Re:Why aren't there more contributors to this proj
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ReactOS 0.3.15 Released
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Not to mention everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room, the reason why Linux has never stood a chance...Windows software.
There is ALWAYS some "must have" piece of software that Linux doesn't have any alternative to or the alternative is poor, and as long as that is the case you can just give it up. the FOSS community has acted like all you need is a browser and Office but even my little old lady customers have software that they simply won't do without, and its pretty damned obvious by now that Linux is NEVER gonna get enough marketshare in its current form to get all that software ported, its just not gonna happen.
So if the FOSS community really and truly wants the world using a FOSS OS? Then get behind ReactOS, because that is pretty much the only shot you have of dethroning Windows on the desktop. Hell you make it stable so "update foo broke my drivers" or even better if supporting windows drivers isn't a problem I'll be happy to stock my shelves with ReactOS boxes and laptops, and I bet I'm far from alone. I really get damned sick of the FOSSie faction saying I don't want Linux to succeed or that I'm working for MSFT...do you have ANY idea how badly they fuck us system builders over? The OEMs get Windows cheap enough they can pay for the cost in trialware, us system builders have to pay the same price the average Joe pays and it fucking sucks. Don't you think I'd rather sell systems without that high as hell cost of Windows dragging like a boat anchor behind it? I'd even be happy to pay say $20 a pop for each copy of ReactOS, sure beats the wallet raping i get from MSFT.
So c'mon FOSS community, get behind ReactOS. You get the code you are always wanting, we system builders get an OS that doesn't bleed us dry, the consumers get an OS that runs what they want to run, hell you could even have a dialog box pop up pointing out a FOSS alternative to this or that software when the user first goes to install if you want to wean them off of non FOSS, its a win/win for everybody.
That doesn't change the fact that there is really no way to "go legit" without killing the whole damned point of such software, which is to be as easy to use as credit with the anonymity of cash, since the feds want everything traceable and tackable and going through them.
So I'd say the best bet would be to set up in some country that gives the finger to the USA, otherwise the feds are gonna raid you and shut you down no matter what you do, or did everybody forget what happened to the "liberty coin" which was simply an attempt to have money backed by a real material instead of just printing paper bullshit out of thin air like fiat currency?
And if you are gonna talk about me at LEAST get the facts right, I have said time and time again that Linux is great on servers, its great on embedded, where it sucks royally is the desktop. And if he isn't a novice then WTF is that Ask Slashdot anyway? if he wasn't a novice he'd know enough basic troubleshooting to figure this out on his own, but if you read TFS its pretty damned obvious his idea of "not a novice" is that he can install the OS, otherwise we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
But no matter what you, I or anybody else thinks about Linux the simple fact of the matter is this is NOT the right place for this question, it should be in the forums where they can ask follow ups and work their way through the problem, all he is gonna get here is wild guesses at best. This isn't one of those ask/. questions where you can just say "Oh do this" or "oh you need" that to solve it, its gonna take some back and forth to get to the root of the problem.
Uhhh...correct me if I'm in the wrong, you are a lawyer and I'm just a fixit guy and bass player, but hasn't the SCOTUS pretty consistently ruled in favor of licenses like EULA and shrink wrap licenses? Again I may be wrong but the only thing I can remember even being close to ruling for the consumer was the courts saying if they change the terms they have to notify you and give you the ability to leave without penalty which is why we get so many "terms of service change" notices from pretty much all of the major players.
I mean if you can name the case where the SCOTUS ruled that TOS, EULAs, and shrink wraps don't count? Good, great, love to read it, but while I can't think of anybody that has been busted yet for changing websites AFAIK the court has been pretty consistent in siding with the license, no matter how unfair or lop sided it is.
The simple fact is ALL OSes can get malware unless they are either so locked down on permissions that they are basically read only or are thin clients which are locked down at the server, but even the Linux community claims Android as Linux and its going to reach a million infections any day now so the argument over whether Linux malware is a threat? Pretty much over, that is what happens when somebody uses it for something popular, popular equals large target. Welcome to the club, the Mac guys that joined a couple of years back can show you the ropes, coffee and donuts are in the back.
As for this specific case? As somebody who works on systems 6 days a week? Yeah...smells like he has an infection. Guys here can have a shitfit if they want but anybody who switches from an OS they know the ropes on to something completely new, I don't care if its Linux or Mac or Windows whatever? They are ALWAYS gonna be at higher risk than where they were simply because they don't know the new system and don't know what to watch out for. Hell he probably doesn't even know what should and shouldn't be running on his system or what to look for if there is a hijacked program or a backdoor installed.
In this case, as much as I fricking hate to say it as I've found you have to wade through a LOT of shit and douchebags than run on pure smug and leetness in them places but in this particular case i don't see any choice, he is gonna have to go to the forums of his particular distro and tell them what is going on. They will have the most experience with that particular build, will know what is supposed to be running and what isn't on build blah blah whatever, and will be able to spot something that doesn't belong a hell of a lot faster than anybody here would.
