Regardless of whether Valve/VU is selling a license or the actual game, they are under no obligation to ensure that the game works after it has been resold.
Can they tell you that you can't resell the game? Well, chances are in the EULA, which you expressly consented to by installing the game, they put in a clause that says you can't sell the game or transfer the EULA to another party. If you buy something, and sign a contract that says you can't sell it to anyone else, then you are bound by that contract, regardless of what laws may apply when no contract is in effect.
Now, do I think this is a really unfriendly thing to do? Sure. But that doesn't mean that they can't cripple the software if you sell it (regardless of whether they can actually prohibit a sale).
Or you can cheat. Simply press CTRL+SHFT+F10. A dialog box will come up asking if you want to cheat. Choose the option that lets you win (I forget which one it is at the moment), and then move any card. It'll instantly put all the cards in the foundations in any order and let you win. It's good for those times when you realize you're stuck, or when you're at work and have to quick close the game but were just about to win anyway.
You could also always just edit the registry entries and give yourself a huge winning streak and no losses...
If by thermal printer you are talking about the things that most stores use to print receipts, I think that could be problematic. Put a receipt in your wallet for a few days and you'll see what I mean -- more often than not it has faded to the point where it is unreadable.
When I worked at Service Merchandise (many years ago), we would give store credit for returns without a receipt, and it would be printed just like a receipt. I had to have at least one person each day walk in with what used to be their store credit slip, but all they had was a blank piece of paper. I started to tell people to buy a gift card with the store credit, as that would last a much longer time.
Anyway, back to my point -- thermal printing (at least the kind I'm thinking of) is not something you want to be using to store important data for any amount of time.
If it shows that Roberts is benefitting directly from IL outside of corporate guidelines, there is going to be an Enron-esque shitstorm.
Somehow I don't think that VC's losing 10-25 million dollars is quite on the same level as thousands of employees and investors losing billions upon billions of dollars.
I don't want to say that the VC's who stand to lose their money on IL deserve what's coming, but they at least know (or at least should know) the risk of being a VC, especially when you are investing in a new company and haven't done any research on them. I am surprised that people will invest millions on a company without doing the research that HardOCP did, and I can't really feel sorry for those who did.
Enron investors, on the other hand, were investing because they were employees of what they thought was a successful company and/or they believed all the documents that the company was filing with the SEC and the NYSE. To make matters worse, they were also misled (deliberately, in some cases) by their financial advisors, who were also looking to make a profit on the whole ordeal.
Bottom line, while this is an unfortunate situation for the VC's who invested in IL, it is by no means even remotely comparable to the whole Enron debacle.
Oh I can definitely feel your pain!!!!! Mine used to be the number for a Male Adult Escorting Service. And is also often confused with a local Women's Clothing store in a different area code.
Yes, I can feel the excruciating pain of having women who want to pay a man to provide them "company" accidentally call me instead...
Actually, that would only be correct if the numbers they gave were the median income. If you take the average salary of 10 people, 9 of whom make $10,000 and another who makes $910,000, your average salary is $100,000. However, 90% of the people are making less than that, and 10% are making more than it.
From a previous guide, a brief description of their build process.
As introduced with our Athlon 64 article, we are looking at compile times for the Quake III Arena source code. In running this test, we compiled the source for both Q3A and Q3TA in both debug and release modes using the Batch Build feature of Visual C++ 6.0. The build was run three consecutive times for each processor (in order to try to reduce file read time impact), and we used the third compile time.
Re:State of the art?
on
Shrek 2 How-To
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Outside of the Gameboy Advance, where standards are lower, can you name a single widely successful game from the past 3 years with cheap-looking 2d graphics?
Ever hear of The Sims, which is arguably the best-selling computer game ever? How about Roller Coaster Tycoon 2? Civ 3?
I suppose the answer to your question is no, I can't name a single widely successful game -- I could think of 3 off the top of my head.
Aside from that, my point was that games with good gameplay are still popular after many years (i.e. more than 3). Take, for instance, Tetris.
Re:State of the art?
on
Shrek 2 How-To
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Take Shrek, make it live action, and you've got a box-office flop.
I agree with you here. However, I think the underlying reason is not because of the story, but because of the genre of the movie. I can't think of a successful fantasy/fairy tale live-action movie off the top of my head. Especially ones with talking animals.
