I heard its just Steam, it seems like every game uses Steam these days. Not that I blame 'em, it makes patching and matchmaking a breeze while discouraging casual piracy without boning the user's PC like Starforce...man I hated that damned thing, dealt with more burnt DVDs because of that stupid DRM than I can count.
Now I have a question..how is the AI? I'm not too worried about the story and combat as I frankly liked both Bioshock I and II (although I thought Minerva's Den had a better plot than the main game) but one thing I loved about the first 2 was how the AI and character models...I don't know, they just had this kind of unnerving quality to it that I thought they did very well. The way the disfigured football jock would talk and move like he was talking to some unseen authority figure ("I can do better Mr Ryan, you'll see") with all the gestures like he was actually having this one sided conversation or the way the actress would just flit around talking about how she would be on top again...until you see her and she gets enraged about you seeing her face and attacks...it had this kind of realism to their madness, especially with the gestures and body movements, I thought they did that REALLY well.
So if it turns out the story is only as good as Bioshock II? I don't have a problem with that, lets face it you can't put a devastating twist into everything, just look at what that has gotten M. Night Shyamalan, so if its not as deep as Bioshock I? Fine. I'm also not real worried if the graphics aren't mind blowing since the new consoles aren't out yet (which is why I'm kinda shocked they didn't wait and make this a Xmas launch title for the new systems) so if they make the PC awesome or just okay on the graphics? Meh I still enjoy the first 2 and they can be played on an average laptop today so no biggie, but the one thing that can totally destroy the immersion of a game is totally dumbshit AI. I mean we have all sat there with a badly done AI and gone "really? You are gonna hide behind a box that leaves your head sticking out like watermelon? THIS is the bad guys I'm suppose to fear?" and just had it ruin the mood and I thought this was one thing the first 2 did really well so if they don't screw that up? Great, I'll be picking this up in a month or so when all the major bugs have been patched but if the AI is just retarded? Sigh, I really don't want to slog through another case of the stupids, i really don't. Please tell me the AI is good? Please?
But is it because people don't want it, or the corps won't let them have it? because a programmer friend of mine and myself were working on a project to make playing these old games as simple as "clicky clicky" for Joe and Jane average but quickly ran into the minefield that is copyrights and trademarks and found a hell of a lot of those old gaming dev houses are now owned by bloodsuckers that dream of one day turning that old "IP" into iPhone money but never get off their lazy asses and do the work.
Considering how sites like GOG exists and make money and there is enough money to be made that actual NES consoles and the like are still being made I'd say there is a market there, its just too much of it is caught up in the IP minefield so Joe and Jane can't have it made simpler and easier because the person who did that would be sued to death. Slowly but surely we are seeing companies like Valve dip their toes in (such as having all the Sega Genesis games for sale through Steam, although Sega wants insane amounts for these ancient games) but it really has to be done by a supermegacorp with a shitload of money in the bank, nobody else can afford to brave the minefield.
Yeah but some of the games back then are just FUN, which sadly seems to be something that a lot of the new "ZOFG we HAVE to make this cinematic ZOMFG!" game devs forget to include.
I mean you want to try some just plain fun DOS games try the BUILD engine games, lots of humor and in-jokes (If you are a fan of horror films you'll get more from Blood than someone who isn't for example) and frankly a lot of jokes you just wouldn't be allowed to do today. I mean can you imagine them releasing a game today where the hero is a walking Bruce Lee stereotype that says things like "Who wants some Wang?" as a catchphrase? Man they would soooo get crucified in today's politically correct environment.
But anybody who likes classic games and has a Pi should be having a happy day today, and if you don't still have your discs put up somewhere GOG has a ton of the classic DOS games cheap. Don't know if they are still doing this but last I checked when you sign up they give you a handful of games like one of the Ultima games just to get your collection started which I thought was a nice touch. So if you don't have any DOS games to try this out with head over to GOG, sign up, and grab you some DOS games and enjoy.
