Good points to be made there. I hope Sony doesn't give up on the PSP as a movie platform for UMD's (or in the very least considers some kind of online subscription service similar to Rhapsody or Napster - $14.95 a month for unlimited movie downloads). If they do relaunch, they need to cut the prices of the UMD's to at least $9 or under, not $20. I bought three or four of them at Walmart for $14 just out of curiosity, and to tell you the truth they're not that bad. But it's not worth $20-$25 for a UMD when you can get a DVD for $9 and rip it to your 2GB memory card using a $20 (one time) piece of software. Also, they need to pay Blockbuster to offer more as rentals. I know Gamefly or Netflix supposedly has them, but I don't like those services (I don't rent enough to warrant them).
All in all, the UMD launch seems more like a Sony guinea pig project then something they were wholly dedicated to. No TV possibilities whatsoever (forgetting the format of the picture), horrible pricing, and poor availability as a rental platform all equal failure.
I was in a Best Buy yesterday looking at PSP games and I noticed a mother pushing a son in a stroller and another kid of about 9 and she had GTA: Liberty City Stories in her hand. She was going to buy it for the 9 year old. Personally, I think there's only so much legislators can expect these ratings to do, and then they just have to let it go because they've given parents the information and the rest belongs out of their hands.
Just a few responses to your criticisms of the PSP (I don't own a DS so I can't comment) -
in-game battery life is a short four hours
This is partially true. If you play a game on full brightness, you have really low battery life. However, I've managed to play a game on low brightness for up to 8 hours before. I can't really comment on wireless play, as I haven't tried it on battery power, just plugged in.
the screen is extremely easy to scratch or mar with fingerprints
Very true with the fingerprints. I also get lots of dust on mine when I put it in my pocket while listening to MP3s. However, it wipes off easy with the provided dustcloth and while there is a great cleaning FAQ on IGN that talks about using car wax, I've used a wet cotton cloth on it just fine with no problems. I've owned mine since July of last year and have bought two different screen covers (the stupid Pelican Face Armor kept breaking, so I found a nicer one that isn't attached to the actual PSP) that have prevented scratches really well. I don't have any that I can say are permanent scratches after 8 months or so. It definitely depends on how well you take care of your device, of course.
game load time is excessively long on occasion.
Many games are hampered by this problem, but it is possible to overcome this. The Sims has a horrible problem with load times, as does Madden (which is a horrible game, don't buy it) and Ape Escape, however other games such as Grand Theft Auto and FIFA Soccer (the original) aren't bad and Ridge Racer, Virtua Tennis, and Mercury have great load times. My initial feeling on this was that it was the UMD, which is partially true. I think the 100% truth is that the UMD is slow, but good programming and testing by the developer can definitely overcome the UMD's shortcomings. The more publishers/developers are criticized for not taking the speed of the UMD into account, the better load times I think we'll see.
On a totally unrelated to the parent post comment, I'm really looking forward to the library of games that are listed to come out this spring for the PSP. Lemmings, Worms, Mega Man, Katamari (which, not owning a PS2, I've never played), and Field Commander look like they all have great potential. I wouldn't count out the PSP due to a horrible games library just yet.
I live in NYC and commute via subway every day to work. I am surprised by the number of people who actually play a PSP, watch movies, and even listen to the music (the lame headphones give them away - the left side is shorter than the right). I personally just use it to listen to music because I'm a little wary of holding it out in the open to be snatched away. I wouldn't say I've seen as many people with a DS or Gameboy. Lots of iPods, obviously, and many cell phone gamers and crackberry addicts. But the PSP definitely has a nicer chunk of representation than the other handhelds.
As for the UMD movies, I'm not surprised myself either. I stayed away from them because they were more expensive than DVDs. I always thought that the best way to utilize the UMD movies is to rent, but Sony just didn't seem to get that. If Blockbuster had UMD movies to rent I'd be all over it for when I travel. Great idea, poor execution.
When I see a game site put big headlines up for a game I would assume that they really think highly of the game and want to inform their readers.