Most kids would rather see a cartoon than a live-action movie anyway.
I will agree, however, that making it a cartoon does add a boost -- back in the 90's, everyone saw the new Disney cartoon every year, but try and name a live-action movie they made for each year that there was a Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, etc. That would be a lot tougher to do, if only because there are a lot more live-action movies than cartoons.
Re:State of the art?
on
Shrek 2 How-To
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
While others may agree or disagree with your analysis of the technical feats of Shrek and Shrek 2, if you're going to the movie just for the graphics, then you're really missing out.
The two movies are huge hits not because of their graphics (although it doesn't hurt) but because of their stories.
People in general value good stories much more than good graphics. The same can be applied to the gaming industry -- while games with amazing graphics may sell well initially, they will only last until the next eye candy comes out a few weeks later. Games with solid gameplay will continue to be played for years (see Counter Strike for an example).
Plus, they must have been doing something right with the graphics -- I've never heard an entire audience simultaneously sigh "Awwwww" because of a cartoon before (if you've seen the movie you know what I'm talking about).
Remember, 480W is the theoretical maximum output of the power supply. First of all, it more than likely could not sustain this output consistently. I believe you generally want a power supply rated at about 150% of what your peak load will likely be to ensure stability. Also, the card itself is not eating up the entire wattage of the system -- Tom's Hardware has the power drain at about 100W at peak usage for the 5800U alone, and about 300W total system usage at peak usage for a fairly high-end system (add another 5 to 500W if you are using a Prescott, depending on who you ask).
So let's give a more reasonable average of about 200-250W for the entire system with average use. That is much more reasonable, when you consider 4 60W light bulbs drain the same amount of power.
That being said, don't turn out the lights when you use your computer, or you may get eye strain. So let's say using your computer is now 320W-370W because you have 2 60W bulbs in your room (bonus points if you use flourescent bulbs).
The point I was trying to make was that upgrading to the nVidia card would likely require the purchase of a new power supply, which will likely be in the $70-$100 range, something that the ATI card will not require as long as you already have a decent power supply.
Please don't mistake me as an ATI fanboy -- if anything, I've been an nVidia fanboy, having owned only nVidia cards since I upgraded my Voodoo2. The competition was fairly close in the last iteration of cards, and while the performance is close (unless you turn on 16xAniso), it's the power that's going to make me buy ATI this time around.
The nVidia 6800 Ultra requires two dedicated molex power connectors, and it also requires a 480W power supply. More details. Now that's a lot of power.
Also, the cooling setup on the 6800 Ultra takes up a slot of its own, which means you lose a PCI port as well, although now that most of the features PCI had (such as sound and NICs) are integrated in the motherboards, it's not too big of a deal.
Lastly to note, nVidia is releasing a lower-powered 6800GT which is approximately equivalent to the X800 Pro card, and they just recently announced a 6850 Ultra which is basically an OEM-overclocked 6800 Ultra. That thing will probably take up 5 slots, have a built-in A/C unit, and have its own cold fusion reactor as well.
You obviously haven't driven on the LIE. If you're not going 80mph, you'll get rear ended.
Seriously though, 80mph is a little bit of a hyperbole, but the area I've experienced is where the cones are just sitting on the side of the road while there is no construction going on. On the LIE, they actually do the construction at night. But they don't always get the barrels all the way over to the side of the road by the end of their shifts, which can just cause lots of problems (as if the LIE itself wasn't a problem already).
How accurate will these new robo-cones be? Having lived on Long Island for 8 years, I've dealt with many, many cones in my day. I've seen problems where a single cone that is a foot farther out than it should be has caused major traffic problems, because the cone is making an already too narrow lane even narrower. And when you're going 80mph on the LIE, that can spell trouble.
What is the reputation of the college you attended? That can have a very large affect on the starting salary out of school, since you likely have little experience. If you did an internship or two over the summer, had a term-time job that was related to technology, and went to a nice school, you can expect to start in the mid 40's, or even more if you work in a more expensive area to live.
I graduated last year, had a hell of a time finding a job, and finally found a job working for a financial company (I found the job through our local Subway restaurant, but that's another story for another day). I asked for 45k a year, given my education and experience working a few jobs over the past few years. When I got the job offer, they offered me 55k.