Hey I don't blame ya, I got similar hate for asking what the point of AROS was, it wasn't like anybody was selling Amiga PPC hardware anymore and the hardware that was left was so damned old frankly its wasteful to even run the things for any length of time (lets face it, its only been in the last few years that chip makers cared about heat and electricity, the late 90s-mid 00s were all about speed which I find kinda ironic as you can get a 15w bobcat dual that runs rings around those "speed demons" while using less power at full load than they do at idle) so I frankly don't get the appeal of that one. At least with this I CAN get the appeal, GOG has dozens of great DOS games cheap (I even got Duke 3D for free from them during one of their promos) and the pi uses so little power that it would make for a dirt cheap, both in price and power, DOSBox gaming unit so in this case i can see the point.
That said if it were me personally I'd like to see DOSBox ported to those cheap "MP4 Players" that they have on Chinamart, those things are pretty decent as far as controls and size and they already have handhelds that have all the classic consoles like SNES and Genesis built in so having DOSBox loaded in there too would be fricking awesome. I mean you want to talk killer handheld imagine a $60 player with an actual D-Pad and buttons that had all the classic consoles AND all the great DOS games loaded onto one SD card, you could have everything from Yar's Revenge to Hexen in one unit? Sweet.
But I wish the Pi guys nothing but luck and good fortune, I'm buddies with a couple of guys that use pi units, one for his remote aircraft and the other for the local college rocketry program and they are cool little units. Its cheap, so you don't have to care if the thing gets busted on a bad landing yet its pretty sturdy and takes a lot of abuse, sips power yet is fast enough to do lots of different jobs and from what I was told by the students working on the rocket its easy to code for, its just a great little project and I can't wait to see what cool stuff will be coming from them in the future. Nothing but luck Pi guys, nothing but luck to you.
Actually the only ones keeping PCs above $200 is MSFT, remove the Windows license and I could build a COTS Bobcat dual core for around $120 and that is just me, I'm sure an OEM could do even better.
And by your logic why not just get rid of everything but cellphones, that's all folks will ever need, right? The "dirty little secret" nobody will talk about is the BEST chips made by ARM right now can't even match the IPC of a Pentium 4, that is a has been 8 year old X86 chip! Why do you think Nvidia is up to 5 cores, Samsung 6 cores? Because ARM just don't scale worth a crap, its like trying to get a Pinto to pull a boat, its just not built for what folks want it to do.
Now if they come out with some new CPU design or battery tech that lets you haul the equivalent of a core i7 or even an i5 in that iPad? THEN I'll agree with you, but now? Now its trying to fit a family of 6 into a 2 seater, its just not a good fit.
Well I can tell you that while the EasyShare tends to have more lens fails from what I've seen (also their docks are kinda iffy) they don't seem to have this problem as much. It still happens, just not as much. Look at the non Olympus models for around $100 at your local Wally World, write down make and model and hit the forums for those cameras and you'll find its not a rare thing. As I answered another poster personally I think they are all subcontracting from the same software firm that has this issue, and as far as the issue goes its just like the other guy wrote, delete from the front or the end? no problems. delete from the middle? BIG problems as the cameras don't seem to like having a chunk of free space in the middle of a bunch of non free.
As for the WHY, fuck if I know, I don't write camera software, I'm just the guy folks hire to fix the problem but if I had to guess something in the software doesn't know how to deal with empty space in the middle and freaks out. I mean its a software bug, they happen, these cameras get cranked out like flapjacks so you know QA ain't gonna be great anyway, i just wish they'd do a little more testing and just not have a delete button on those with this issue.
Never bothered writing down specific make and model but look at any of the non Olympus (as I said, never saw it with their models) that sell for $75-$150 in your local Walmart or Best Buy and then hit their forums and see, its really not that rare an occurrence. Personally I think many of them are buying their software from the same company in who knows where Asia and they have some issues, no different than how when Creative subcontracted their software out to India it went to crap. Not saying all Indian coders suck, just saying the ones Creative used blew chunks.