I've gotten to the point now where I don't even read the "previews" of games expecting a negative word about the game at all. PC Gamer is an excellent example of a magazine that never gives a negative word in its previews. Ditto for IGN. Usually when it comes to previews I just kind of skim the article looking for features that are mentioned and so forth. Is that a testament to how similar games are now or the fact that the press just doesn't vary it's content? I don't know. However, I have stopped counting the number of times a game is hyped bigtime by the press only to have it come out and get negative reviews. Operation Flashpoint, Citizens Kabuto, and my personal favorite, Republic: The Revolution. Yes, these games are relatively old now but that's how long ago I stopped paying attention to the previews.
Looking at the current state of things, I'd say we're far from it being "given" that games will become just tools for Dungeon Masters and the like. Only a small set of games have actually released tools powerful enough for developers to modify. Unless the code is released, all you're doing is modifying the artwork and some weapon characteristics ala BF1942. I think if anything, creativity and flexibility are being given up because the publishers don't want to take risks on things that won't sell. They want a proven formula every time so they can make money.
Even more, games are so complicated now that it takes a while to produce modifications. By the time those mods are released, gamers have moved on to the next flavor of the month. The gap between independent modmakers and paid developers is growing rapidly. And worse, if people don't modify a game then the economics of the thing becomes unrealistic. If people don't use your tools, why are you going to the trouble of making it so moddable? I think one thing will be most telling in this regard...if Valve keeps the Source engine around and incrementally improves it over the next 5-10 years, then we know it's an economically sound model for development. If they ditch it for a whole new source code base, then we know modding will eventually be a fringe benefit. Before you go ahead and tell me it's an obvious software design principle, remember the marketing tactics and game journal articles that always feature a game developers "newest and greatest engine." John Carmack throws out his codebase for each new game, and he's been doing it how long?
While I think there will be a share of people who forego the license fee to use CentOS, I think it's safe to say that any large organization that can afford the fee will pay for RHEL so they get the support that comes with it. It's six times easier to blame someone else then fall back on yourself when the OS wreaks havoc in production. "We've found the problem and we're on the phone with our SA's from Red Hat" sounds better than "We've found the problem and Joe from IT is hacking together a solution."
I use linux on my laptop dual-booted with Windows. It's a 40gig drive that's about 25 gigs linux, 15 gigs windows. So space is kind of a concern, but more like I use gentoo and it takes too long to compile both GTK and QT and Gnome and KDE. Now now, none of those Gentoo jokes, I like things the way I like them and your bashing of Gentoo won't change my mind./rant.
Anyways, I also use lighter WMs like E16/17 and Fluxbox, so I really don't use either of the DE's. I felt like KDE had too much bloat and Gnome was always changing the configs in completely crazy ways (no way to edit the applications menu in Gnome 2.10 anyone?). So I decided I'd go lightweight and take the time to configure stuff the way I wanted. Plus, I like gedit as a backup to emacs and gimp and a few other GTK apps that are really nice. So if I have to choose, I choose GTK.
Re:Gnome Terminal speed improvements
on
Gnome 2.14 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Konsole on Gnome wouldn't make much sense to me....you'd have to have qt installed and I really only want one Graphics library / DE or the other on my drive because of all the space they take up.
I use Eterm and aterm. Both are highly customizable, support fake transparency (except in E17), and give the appearance of speed over konsole and gnome-terminal.
If the drivers are all modules, I don't believe the source code has to be released. Obviously, Nvidia and ATI have never released the code to their modules. Another example off the top of my head is Broadcom and the b44 ethernet card module (that's the open source one, but they have a module that is closed source whose name I can't remember). Another tactic they might follow is Intel's, who releases the wireless drivers for their IPW series as open source, but keeps the firmware for the cards closed. This allows them to look good and at the same time protect their IP. I doubt you'll see much source code from Sony in light of the PSP debacle. Personally, I don't care what they do as long as I can run linux. The PS2 dev kits all ran linux on them. My friend set up Afterstep on his in an effort to pretend he was John Carmack running a NeXT box. I'll settle for E17, since by the time the PS3 is released, E17 will probably be stable and able to run Duke Nukem Forever with OpenGL acceleration.
And don't flame me for E17, I'm running it on my laptop.