While good grades will probably help you out, I didn't even have a B average in school. Then again, going to Harvard didn't hurt me by any stretch of the imagination.
For those of you who are still in college, I offer you this advice: get a relevant internship every summer you can get, try to get a term-time job that is involved with technology in some way, and try and get your hands dirty in odd projects around campus that involve technology (whether it is being a webmaster for your dorm, etc.).
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Can they tell you that you can't resell the game? Well, chances are in the EULA, which you expressly consented to by installing the game, they put in a clause that says you can't sell the game or transfer the EULA to another party. If you buy something, and sign a contract that says you can't sell it to anyone else, then you are bound by that contract, regardless of what laws may apply when no contract is in effect.
Now, do I think this is a really unfriendly thing to do? Sure. But that doesn't mean that they can't cripple the software if you sell it (regardless of whether they can actually prohibit a sale).
You could also always just edit the registry entries and give yourself a huge winning streak and no losses...
If by thermal printer you are talking about the things that most stores use to print receipts, I think that could be problematic. Put a receipt in your wallet for a few days and you'll see what I mean -- more often than not it has faded to the point where it is unreadable.
When I worked at Service Merchandise (many years ago), we would give store credit for returns without a receipt, and it would be printed just like a receipt. I had to have at least one person each day walk in with what used to be their store credit slip, but all they had was a blank piece of paper. I started to tell people to buy a gift card with the store credit, as that would last a much longer time.
Anyway, back to my point -- thermal printing (at least the kind I'm thinking of) is not something you want to be using to store important data for any amount of time.
That's funny, because the NFL lists last year's records under the "2003" season. So what happened to the 2004 season, if this is the 2005 season?
Seriously, did someone from the car industry come over to the video game industry and start naming projects?
Which coke would that be?
Also, in order to run like an olympic athlete, you have to add some sort of steroid to the mix.
Somehow I don't think that VC's losing 10-25 million dollars is quite on the same level as thousands of employees and investors losing billions upon billions of dollars.
I don't want to say that the VC's who stand to lose their money on IL deserve what's coming, but they at least know (or at least should know) the risk of being a VC, especially when you are investing in a new company and haven't done any research on them. I am surprised that people will invest millions on a company without doing the research that HardOCP did, and I can't really feel sorry for those who did.
Enron investors, on the other hand, were investing because they were employees of what they thought was a successful company and/or they believed all the documents that the company was filing with the SEC and the NYSE. To make matters worse, they were also misled (deliberately, in some cases) by their financial advisors, who were also looking to make a profit on the whole ordeal.
Bottom line, while this is an unfortunate situation for the VC's who invested in IL, it is by no means even remotely comparable to the whole Enron debacle.
Yes, I can feel the excruciating pain of having women who want to pay a man to provide them "company" accidentally call me instead...
Link to a video showing the aforementioned BSOD: http://www.windowscrash.com/albums/movies/gates_30 _240.mov
Actually, that would only be correct if the numbers they gave were the median income. If you take the average salary of 10 people, 9 of whom make $10,000 and another who makes $910,000, your average salary is $100,000. However, 90% of the people are making less than that, and 10% are making more than it.
As introduced with our Athlon 64 article, we are looking at compile times for the Quake III Arena source code. In running this test, we compiled the source for both Q3A and Q3TA in both debug and release modes using the Batch Build feature of Visual C++ 6.0. The build was run three consecutive times for each processor (in order to try to reduce file read time impact), and we used the third compile time.
Ever hear of The Sims, which is arguably the best-selling computer game ever? How about Roller Coaster Tycoon 2? Civ 3?
I suppose the answer to your question is no, I can't name a single widely successful game -- I could think of 3 off the top of my head.
Aside from that, my point was that games with good gameplay are still popular after many years (i.e. more than 3). Take, for instance, Tetris.
I agree with you here. However, I think the underlying reason is not because of the story, but because of the genre of the movie. I can't think of a successful fantasy/fairy tale live-action movie off the top of my head. Especially ones with talking animals.
Most kids would rather see a cartoon than a live-action movie anyway.
I will agree, however, that making it a cartoon does add a boost -- back in the 90's, everyone saw the new Disney cartoon every year, but try and name a live-action movie they made for each year that there was a Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, etc. That would be a lot tougher to do, if only because there are a lot more live-action movies than cartoons.