That doesn't change my point, which is that RMS and the FSF has gone down the same road as PETA, MADD, Greenpeace, and countless other once really good ideas in that they NEVER stay reasonable, they ALWAYS end up a parody of themselves because they have to go sooo far overboard that nobody can take them seriously,it ends up so damned militant and extreme only those that are equally militant and extreme will listen.
But just because he doesn't have any power doesn't make it any less sad, in a way it makes it MORE sad IMHO. Because what was once a truly great and noble idea, to give everyone the most important of freedoms, the freedom of choice when it comes to one of the most powerfully life changes systems we humans have ever come up with, computers, has become so extremist that virtually no one will take them seriously or listen to them. Frankly it couldn't have come at a worse time because as we see all around us, from the Microsoft Xbox One to the iPad to all these dumb fuck pundits calling for the "death of the PC!" as they happily play in their corporate controlled walled gardens more and more of this truly incredible technology is being taken away from the user and given to the corps who control everything from the hardware to the software.
Frankly we could really have used a sane FSF right about now, too bad they joined PETA and MADD at the "batshit brigade" table.
Because they are spreading lies and FUD? After all I'm sure you wouldn't be happy if I was posting "Linux is running on stolen code!" or pointed out that nearly every distro on the entire planet is running code that goes against the Berne treaty and you would be right to say so, because I would be spreading FUD and using doom scenarios to paint a product I don't like in a bad light as opposed to pointing out actual problems I have with it.
Good for the goose, good for the gander, and if one wants to explain why they have a personal preference for one product or another fine, I like Win 7 and AsusRock, I like AMD and Samsung, hell i like mashed potatoes on my pizza. All of those are personal preferences and you are free to take them or leave them, but when you try to vilify anything you consider a "threat" to something you like you've crossed the line into bullshit fanboi and I WILL call you out, sorry but bullshit is bullshit and FUD is FUD, period the end.
People can bitch about anecdotes but whatever I trust what I have seen with my own two peepers and after seeing my gaming customers, who just FYI do NOT buy cheap shit, I mean for fuck's sake one of them has a grandma using Skulltrail because that was the weakest hand me down he had, when they are lucky if the damned thing lasts past warranty no matter who makes it? Yeah...really not wanting the new SSDs, sorry.
That is why I have been steering customers to the hybrids (those fail safe, the SSD part can completely die and you'll lose nothing but the speed boost) and caching SSDs because the new MLCs? Really REALLY suck. Hell go back a couple of processes please, they lasted a hell of a lot longer than this new stuff and with the old you could still fit 128GB-256GB in a 2.5 inch which is plenty. I don't know about everybody else but I'd rather have reliability over larger drives but sadly the SLCs are butt puckeringly expensive and the new MLCs just stink.
The worst part is it isn't just the cells, after all if it did fail to a read only state like so many of them claim that wouldn't be so bad as it would be like having your data on an oversized DVD that would be trivial to copy, but no their controller chips also have a nasty habit of just failing and when it does? Well I hope you weren't working on anything important that you didn't have time to back up. I have managed to get data off of HDDs that were frankly shot but once that controller fails you are just SOL, all the data is gone forever.
I think we can all agree that the FSF reached PETA "sea kittens" levels of batshit when they came up with that anvilicious "Windows 7 sins"..sins...really? Are you the fricking pope now Snt IGNUcious?
To me this is the sad part of all this, it doesn't matter how good or noble a group's intentions are they ALWAYS end up being completely batshit if they exist for too long, from FSF and their ever crazier "causes for freedumb!" to PETA and the sea kittens to the head of MADD saying the ultimate goal was to bring back prohibition (yeah, like that worked so well LAST time) it never seems to fail that the batshit end up snatching the mike and making the whole thing a pathetic parody of itself.
Remember when the FSF was all about having choice instead of pushing their agenda, when the whole goal was to make sure there was always an alternative so you didn't HAVE to use proprietary if you didn't want to? Wasn't that nice, didn't they seem a hell of a lot less circle loopy in those days? why oh why must every single cause end up ruled by the completely loony tune?
And when it comes to NAND we all know the dirty little secret they don't like talking about, with each shrink the lifespan gets shorter so they have to add more and more extra space to replace the dying cells and you end up losing any gains you may have made. That is why I hope something new will end up coming out that will let us have the power saving of SSD with the long life of the HDD, because the consumer level MLC chips frankly aren't very good.
Again if you just don't want to use it on GP? I have NO problem with that, live long and prosper. What I DO very fucking much have a problem with is FUD and "doom scenarios" since they are nothing but an appeal to emotion and just like every other fallacy its ultimately bullshit.
Could Steam disappear? Honestly its about as likely as wings growing out of my ass, in fact you are more likely to lose every other game publisher on the planet as Valve has always been VERY conservative when it comes to their finances, which is why they really haven't had to rush out any games like the other guys do, they have enough in the bank they don't have to do anything they don't want to.