Sony doesnt have a specific mascot or icon, so consumers associate whatever title they love with the playstation line. fighting fans may think tekken when they think playstation. shooter fans may think socom or killzone or some such when they think playstation. rpg fans may think final fantasy. same carries for metal gear solid, devil may cry, or grand theft auto
This is probably the most insightful thing said in this thread. Yes, Nintendo and Microsoft have icons in Mario and the Master Chief respectively. However, Sony has games that people enjoyed playing, or else they wouldn't have sold more PS2's than Xboxes or Gamecubes. I think that it's true they might be reacting to their competitors, but that's what competition is all about. Someone offers something just before you release your product and it becomes popular, so you have to duplicate rather than innovate. Sure, it's not as great but if you offer an improvement that makes it worth the purchase price, then at least you've done something to play down the competition. I think if Sony can somehow pull it together so that the PSP, the PS3, and this so-called network library is somewhat seamless, they might have something. They've already talked about feature sharing between the two hardware platforms, so it's not a stretch to think they might be thinking about this. However, I think it's too close to release time to pull it off immediately. This is not to say that Nintendo won't attempt the same thing, but I think that Nintendo hasn't produced much proof about their network stuff either, so saying that Sony is copying Nintendo isn't entirely accurate when neither have actual hardware on the market yet. It's all just speculation at this point.
Yes, I probably just modded myself flamebait with that last statement, but seriously, no one has produced anything solid yet here except for microsoft, and even their launch was mediocre at best. Not only could no one buy a 360, those that did found only a few games available and the best one IMO, Call of Duty 2, wasnt worth playing when I saw the demo at J&R. I say to Sony and Nintendo, put your money where your mouth is and give me a freaking device. No more controllers or network features, I want to see the hardware before I make any decisions.
I had a huge problem with StarForce on X3. I installed the game via 6 CD's when I got it for Christmas, played the game long enough to get annoyed by the bugs, and then ignored it until last week when I got the itch to play again. Downloaded the new patch, put the disc in the drive, and loaded the executable. Strangely enough, starforce pops up and says "Invalid CDROM in drive, please load the correct disc" or some such thing. Two things pop into my mind - first, I have X3 from the US publisher, who supposedly didn't put starforce on their copy (only the UK publisher did on DVDROMs), and second, why the hell doesn't it like my disc. So, I go to Egosoft's website to check out the support forum. Nice, I have to download a patch to starforce. Download patch, and reboot. I get the same error message when I try again. Forum suggests I uninstall and reinstall. So I do that and reboot. Same error. Forum suggests uninstalling the game AND starforce. I do that and reboot. Then I have to apply the starforce patch and reboot again. Now I'm completely frustrated (after 4 reboots and the knowledge that starforce is on my system) so I check the disc. Doh! Wrong disc in the drive.
Long story short, the game works fine, starforce is present and accounted for, and I for one welcome our new Laser-Read Spinning Mirrors of Knowledge overlords.
Yes, but an Athlon 64 that matches (or exceeds) the performance of your 3GHz PIV (the 3000+) is now less than $150...
You obviously didn't get what I was saying...why would I pay money for something equivalent to what I already own? I'm saying the top ranked stuff on average is getting pricier - it used to be $400 for a top video card, now it's $645. $500 for a processor now goes for $1000. Sure, inflation can be taken into account but prices shouldn't double over a two or three year period.
I mean, if you hold a stock for 10 years, do you really care what may happen during the next 3 months?
That might be true for most stocks, but Google is trading abnormally high. I think that at this point the stock is more likely to crash and burn to under $100 rather than increase to $400, wouldn't you agree? And if it does crash, it's never going to get to $300 again. Normally I'd agree with you, but I think Google is kind of a special case being that it is (was?) everyone's favorite.
Do they need to sell new cards for $700, or perhaps can we start seeing a price war that will drive down costs of new products to reasonable prices
I agree with everything you said, but if there's one thing that's almost assured, it's that a price war is going on and the prices are only increasing, not decreasing. The video card market seems to have a nice thing going for manufacturers - the better the card the better it looks so you can impress your friends so all ATI/Nvidia has to do is create a see-saw effect where every 6 months they're topping the other guy and the demand for these cards will just increase. Kind of like Coke/Pepsi and two litre bottles. Every week, one guy goes on sale and the other one doesn't. Processors seem to be doing this as well. I bought my 3Ghz PIV two years ago for $500 when the first 3Ghz chips were being released, now the top of the line AMD chips are like $1000. I think we're making backwards progress and the manufacturers love it.
How many of these analysts actually hold Google stock?