But like I said working retail 6 days a week I tend to see shit Joe Average may not run into, such as right now I suspect there may be a problem with AMD APU drivers and Win 8 as the only commonality I can find in those low to mid tier laptops that I have to keep doing a "refresh your PC" on with Win 8 seems to be AMD APUs. Maybe its the fact that Win 8 is so GPU heavy, maybe AMD is having trouble with the Win 8 DRM, hell if I know, I'm just a lowly PC shop guy, all I know is that folks buying the high end laptops don't seem to be having nearly as much trouble as those buying the low to mid tier stuff and it AIN'T the hardware, because when I put Win 7 on 'em they purr like fat contented kittens, so its gotta be Win 8.
But I am used to hearing the fanboys of this or that scream "bullshit" because they just don't have to deal with the volume of hardware I do. I usually am the first to know when a hard drive OEM has gotten a bad batch, when the fans they are using on this or that model ain't cutting the mustard, because for every one unit you have to deal with I have to deal with 100, that's just how it is when you have a little PC shop.
Well duh, America has been a corporatocracy for a few decades now, its common knowledge that laws affecting a specific business sector is often written by the lobbyists FOR that sector and simply handed to the congress critters for submission, so is anybody REALLY surprised by this?
This is why I really can't stand those that beat the "free market herpa derp" drum, because honestly the USA hasn't had a free market since the New Deal, probably even earlier than that before you can find a market that wasn't steered by insiders in one way or another (teapot dome, Standard Oil, the trusts, etc) so frankly shit like this is pretty much par for the course in the USA. We get lousy service, price gouging, backdoor bullshit like this, cheery picking and duopolies, its the same old insider "wink wink" crap we've had to put up with for ages now and it stinks but what can you do? Both sides are as crooked as a snake, there is 4 lobbyists for every person in congress, and voting is like playing 3 card monty with a street hustler and thinking if you put enough money on the table eventually you'll get ahead. unless your last name is Gates or Dell or Buffet you won't, its not a game for the citizen, its for the elite.
They broke multitasking not only in the mess that is Metro, frankly I'm seeing a LOT of crashed laptops that seems to come down to all that Live Tile horseshit having conflicts with desktop apps and making a poopie all over the place. Hell you'd be amazed how much money I've made since Win 8 just doing that stupid "refresh your PC" crap for folks, its just buggy as hell compared to Win 7 and most folks don't feel comfortable with that refresh bit so I get paid to push the button.
And a MUCH better point is this: What do YOU gain by going Win 8 on a non touch device? And I think those articles make it clear that you gain nothing but a whole bunch of hassles, DRM, and bullshit in return for zero gains. Hell even their "faster boot" is just a lie, look up "Win 8 hybrid sleep" to see what is REALLY going on, you have to drop to a fricking command prompt just to get a clean boot in win 8! Makes it REALLY fun to try to do a clean install of drivers on Win 8 as it'll keep loading the old crap from the disc image and reinstalling them until you CLI and kill hybrid boot.
Look you can stay with the flaming turd if you want, the fact I got 3 more laptops at the shop waiting on my next batch of Win 7 discs to get here tells me all I need to know counting the cost of the OS that is a $200 job but given the choice of sticking with Windows 8 or shelling out 2 C-notes? Folks are choosing the latter...well all those that have to make a choice, i'm proud to say I've caused no less than a half a dozen laptops to be returned and 3 folks to get handed free copies of Win 7 Home to keep from losing the sale (Protip:pitching a fit and threatening a chargeback if they won't take it back seems to work well) because...its just not good friend. Hell I was one of those that defended Vista...well right up until they went RTM and I saw they hadn't fixed the problems we'd repeatedly pointed out in the beta that is.
And again I have NO PROBLEM learning new OSes, hell I used to run Blackbox DE on Win98 and Fluxbox and JWM in Linux, but in all those cases I got SOMETHING, anything, in return for the effort, more performance, better memory usage, something, but Win 8 sucks bandwidth, CPU cycles, memory, I'm sorry but it just sucks and slapping one of those patched together fake start menus is like a bandaid on a bullet wound, it don't fix the major problems with the OS. Hell last week I even got to "Pepsi challenge" Windows 8 since a guy came in with a laptop with damned near perfectly identical hardware to my netbook so we put them side by side (after a refresh of Win 8 of course, which is why he brought it) and we put the same software on both...final verdict? When we started putting heavy loads that slowed my netbook it locked Win 8 smooth up, we had to do a hard reset just to get control back. Its 2013 dude, that is frankly inexcusable in this day and age.