Oh and you do face some problems with GOG as I have 3 games from them right now that simply won't run, tried every trick and tip on their site, they just don't fucking work. i76 which you can't get past the second level if you aren't running an old single core (even tried MoSlo, no dice) Sacred Gold which drops the framerate so low its frankly unplayable, the third one I can't think of off the top of my head and I don't feel like digging out my USB drive to look but like i76 the game won't let you get past one of the early levels. That is why I won't buy former Win9X games from them anymore,their DOS games work fine but the Win9X games are hit and miss and from looking at the forums its more miss than hit. At least with Steam i have gotten what i paid for every time, not had a single game yet that won't play flawlessly.
But if you want to run a niche OS, or wave a "free as in freedom" flag? No problem with that, it takes all kinds, but don't try to bullshit us with doom scenarios because that is all they are, complete bullshit with ZERO evidence to back 'em up.
Thanks for the heads up, I bookmarked the page but before i play it I have GOT to play the games I bought from the fall and winter Steam sales, i got a bunch of bundles and am waaaay behind. In point of fact i just got done playing some Crysis 2 which I got in the fricking fall sale and just NOW got to play, still haven't gotten to the Deus Ex series (my oldest said the new one is great, and by buying the bundle we got all the DLC) nor the Company Of Heroes games...man there is just not enough hours in the day!
Well then a good 70% of the planet are guilty of breaking DMCA...does that mean we get to shut them down and have their owners arrested? After all it IS a crime in the United States.
You see THIS is the problem with that whole idea, as if we follow that to its logical conclusion then the Internet can only be as open as the worst theocracies on the planet because guess what? EVERYTHING is illegal somewhere. Hell there are Middle Eastern and Asian countries where if you show a picture that has the bottom of a foot you can be arrested!
This is why we REALLY need to fight against bullshit like this, even when you feel sorry for the person like the girl in this case, because the freedom of speech we so highly value? Doesn't exist in a LOT of the world and if we let others laws affect us simply because they have the ability to reach us through the web? Well you may as well give up even pretending to have any freedoms at all, because its all illegal somewhere.
Yeah it makes a pretty big difference when it comes to CPU scheduling and memory management. I have run just about every windows, 2K,XP,XP X64 (great OS but drivers for your more offbeat stuff wasn't easy to find), Vista, Win 7, and Win 8 and while its true Win 8 uses a LITTLE bit less memory frankly its due to that fugly as hell metro flat "start screen" (bullshit its a task panel) and what it saves in memory it more than makes up in network usage thanks to all the tweeting twitting phone home bullshit baked in.
But I'd take Win 7 over any of them, I've run Win 7 X86 and its nice for older systems but if you are gonna ever go above 3GB of RAM its better to run X64, it'll support 16GB in Home (what I'm using) or 192GB in Pro and the MUCH better memory management and CPU scheduler makes a fricking world of difference, it really does. even with me having 8GB of RAM and a 6 core CPU XP 32bit would be slamming the living hell out of swap, its design is from a time when memory was crazy expensive so it uses memory as last resort whereas Win 7 knows that unused memory is wasted memory (since DRAM uses the same power empty or full) so when not being used by other programs Win 7 will cache most used programs into memory for instant access, really sweet.
Try it dude, trust me its heads and shoulders above XP and is the first OS since XP that I could say with zero reservations was worth the upgrade. Like I said my card is a good 20% slower than yours and I just spent 5 hours playing Crysis 2 with everything on high and it ran great, no jerking, skipping, just smooth as butter even on the crazy set pieces like the chopper battle.
That is the same thing my users that I've talked to has said, they will hang onto Opera while they try other browsers and see what fits best and then get the hell away from Opera, they are NOT happy about this crap.
BTW if that sounds like you I'd suggest some of the less famous browsers, plenty of smaller browsers that have nice features like Kmeleon and Kmeleon CCF-ME (ultra low system reqs, it'll even run on win98), QTWeb (based on Webkit and QT and cross platform if that interests you) SWIron and Comodo Dragon (my current browser) which are also based on Chromium with different feature sets, Comodo IceDragon and Pale Moon (my current backup) both based on gecko, there are a ton of browsers out there if you don't mind trying a few to see what fits you best.
Last I checked it can't do a thing beyond neutral so karma whoring with funny would be completely pointless, not to mention if he wanted to karma whore he could get a LOT more points by simply going along with groupthink on one of the niche pages, talking up Linux or the Pi for instance.
But would you agree or disagree that the browser builders shouldn't be wasting resources on any problems you have when you are so obviously going so far beyond a typical use case its not even funny?
Again nobody would expect Intel or AMD to take the fact that some guy doubled his clock and the CPU melted as a legitimate problem, or the game designer to fix an issue when some guy tries to run a half a dozen instances of WoW on a single PC and it crashes and burns, so why should limited resources be dedicated to what is so obviously as opposite from typical use as one can get?
Sorry but if they don't have offices and servers in Italy I don't see how Italian law applies, if you wanna go that route than every country on the planet would have to support DMCA and our insane-o copyright laws since hey! I can access their sites from here.