For their sake, hopefully none. The SEC is really cracking down on analysts who give positive ratings to stocks in which they have a direct interest, i.e. pumping up investment funds their own company sells. The pressure on Google to talk straight with analysts is probably in response to this policy. If the analyst can't make a good judgement and he has some kind of direct interest in that company, he could get into big trouble if he advises the wrong way.
That being said, I also think that Google doesn't have to play ball with these guys if they don't want to, but it might hurt them in the long run. Sure, it's nice public relations and all that, but pissing off the money people is not exactly something you do. Also, it seems like the analysts are whining more than anything. Google may think they're trying to change the way investors and companies interact and they kind of had the ball in their court for a while, but I think the recent fall in price probably are the investors indicating they want straight talk or else. It's russian roulette at $350 a bullet.
Sony/MS use a subscription model. Nintendo is using free access.
This article is about the DS I thought...its direct competitor would be the PSP which doesn't require a subscription to anything to play online games unless the game developer/publisher require it. But I don't know of any games like this.
For an average consumer, that choice can be narrowed down to 3 or 4 of the best. Suse, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mandriva.
I thought Lindows/Linspire would have been a good choice for the grandmas out there, but I'm not sure if it's even still around. I completely agree with parent too about the family lines - most distributions aren't worth checking out because their variations of the big 4 (I thought Slackware came from RH waaaay back when....). However, I don't see the standard desktop happening ever. I still don't understand what the Open Group gets us other than a nice X11 fork^H^H^Halternative. Just because it would make life easier for hardware manufacturers, doesn't mean we should do it. Dell has a good point about alienating users by choosing a sole distribution, but seriously, everyone who uses Linux now usually wipes their drives and installs it from scratch anyways. The big issue for me is that a lot of Linux machines cost more than their Windows counterparts. That is a total waste IMO. It's like a Linux tax just so I can not send my money to Microsoft.
while ($beer != full) {
$beer = new Beer();
chug($beer);
}
So here's a small problem with your signature - you run the while loop until the beer is full...but you chug the beer inside the while loop. Which means that once your beer is full...you stop drinking. Of course, this is all dependent upon the fact that chug doesn't empty the glass, which is usually what happens when you chug...so basically I think you need to check the return of chug to make sure it didn't fail. Otherwise you might have problems.
There were many schools I could have dropped in there but the point I was trying to make was that you should expect to go to just any school and make great money straight out.
Slashdot Mirror
Good points to be made there. I hope Sony doesn't give up on the PSP as a movie platform for UMD's (or in the very least considers some kind of online subscription service similar to Rhapsody or Napster - $14.95 a month for unlimited movie downloads). If they do relaunch, they need to cut the prices of the UMD's to at least $9 or under, not $20. I bought three or four of them at Walmart for $14 just out of curiosity, and to tell you the truth they're not that bad. But it's not worth $20-$25 for a UMD when you can get a DVD for $9 and rip it to your 2GB memory card using a $20 (one time) piece of software. Also, they need to pay Blockbuster to offer more as rentals. I know Gamefly or Netflix supposedly has them, but I don't like those services (I don't rent enough to warrant them).
All in all, the UMD launch seems more like a Sony guinea pig project then something they were wholly dedicated to. No TV possibilities whatsoever (forgetting the format of the picture), horrible pricing, and poor availability as a rental platform all equal failure.
Just curious, how do you know it was for the 9 year old Because the 9 year old asked the mother to buy it and she said yes.
I was in a Best Buy yesterday looking at PSP games and I noticed a mother pushing a son in a stroller and another kid of about 9 and she had GTA: Liberty City Stories in her hand. She was going to buy it for the 9 year old. Personally, I think there's only so much legislators can expect these ratings to do, and then they just have to let it go because they've given parents the information and the rest belongs out of their hands.
Now, what really would be cool is if Worms on the PSP would actually play against Worms on the DS. But that won't happen....