While others may agree or disagree with your analysis of the technical feats of Shrek and Shrek 2, if you're going to the movie just for the graphics, then you're really missing out.
The two movies are huge hits not because of their graphics (although it doesn't hurt) but because of their stories.
People in general value good stories much more than good graphics. The same can be applied to the gaming industry -- while games with amazing graphics may sell well initially, they will only last until the next eye candy comes out a few weeks later. Games with solid gameplay will continue to be played for years (see Counter Strike for an example).
Plus, they must have been doing something right with the graphics -- I've never heard an entire audience simultaneously sigh "Awwwww" because of a cartoon before (if you've seen the movie you know what I'm talking about).
Remember, 480W is the theoretical maximum output of the power supply. First of all, it more than likely could not sustain this output consistently. I believe you generally want a power supply rated at about 150% of what your peak load will likely be to ensure stability. Also, the card itself is not eating up the entire wattage of the system -- Tom's Hardware has the power drain at about 100W at peak usage for the 5800U alone, and about 300W total system usage at peak usage for a fairly high-end system (add another 5 to 500W if you are using a Prescott, depending on who you ask).
So let's give a more reasonable average of about 200-250W for the entire system with average use. That is much more reasonable, when you consider 4 60W light bulbs drain the same amount of power.
That being said, don't turn out the lights when you use your computer, or you may get eye strain. So let's say using your computer is now 320W-370W because you have 2 60W bulbs in your room (bonus points if you use flourescent bulbs).
The point I was trying to make was that upgrading to the nVidia card would likely require the purchase of a new power supply, which will likely be in the $70-$100 range, something that the ATI card will not require as long as you already have a decent power supply.
Please don't mistake me as an ATI fanboy -- if anything, I've been an nVidia fanboy, having owned only nVidia cards since I upgraded my Voodoo2. The competition was fairly close in the last iteration of cards, and while the performance is close (unless you turn on 16xAniso), it's the power that's going to make me buy ATI this time around.
To clarify on a few points of the parent:
The nVidia 6800 Ultra requires two dedicated molex power connectors, and it also requires a 480W power supply. More details. Now that's a lot of power.
Also, the cooling setup on the 6800 Ultra takes up a slot of its own, which means you lose a PCI port as well, although now that most of the features PCI had (such as sound and NICs) are integrated in the motherboards, it's not too big of a deal.
Lastly to note, nVidia is releasing a lower-powered 6800GT which is approximately equivalent to the X800 Pro card, and they just recently announced a 6850 Ultra which is basically an OEM-overclocked 6800 Ultra. That thing will probably take up 5 slots, have a built-in A/C unit, and have its own cold fusion reactor as well.
You obviously haven't driven on the LIE. If you're not going 80mph, you'll get rear ended.
Seriously though, 80mph is a little bit of a hyperbole, but the area I've experienced is where the cones are just sitting on the side of the road while there is no construction going on. On the LIE, they actually do the construction at night. But they don't always get the barrels all the way over to the side of the road by the end of their shifts, which can just cause lots of problems (as if the LIE itself wasn't a problem already).
How accurate will these new robo-cones be? Having lived on Long Island for 8 years, I've dealt with many, many cones in my day. I've seen problems where a single cone that is a foot farther out than it should be has caused major traffic problems, because the cone is making an already too narrow lane even narrower. And when you're going 80mph on the LIE, that can spell trouble.
What is the reputation of the college you attended? That can have a very large affect on the starting salary out of school, since you likely have little experience. If you did an internship or two over the summer, had a term-time job that was related to technology, and went to a nice school, you can expect to start in the mid 40's, or even more if you work in a more expensive area to live. I graduated last year, had a hell of a time finding a job, and finally found a job working for a financial company (I found the job through our local Subway restaurant, but that's another story for another day). I asked for 45k a year, given my education and experience working a few jobs over the past few years. When I got the job offer, they offered me 55k. While good grades will probably help you out, I didn't even have a B average in school. Then again, going to Harvard didn't hurt me by any stretch of the imagination. For those of you who are still in college, I offer you this advice: get a relevant internship every summer you can get, try to get a term-time job that is involved with technology in some way, and try and get your hands dirty in odd projects around campus that involve technology (whether it is being a webmaster for your dorm, etc.).