Here is the thing that always got to me about that and I have yet to receive any kind of logical answer for it...why? Why would you WANT 500+ tabs open at the same damned time anyway? I mean I can see a half a dozen, hell maybe even a dozen if you are researching something, but 500? Why would you even do that?
I mean with anything else we would point out that this behavior is dumb and any problems were from them being a dumbass, to use the car analogy if someone said "I drive my car on the freeway in second gear and it overheats" everyone would say "Well take it out of second gear dumbass" but when someone posts they have a problem while having 500+ pages open people treat it as a legitimate problem...why? we don't treat anything else on the PC when its used so far out of bounds of its normal usage as anything but stupidity,nobody would say its a legitimate problem if the guy who takes a 3GHz CPU and doubles the clock has overheating issues or the guy that tries to run a dozen games at a time on his GPU suffers a meltdown, so why is it that browsers are supposed to work perfectly when they are pushed so far beyond what is a typical use case its not even funny?
Uhhh dude? Yeah just FYI but unless the new owners changed it you don't GET any karma from a funny post, so you not only deserve a whoosh but a "here's your sign" while we are at it.
Considering how it looks like MSFT is monitoring everybody's Skype conversations since somebody cooked up some bullshit honeypots to see if anybody was watching and sure enough after talking about it on Skype they get visited? You may be a lot more right than you think, scary shit.
Bingo! This is why I recommend to those around me that they get DSL, there is only one other guy in my building using cable for net and he never uses BT so I get crazy low pings, no way i'm gonna tell anybody to use cable and lose my sweet connection;-)
Uhhh...what has age got to do with it? The graphics still look great, and the number of systems the modders have added is just insane (one mod brags about how they have over 600 star systems, complete with everything from asteroid belts to mining colonies) and unlike EVE you don't have to keep shelling out money just to play the thing.
While I haven't played Star Conflict let me ask you...does it have the EXACT same control scheme as Freelancer? because i have bought several of the "Oh if you like Freelancer you should get" only to find the games are pretty much useless without a flight stick and I don't have the room nor the desire to get a big clunky flight stick just to play a handful of games. The Freespace games are like that, while you can drive with keyboard and mouse you are seriously gimped compared to somebody with a stick, whereas with Freelancer you could fly and battle with the best of them with just keyboard and mouse, REALLY great control layout.
The consoles will most likely cost around 30% more since you guys across the pond are great for screwing, sorry but its true, the game companies just love to bend you guys over and ride you raw. Compare what you are paying to how much you pay for a triple or hexacore here, you guy really are getting screwed. My youngest is gaming on that triple core right now, works great and if games ever need more than a triple his board will go up all the way to an octo-core if he needs one down the road.
I pointed that out because unlike with the consoles you have CHOICE. Don't like Steam for some reason? Well i just named a half a dozen off the top of my head and there are at least a half a dozen more that I can't recall the names of. Nobody says you HAVE to buy some from each service, but there ARE options.
And yes YOU control the software, because again don't like one service? You can always buy from another, hell don't like DRM at all? Gamecopyworld is a click away and can give you a crack for every game out there, the only way you are cracking that console is with a soldering iron and a LOT of luck, not to mention by doing so you just made sure you can NEVER play ANY game online, not just the game you cracked. I have some of my old games cracked because the ancient starfuck or SecuROM they had isn't compatible with 64bits (which I'm proud to say I have been 64bits since XP X64 back in 05) but just because I have those old games cracked doesn't mean a damned thing to Steam games or frankly any game OTHER than the old ones i cracked.
And sorry but you are wrong, several developers including epic and Crytek have said they have held off new better gaming engines because the current consoles just couldn't handle them, and very few make games that aren't cross platform so its rare that you get a game that doesn't at the very least have the console level graphics as the default which is MUCH weaker than even a 5 year old MOR gaming chip is. Heck I still do my gaming on an HD4850 and that is a 5 year old card, when the new consoles come out I'll pick up an HD7770 for $80 or less and be ahead of the consoles again for their entire run.
Finally as for what you all "shitty" monitors? There really isn't a point to going beyond 1080P right now because not only is the content just not there, neither in movies nor in TV, but with games costing in the 100 mil range with 1080p the price of doubling the pixels would be more than a good 90% of the gaming devs could ever afford. For what its worth I'm still on a 1600x900 monitor and I'm quite happy, movies and games look sharp and clear, and from the looks of things 32 inch 1080p TVs will drop to the $100-$140 price range by Xmas so pretty much anybody will be able to afford a nice large screen for gaming. Until ultra HD cameras and screens come down to a more realistic price the content just isn't gonna be there, it really is a chicken or egg problem in that most won't pay the higher prices without lots of content and most places won't spend the extra money to make the higher res content until there is some real numbers when it comes to users. Personally I'm fine with that, I've set up many a gaming HTPC and games look great on a 55 inch 1080p without needing expensive as hell hardware, thus opening it up to more people.