Just a few responses to your criticisms of the PSP (I don't own a DS so I can't comment) -
in-game battery life is a short four hoursThis is partially true. If you play a game on full brightness, you have really low battery life. However, I've managed to play a game on low brightness for up to 8 hours before. I can't really comment on wireless play, as I haven't tried it on battery power, just plugged in.
the screen is extremely easy to scratch or mar with fingerprintsVery true with the fingerprints. I also get lots of dust on mine when I put it in my pocket while listening to MP3s. However, it wipes off easy with the provided dustcloth and while there is a great cleaning FAQ on IGN that talks about using car wax, I've used a wet cotton cloth on it just fine with no problems. I've owned mine since July of last year and have bought two different screen covers (the stupid Pelican Face Armor kept breaking, so I found a nicer one that isn't attached to the actual PSP) that have prevented scratches really well. I don't have any that I can say are permanent scratches after 8 months or so. It definitely depends on how well you take care of your device, of course.
game load time is excessively long on occasion.Many games are hampered by this problem, but it is possible to overcome this. The Sims has a horrible problem with load times, as does Madden (which is a horrible game, don't buy it) and Ape Escape, however other games such as Grand Theft Auto and FIFA Soccer (the original) aren't bad and Ridge Racer, Virtua Tennis, and Mercury have great load times. My initial feeling on this was that it was the UMD, which is partially true. I think the 100% truth is that the UMD is slow, but good programming and testing by the developer can definitely overcome the UMD's shortcomings. The more publishers/developers are criticized for not taking the speed of the UMD into account, the better load times I think we'll see.
On a totally unrelated to the parent post comment, I'm really looking forward to the library of games that are listed to come out this spring for the PSP. Lemmings, Worms, Mega Man, Katamari (which, not owning a PS2, I've never played), and Field Commander look like they all have great potential. I wouldn't count out the PSP due to a horrible games library just yet.
I live in NYC and commute via subway every day to work. I am surprised by the number of people who actually play a PSP, watch movies, and even listen to the music (the lame headphones give them away - the left side is shorter than the right). I personally just use it to listen to music because I'm a little wary of holding it out in the open to be snatched away. I wouldn't say I've seen as many people with a DS or Gameboy. Lots of iPods, obviously, and many cell phone gamers and crackberry addicts. But the PSP definitely has a nicer chunk of representation than the other handhelds.
As for the UMD movies, I'm not surprised myself either. I stayed away from them because they were more expensive than DVDs. I always thought that the best way to utilize the UMD movies is to rent, but Sony just didn't seem to get that. If Blockbuster had UMD movies to rent I'd be all over it for when I travel. Great idea, poor execution.
I've gotten to the point now where I don't even read the "previews" of games expecting a negative word about the game at all. PC Gamer is an excellent example of a magazine that never gives a negative word in its previews. Ditto for IGN. Usually when it comes to previews I just kind of skim the article looking for features that are mentioned and so forth. Is that a testament to how similar games are now or the fact that the press just doesn't vary it's content? I don't know. However, I have stopped counting the number of times a game is hyped bigtime by the press only to have it come out and get negative reviews. Operation Flashpoint, Citizens Kabuto, and my personal favorite, Republic: The Revolution. Yes, these games are relatively old now but that's how long ago I stopped paying attention to the previews.
Buy em up, sell them on Ebay! And whatever you do, don't post it to /.
Looking at the current state of things, I'd say we're far from it being "given" that games will become just tools for Dungeon Masters and the like. Only a small set of games have actually released tools powerful enough for developers to modify. Unless the code is released, all you're doing is modifying the artwork and some weapon characteristics ala BF1942. I think if anything, creativity and flexibility are being given up because the publishers don't want to take risks on things that won't sell. They want a proven formula every time so they can make money.
Even more, games are so complicated now that it takes a while to produce modifications. By the time those mods are released, gamers have moved on to the next flavor of the month. The gap between independent modmakers and paid developers is growing rapidly. And worse, if people don't modify a game then the economics of the thing becomes unrealistic. If people don't use your tools, why are you going to the trouble of making it so moddable? I think one thing will be most telling in this regard...if Valve keeps the Source engine around and incrementally improves it over the next 5-10 years, then we know it's an economically sound model for development. If they ditch it for a whole new source code base, then we know modding will eventually be a fringe benefit. Before you go ahead and tell me it's an obvious software design principle, remember the marketing tactics and game journal articles that always feature a game developers "newest and greatest engine." John Carmack throws out his codebase for each new game, and he's been doing it how long?
While I think there will be a share of people who forego the license fee to use CentOS, I think it's safe to say that any large organization that can afford the fee will pay for RHEL so they get the support that comes with it. It's six times easier to blame someone else then fall back on yourself when the OS wreaks havoc in production. "We've found the problem and we're on the phone with our SA's from Red Hat" sounds better than "We've found the problem and Joe from IT is hacking together a solution."