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Not to mention everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room, the reason why Linux has never stood a chance...Windows software.
There is ALWAYS some "must have" piece of software that Linux doesn't have any alternative to or the alternative is poor, and as long as that is the case you can just give it up. the FOSS community has acted like all you need is a browser and Office but even my little old lady customers have software that they simply won't do without, and its pretty damned obvious by now that Linux is NEVER gonna get enough marketshare in its current form to get all that software ported, its just not gonna happen.
So if the FOSS community really and truly wants the world using a FOSS OS? Then get behind ReactOS, because that is pretty much the only shot you have of dethroning Windows on the desktop. Hell you make it stable so "update foo broke my drivers" or even better if supporting windows drivers isn't a problem I'll be happy to stock my shelves with ReactOS boxes and laptops, and I bet I'm far from alone. I really get damned sick of the FOSSie faction saying I don't want Linux to succeed or that I'm working for MSFT...do you have ANY idea how badly they fuck us system builders over? The OEMs get Windows cheap enough they can pay for the cost in trialware, us system builders have to pay the same price the average Joe pays and it fucking sucks. Don't you think I'd rather sell systems without that high as hell cost of Windows dragging like a boat anchor behind it? I'd even be happy to pay say $20 a pop for each copy of ReactOS, sure beats the wallet raping i get from MSFT.
So c'mon FOSS community, get behind ReactOS. You get the code you are always wanting, we system builders get an OS that doesn't bleed us dry, the consumers get an OS that runs what they want to run, hell you could even have a dialog box pop up pointing out a FOSS alternative to this or that software when the user first goes to install if you want to wean them off of non FOSS, its a win/win for everybody.
That doesn't change the fact that there is really no way to "go legit" without killing the whole damned point of such software, which is to be as easy to use as credit with the anonymity of cash, since the feds want everything traceable and tackable and going through them.
So I'd say the best bet would be to set up in some country that gives the finger to the USA, otherwise the feds are gonna raid you and shut you down no matter what you do, or did everybody forget what happened to the "liberty coin" which was simply an attempt to have money backed by a real material instead of just printing paper bullshit out of thin air like fiat currency?
Do I REALLY need to wallpaper this page with articles about Linux malware? Or point out how to write a Linux virus in 5 easy steps again?
And if you are gonna talk about me at LEAST get the facts right, I have said time and time again that Linux is great on servers, its great on embedded, where it sucks royally is the desktop. And if he isn't a novice then WTF is that Ask Slashdot anyway? if he wasn't a novice he'd know enough basic troubleshooting to figure this out on his own, but if you read TFS its pretty damned obvious his idea of "not a novice" is that he can install the OS, otherwise we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
But no matter what you, I or anybody else thinks about Linux the simple fact of the matter is this is NOT the right place for this question, it should be in the forums where they can ask follow ups and work their way through the problem, all he is gonna get here is wild guesses at best. This isn't one of those ask /. questions where you can just say "Oh do this" or "oh you need" that to solve it, its gonna take some back and forth to get to the root of the problem.
Uhhh...correct me if I'm in the wrong, you are a lawyer and I'm just a fixit guy and bass player, but hasn't the SCOTUS pretty consistently ruled in favor of licenses like EULA and shrink wrap licenses? Again I may be wrong but the only thing I can remember even being close to ruling for the consumer was the courts saying if they change the terms they have to notify you and give you the ability to leave without penalty which is why we get so many "terms of service change" notices from pretty much all of the major players.
I mean if you can name the case where the SCOTUS ruled that TOS, EULAs, and shrink wraps don't count? Good, great, love to read it, but while I can't think of anybody that has been busted yet for changing websites AFAIK the court has been pretty consistent in siding with the license, no matter how unfair or lop sided it is.
The simple fact is ALL OSes can get malware unless they are either so locked down on permissions that they are basically read only or are thin clients which are locked down at the server, but even the Linux community claims Android as Linux and its going to reach a million infections any day now so the argument over whether Linux malware is a threat? Pretty much over, that is what happens when somebody uses it for something popular, popular equals large target. Welcome to the club, the Mac guys that joined a couple of years back can show you the ropes, coffee and donuts are in the back.
As for this specific case? As somebody who works on systems 6 days a week? Yeah...smells like he has an infection. Guys here can have a shitfit if they want but anybody who switches from an OS they know the ropes on to something completely new, I don't care if its Linux or Mac or Windows whatever? They are ALWAYS gonna be at higher risk than where they were simply because they don't know the new system and don't know what to watch out for. Hell he probably doesn't even know what should and shouldn't be running on his system or what to look for if there is a hijacked program or a backdoor installed.
In this case, as much as I fricking hate to say it as I've found you have to wade through a LOT of shit and douchebags than run on pure smug and leetness in them places but in this particular case i don't see any choice, he is gonna have to go to the forums of his particular distro and tell them what is going on. They will have the most experience with that particular build, will know what is supposed to be running and what isn't on build blah blah whatever, and will be able to spot something that doesn't belong a hell of a lot faster than anybody here would.
That doesn't change my point, which is that RMS and the FSF has gone down the same road as PETA, MADD, Greenpeace, and countless other once really good ideas in that they NEVER stay reasonable, they ALWAYS end up a parody of themselves because they have to go sooo far overboard that nobody can take them seriously,it ends up so damned militant and extreme only those that are equally militant and extreme will listen.
But just because he doesn't have any power doesn't make it any less sad, in a way it makes it MORE sad IMHO. Because what was once a truly great and noble idea, to give everyone the most important of freedoms, the freedom of choice when it comes to one of the most powerfully life changes systems we humans have ever come up with, computers, has become so extremist that virtually no one will take them seriously or listen to them. Frankly it couldn't have come at a worse time because as we see all around us, from the Microsoft Xbox One to the iPad to all these dumb fuck pundits calling for the "death of the PC!" as they happily play in their corporate controlled walled gardens more and more of this truly incredible technology is being taken away from the user and given to the corps who control everything from the hardware to the software.
Frankly we could really have used a sane FSF right about now, too bad they joined PETA and MADD at the "batshit brigade" table.
Because they are spreading lies and FUD? After all I'm sure you wouldn't be happy if I was posting "Linux is running on stolen code!" or pointed out that nearly every distro on the entire planet is running code that goes against the Berne treaty and you would be right to say so, because I would be spreading FUD and using doom scenarios to paint a product I don't like in a bad light as opposed to pointing out actual problems I have with it.
Good for the goose, good for the gander, and if one wants to explain why they have a personal preference for one product or another fine, I like Win 7 and AsusRock, I like AMD and Samsung, hell i like mashed potatoes on my pizza. All of those are personal preferences and you are free to take them or leave them, but when you try to vilify anything you consider a "threat" to something you like you've crossed the line into bullshit fanboi and I WILL call you out, sorry but bullshit is bullshit and FUD is FUD, period the end.
People can bitch about anecdotes but whatever I trust what I have seen with my own two peepers and after seeing my gaming customers, who just FYI do NOT buy cheap shit, I mean for fuck's sake one of them has a grandma using Skulltrail because that was the weakest hand me down he had, when they are lucky if the damned thing lasts past warranty no matter who makes it? Yeah...really not wanting the new SSDs, sorry.
That is why I have been steering customers to the hybrids (those fail safe, the SSD part can completely die and you'll lose nothing but the speed boost) and caching SSDs because the new MLCs? Really REALLY suck. Hell go back a couple of processes please, they lasted a hell of a lot longer than this new stuff and with the old you could still fit 128GB-256GB in a 2.5 inch which is plenty. I don't know about everybody else but I'd rather have reliability over larger drives but sadly the SLCs are butt puckeringly expensive and the new MLCs just stink.
The worst part is it isn't just the cells, after all if it did fail to a read only state like so many of them claim that wouldn't be so bad as it would be like having your data on an oversized DVD that would be trivial to copy, but no their controller chips also have a nasty habit of just failing and when it does? Well I hope you weren't working on anything important that you didn't have time to back up. I have managed to get data off of HDDs that were frankly shot but once that controller fails you are just SOL, all the data is gone forever.
I think we can all agree that the FSF reached PETA "sea kittens" levels of batshit when they came up with that anvilicious "Windows 7 sins"..sins...really? Are you the fricking pope now Snt IGNUcious?
To me this is the sad part of all this, it doesn't matter how good or noble a group's intentions are they ALWAYS end up being completely batshit if they exist for too long, from FSF and their ever crazier "causes for freedumb!" to PETA and the sea kittens to the head of MADD saying the ultimate goal was to bring back prohibition (yeah, like that worked so well LAST time) it never seems to fail that the batshit end up snatching the mike and making the whole thing a pathetic parody of itself.
Remember when the FSF was all about having choice instead of pushing their agenda, when the whole goal was to make sure there was always an alternative so you didn't HAVE to use proprietary if you didn't want to? Wasn't that nice, didn't they seem a hell of a lot less circle loopy in those days? why oh why must every single cause end up ruled by the completely loony tune?
And when it comes to NAND we all know the dirty little secret they don't like talking about, with each shrink the lifespan gets shorter so they have to add more and more extra space to replace the dying cells and you end up losing any gains you may have made. That is why I hope something new will end up coming out that will let us have the power saving of SSD with the long life of the HDD, because the consumer level MLC chips frankly aren't very good.
Again if you just don't want to use it on GP? I have NO problem with that, live long and prosper. What I DO very fucking much have a problem with is FUD and "doom scenarios" since they are nothing but an appeal to emotion and just like every other fallacy its ultimately bullshit.
Could Steam disappear? Honestly its about as likely as wings growing out of my ass, in fact you are more likely to lose every other game publisher on the planet as Valve has always been VERY conservative when it comes to their finances, which is why they really haven't had to rush out any games like the other guys do, they have enough in the bank they don't have to do anything they don't want to.