I use linux on my laptop dual-booted with Windows. It's a 40gig drive that's about 25 gigs linux, 15 gigs windows. So space is kind of a concern, but more like I use gentoo and it takes too long to compile both GTK and QT and Gnome and KDE. Now now, none of those Gentoo jokes, I like things the way I like them and your bashing of Gentoo won't change my mind. /rant.
Anyways, I also use lighter WMs like E16/17 and Fluxbox, so I really don't use either of the DE's. I felt like KDE had too much bloat and Gnome was always changing the configs in completely crazy ways (no way to edit the applications menu in Gnome 2.10 anyone?). So I decided I'd go lightweight and take the time to configure stuff the way I wanted. Plus, I like gedit as a backup to emacs and gimp and a few other GTK apps that are really nice. So if I have to choose, I choose GTK.
Konsole on Gnome wouldn't make much sense to me....you'd have to have qt installed and I really only want one Graphics library / DE or the other on my drive because of all the space they take up.
I use Eterm and aterm. Both are highly customizable, support fake transparency (except in E17), and give the appearance of speed over konsole and gnome-terminal.
Anyone got a "Can't take a joke" mod?
If the drivers are all modules, I don't believe the source code has to be released. Obviously, Nvidia and ATI have never released the code to their modules. Another example off the top of my head is Broadcom and the b44 ethernet card module (that's the open source one, but they have a module that is closed source whose name I can't remember). Another tactic they might follow is Intel's, who releases the wireless drivers for their IPW series as open source, but keeps the firmware for the cards closed. This allows them to look good and at the same time protect their IP. I doubt you'll see much source code from Sony in light of the PSP debacle. Personally, I don't care what they do as long as I can run linux. The PS2 dev kits all ran linux on them. My friend set up Afterstep on his in an effort to pretend he was John Carmack running a NeXT box. I'll settle for E17, since by the time the PS3 is released, E17 will probably be stable and able to run Duke Nukem Forever with OpenGL acceleration.
And don't flame me for E17, I'm running it on my laptop.
This is probably the most insightful thing said in this thread. Yes, Nintendo and Microsoft have icons in Mario and the Master Chief respectively. However, Sony has games that people enjoyed playing, or else they wouldn't have sold more PS2's than Xboxes or Gamecubes. I think that it's true they might be reacting to their competitors, but that's what competition is all about. Someone offers something just before you release your product and it becomes popular, so you have to duplicate rather than innovate. Sure, it's not as great but if you offer an improvement that makes it worth the purchase price, then at least you've done something to play down the competition. I think if Sony can somehow pull it together so that the PSP, the PS3, and this so-called network library is somewhat seamless, they might have something. They've already talked about feature sharing between the two hardware platforms, so it's not a stretch to think they might be thinking about this. However, I think it's too close to release time to pull it off immediately. This is not to say that Nintendo won't attempt the same thing, but I think that Nintendo hasn't produced much proof about their network stuff either, so saying that Sony is copying Nintendo isn't entirely accurate when neither have actual hardware on the market yet. It's all just speculation at this point.
Yes, I probably just modded myself flamebait with that last statement, but seriously, no one has produced anything solid yet here except for microsoft, and even their launch was mediocre at best. Not only could no one buy a 360, those that did found only a few games available and the best one IMO, Call of Duty 2, wasnt worth playing when I saw the demo at J&R. I say to Sony and Nintendo, put your money where your mouth is and give me a freaking device. No more controllers or network features, I want to see the hardware before I make any decisions.
I had a huge problem with StarForce on X3. I installed the game via 6 CD's when I got it for Christmas, played the game long enough to get annoyed by the bugs, and then ignored it until last week when I got the itch to play again. Downloaded the new patch, put the disc in the drive, and loaded the executable. Strangely enough, starforce pops up and says "Invalid CDROM in drive, please load the correct disc" or some such thing. Two things pop into my mind - first, I have X3 from the US publisher, who supposedly didn't put starforce on their copy (only the UK publisher did on DVDROMs), and second, why the hell doesn't it like my disc. So, I go to Egosoft's website to check out the support forum. Nice, I have to download a patch to starforce. Download patch, and reboot. I get the same error message when I try again. Forum suggests I uninstall and reinstall. So I do that and reboot. Same error. Forum suggests uninstalling the game AND starforce. I do that and reboot. Then I have to apply the starforce patch and reboot again. Now I'm completely frustrated (after 4 reboots and the knowledge that starforce is on my system) so I check the disc. Doh! Wrong disc in the drive.