Oh and you do face some problems with GOG as I have 3 games from them right now that simply won't run, tried every trick and tip on their site, they just don't fucking work. i76 which you can't get past the second level if you aren't running an old single core (even tried MoSlo, no dice) Sacred Gold which drops the framerate so low its frankly unplayable, the third one I can't think of off the top of my head and I don't feel like digging out my USB drive to look but like i76 the game won't let you get past one of the early levels. That is why I won't buy former Win9X games from them anymore,their DOS games work fine but the Win9X games are hit and miss and from looking at the forums its more miss than hit. At least with Steam i have gotten what i paid for every time, not had a single game yet that won't play flawlessly.
But if you want to run a niche OS, or wave a "free as in freedom" flag? No problem with that, it takes all kinds, but don't try to bullshit us with doom scenarios because that is all they are, complete bullshit with ZERO evidence to back 'em up.
Thanks for the heads up, I bookmarked the page but before i play it I have GOT to play the games I bought from the fall and winter Steam sales, i got a bunch of bundles and am waaaay behind. In point of fact i just got done playing some Crysis 2 which I got in the fricking fall sale and just NOW got to play, still haven't gotten to the Deus Ex series (my oldest said the new one is great, and by buying the bundle we got all the DLC) nor the Company Of Heroes games...man there is just not enough hours in the day!
Well then a good 70% of the planet are guilty of breaking DMCA...does that mean we get to shut them down and have their owners arrested? After all it IS a crime in the United States.
You see THIS is the problem with that whole idea, as if we follow that to its logical conclusion then the Internet can only be as open as the worst theocracies on the planet because guess what? EVERYTHING is illegal somewhere. Hell there are Middle Eastern and Asian countries where if you show a picture that has the bottom of a foot you can be arrested!
This is why we REALLY need to fight against bullshit like this, even when you feel sorry for the person like the girl in this case, because the freedom of speech we so highly value? Doesn't exist in a LOT of the world and if we let others laws affect us simply because they have the ability to reach us through the web? Well you may as well give up even pretending to have any freedoms at all, because its all illegal somewhere.
Yeah it makes a pretty big difference when it comes to CPU scheduling and memory management. I have run just about every windows, 2K,XP,XP X64 (great OS but drivers for your more offbeat stuff wasn't easy to find), Vista, Win 7, and Win 8 and while its true Win 8 uses a LITTLE bit less memory frankly its due to that fugly as hell metro flat "start screen" (bullshit its a task panel) and what it saves in memory it more than makes up in network usage thanks to all the tweeting twitting phone home bullshit baked in.
But I'd take Win 7 over any of them, I've run Win 7 X86 and its nice for older systems but if you are gonna ever go above 3GB of RAM its better to run X64, it'll support 16GB in Home (what I'm using) or 192GB in Pro and the MUCH better memory management and CPU scheduler makes a fricking world of difference, it really does. even with me having 8GB of RAM and a 6 core CPU XP 32bit would be slamming the living hell out of swap, its design is from a time when memory was crazy expensive so it uses memory as last resort whereas Win 7 knows that unused memory is wasted memory (since DRAM uses the same power empty or full) so when not being used by other programs Win 7 will cache most used programs into memory for instant access, really sweet.
Try it dude, trust me its heads and shoulders above XP and is the first OS since XP that I could say with zero reservations was worth the upgrade. Like I said my card is a good 20% slower than yours and I just spent 5 hours playing Crysis 2 with everything on high and it ran great, no jerking, skipping, just smooth as butter even on the crazy set pieces like the chopper battle.
That is the same thing my users that I've talked to has said, they will hang onto Opera while they try other browsers and see what fits best and then get the hell away from Opera, they are NOT happy about this crap.
BTW if that sounds like you I'd suggest some of the less famous browsers, plenty of smaller browsers that have nice features like Kmeleon and Kmeleon CCF-ME (ultra low system reqs, it'll even run on win98), QTWeb (based on Webkit and QT and cross platform if that interests you) SWIron and Comodo Dragon (my current browser) which are also based on Chromium with different feature sets, Comodo IceDragon and Pale Moon (my current backup) both based on gecko, there are a ton of browsers out there if you don't mind trying a few to see what fits you best.
Last I checked it can't do a thing beyond neutral so karma whoring with funny would be completely pointless, not to mention if he wanted to karma whore he could get a LOT more points by simply going along with groupthink on one of the niche pages, talking up Linux or the Pi for instance.
But would you agree or disagree that the browser builders shouldn't be wasting resources on any problems you have when you are so obviously going so far beyond a typical use case its not even funny?
Again nobody would expect Intel or AMD to take the fact that some guy doubled his clock and the CPU melted as a legitimate problem, or the game designer to fix an issue when some guy tries to run a half a dozen instances of WoW on a single PC and it crashes and burns, so why should limited resources be dedicated to what is so obviously as opposite from typical use as one can get?
Sorry but if they don't have offices and servers in Italy I don't see how Italian law applies, if you wanna go that route than every country on the planet would have to support DMCA and our insane-o copyright laws since hey! I can access their sites from here.
Here is the thing that always got to me about that and I have yet to receive any kind of logical answer for it...why? Why would you WANT 500+ tabs open at the same damned time anyway? I mean I can see a half a dozen, hell maybe even a dozen if you are researching something, but 500? Why would you even do that?
I mean with anything else we would point out that this behavior is dumb and any problems were from them being a dumbass, to use the car analogy if someone said "I drive my car on the freeway in second gear and it overheats" everyone would say "Well take it out of second gear dumbass" but when someone posts they have a problem while having 500+ pages open people treat it as a legitimate problem...why? we don't treat anything else on the PC when its used so far out of bounds of its normal usage as anything but stupidity,nobody would say its a legitimate problem if the guy who takes a 3GHz CPU and doubles the clock has overheating issues or the guy that tries to run a dozen games at a time on his GPU suffers a meltdown, so why is it that browsers are supposed to work perfectly when they are pushed so far beyond what is a typical use case its not even funny?
Uhhh dude? Yeah just FYI but unless the new owners changed it you don't GET any karma from a funny post, so you not only deserve a whoosh but a "here's your sign" while we are at it.
Considering how it looks like MSFT is monitoring everybody's Skype conversations since somebody cooked up some bullshit honeypots to see if anybody was watching and sure enough after talking about it on Skype they get visited? You may be a lot more right than you think, scary shit.
Bingo! This is why I recommend to those around me that they get DSL, there is only one other guy in my building using cable for net and he never uses BT so I get crazy low pings, no way i'm gonna tell anybody to use cable and lose my sweet connection ;-)
Uhhh...what has age got to do with it? The graphics still look great, and the number of systems the modders have added is just insane (one mod brags about how they have over 600 star systems, complete with everything from asteroid belts to mining colonies) and unlike EVE you don't have to keep shelling out money just to play the thing.
While I haven't played Star Conflict let me ask you...does it have the EXACT same control scheme as Freelancer? because i have bought several of the "Oh if you like Freelancer you should get" only to find the games are pretty much useless without a flight stick and I don't have the room nor the desire to get a big clunky flight stick just to play a handful of games. The Freespace games are like that, while you can drive with keyboard and mouse you are seriously gimped compared to somebody with a stick, whereas with Freelancer you could fly and battle with the best of them with just keyboard and mouse, REALLY great control layout.
The consoles will most likely cost around 30% more since you guys across the pond are great for screwing, sorry but its true, the game companies just love to bend you guys over and ride you raw. Compare what you are paying to how much you pay for a triple or hexacore here, you guy really are getting screwed. My youngest is gaming on that triple core right now, works great and if games ever need more than a triple his board will go up all the way to an octo-core if he needs one down the road.
I pointed that out because unlike with the consoles you have CHOICE. Don't like Steam for some reason? Well i just named a half a dozen off the top of my head and there are at least a half a dozen more that I can't recall the names of. Nobody says you HAVE to buy some from each service, but there ARE options.
And yes YOU control the software, because again don't like one service? You can always buy from another, hell don't like DRM at all? Gamecopyworld is a click away and can give you a crack for every game out there, the only way you are cracking that console is with a soldering iron and a LOT of luck, not to mention by doing so you just made sure you can NEVER play ANY game online, not just the game you cracked. I have some of my old games cracked because the ancient starfuck or SecuROM they had isn't compatible with 64bits (which I'm proud to say I have been 64bits since XP X64 back in 05) but just because I have those old games cracked doesn't mean a damned thing to Steam games or frankly any game OTHER than the old ones i cracked.
And sorry but you are wrong, several developers including epic and Crytek have said they have held off new better gaming engines because the current consoles just couldn't handle them, and very few make games that aren't cross platform so its rare that you get a game that doesn't at the very least have the console level graphics as the default which is MUCH weaker than even a 5 year old MOR gaming chip is. Heck I still do my gaming on an HD4850 and that is a 5 year old card, when the new consoles come out I'll pick up an HD7770 for $80 or less and be ahead of the consoles again for their entire run.
Finally as for what you all "shitty" monitors? There really isn't a point to going beyond 1080P right now because not only is the content just not there, neither in movies nor in TV, but with games costing in the 100 mil range with 1080p the price of doubling the pixels would be more than a good 90% of the gaming devs could ever afford. For what its worth I'm still on a 1600x900 monitor and I'm quite happy, movies and games look sharp and clear, and from the looks of things 32 inch 1080p TVs will drop to the $100-$140 price range by Xmas so pretty much anybody will be able to afford a nice large screen for gaming. Until ultra HD cameras and screens come down to a more realistic price the content just isn't gonna be there, it really is a chicken or egg problem in that most won't pay the higher prices without lots of content and most places won't spend the extra money to make the higher res content until there is some real numbers when it comes to users. Personally I'm fine with that, I've set up many a gaming HTPC and games look great on a 55 inch 1080p without needing expensive as hell hardware, thus opening it up to more people.