Long story short, the game works fine, starforce is present and accounted for, and I for one welcome our new Laser-Read Spinning Mirrors of Knowledge overlords.
Yes, but an Athlon 64 that matches (or exceeds) the performance of your 3GHz PIV (the 3000+) is now less than $150... You obviously didn't get what I was saying...why would I pay money for something equivalent to what I already own? I'm saying the top ranked stuff on average is getting pricier - it used to be $400 for a top video card, now it's $645. $500 for a processor now goes for $1000. Sure, inflation can be taken into account but prices shouldn't double over a two or three year period.
That might be true for most stocks, but Google is trading abnormally high. I think that at this point the stock is more likely to crash and burn to under $100 rather than increase to $400, wouldn't you agree? And if it does crash, it's never going to get to $300 again. Normally I'd agree with you, but I think Google is kind of a special case being that it is (was?) everyone's favorite.
I agree with everything you said, but if there's one thing that's almost assured, it's that a price war is going on and the prices are only increasing, not decreasing. The video card market seems to have a nice thing going for manufacturers - the better the card the better it looks so you can impress your friends so all ATI/Nvidia has to do is create a see-saw effect where every 6 months they're topping the other guy and the demand for these cards will just increase. Kind of like Coke/Pepsi and two litre bottles. Every week, one guy goes on sale and the other one doesn't. Processors seem to be doing this as well. I bought my 3Ghz PIV two years ago for $500 when the first 3Ghz chips were being released, now the top of the line AMD chips are like $1000. I think we're making backwards progress and the manufacturers love it.
For their sake, hopefully none. The SEC is really cracking down on analysts who give positive ratings to stocks in which they have a direct interest, i.e. pumping up investment funds their own company sells. The pressure on Google to talk straight with analysts is probably in response to this policy. If the analyst can't make a good judgement and he has some kind of direct interest in that company, he could get into big trouble if he advises the wrong way.
That being said, I also think that Google doesn't have to play ball with these guys if they don't want to, but it might hurt them in the long run. Sure, it's nice public relations and all that, but pissing off the money people is not exactly something you do. Also, it seems like the analysts are whining more than anything. Google may think they're trying to change the way investors and companies interact and they kind of had the ball in their court for a while, but I think the recent fall in price probably are the investors indicating they want straight talk or else. It's russian roulette at $350 a bullet.
Sony/MS use a subscription model. Nintendo is using free access. This article is about the DS I thought...its direct competitor would be the PSP which doesn't require a subscription to anything to play online games unless the game developer/publisher require it. But I don't know of any games like this.
I thought Lindows/Linspire would have been a good choice for the grandmas out there, but I'm not sure if it's even still around. I completely agree with parent too about the family lines - most distributions aren't worth checking out because their variations of the big 4 (I thought Slackware came from RH waaaay back when....). However, I don't see the standard desktop happening ever. I still don't understand what the Open Group gets us other than a nice X11 fork^H^H^Halternative. Just because it would make life easier for hardware manufacturers, doesn't mean we should do it. Dell has a good point about alienating users by choosing a sole distribution, but seriously, everyone who uses Linux now usually wipes their drives and installs it from scratch anyways. The big issue for me is that a lot of Linux machines cost more than their Windows counterparts. That is a total waste IMO. It's like a Linux tax just so I can not send my money to Microsoft.
So here's a small problem with your signature - you run the while loop until the beer is full...but you chug the beer inside the while loop. Which means that once your beer is full...you stop drinking. Of course, this is all dependent upon the fact that chug doesn't empty the glass, which is usually what happens when you chug...so basically I think you need to check the return of chug to make sure it didn't fail. Otherwise you might have problems.
Sorry for wasting your time.
There were many schools I could have dropped in there but the point I was trying to make was that you should expect to go to just any school and make great money straight out.
Yeah, it's a government job so the pay won't be great, but you have a smaller chance than I do of getting laid off, so it works out, kind of.