You load it if you want but if you were to put Win 7 on the same hardware and dual boot and give both a good testing you'll see win 8 just don't cut the mustard. If I had to take a guess I'd say that some of the "social" crap they shoehorned in along with all the extra tablet centric crap is causing low level conflicts that get worse with time until it craps itself. I truly believe that "refresh my PC" bit, which considering the OEMs all use restore partitions now really wasn't needed, was stuck in there as a "get out of jail free" card by the devs who couldn't fix the serious issues they were seeing before Ballmer squirted it out the door.
Right me and that other guy just made it up for...why exactly? Or maybe, just maybe, you got lucky or chose a really good model? The Olympus cameras don't seem to have this problem but a LOT of the cameras sold in your B&M stores DO have this problem. Looking at the forums its just as the other guy described it in that their software doesn't know what to make of free blocks in the middle of non free blocks and freaks the hell out.
But just because you haven't seen it, especially when you don't actually work in retail, don't mean squat. Hell I can introduce you to a guy that swears WinME is a great OS because hey! Works for him. Don't mean its a great OS though, just means it works for him. Working computer retail I tend to see things that the average Joe may not run into, like how Win 8 seems to shit itself quite often on low to mid tier laptops. If you never buy low or mid tier? Hell you'd never know it, doesn't seem to happen on the high end systems, just the way it works.
Dude it ain't ExFAT, hell you can use any file system and it ain't gonna matter with the shitty software on those cameras. I don't know how many times i've had to try to recover photos because somebody used the delete button....WTF? If its gonna shit itself practically every time you use it, why in satan's balls would they put that button on there in the first place?
as I have told many a customer the delete button should be called "hose your photos NOW" button because a good 9 times out of 10 that is what the stupid thing does.
Dude if you HAVE to use the keyboard in an OS that ironically MSFT is pushing for tablets? Then its broken, end of story. I can remove the keyboard from any Windows 7 PC and you'll be just fine, the fact that only "keyboard commanders" can tolerate that flaming turd known as Windows 8 should be all the proof one needs that its broken.
But if you didn't like the video perhaps you'll like Infoworld or ZDnet which even has a picture of Wily Coyote, kinda like that one,or maybe Consumer Reports and while they highlight different things the final verdict? Windows 8 suuuuuuccccckkkkkssss, its crap, its the wrong direction, it doesn't work, its just a bad OS.
Uhhh...has anybody looked at the actual numbers? Both sales and profits are already back to pre 2008 levels, the company is firing on all cylinders frankly the ONLY thing that hasn't gone up is the stock price which considering how distorted the market is right now really isn't surprising and I would say should be expected. I just hope they keep Icahn the fuck away from it as that corporate raider has a history of destroying companies but Michael is just being smart, he sees the numbers and sees the stock is undervalued and is going for it, can't say as I blame 'em.
Bimbo Newton Crosby, all these "keyboard commanders" jumping through keyboard commands are merely trying to cover up a bad design because honestly you can drive Windows 7 (and Vista and XP for that matter) with JUST a mouse and it works fine, its ONLY Windows 8 that keyboard commands become mandatory. Which is ironic since MSFT is pushing what is supposed to be a tablet OS onto the desktop. The fact that their tablet OS needs a keyboard to be usable? Just shows how made of fail it is.
And all those keyboard commanders might want to read a study comparing mouse to keyboard and the verdict? if the UI is well designed then the mouse is faster. Of course since Win 8 practically requires a keyboard I think we can take from that that Win 8 is a bad UI design.
Oh good its not just me. Well not good for YOU obviously but the amount of people I've had to wipe and put 7 on because Windows 8 shat itself one too many times for their liking is NOT a small number. Maybe its the DRM they baked in, maybe its TIFKAM crapping all over the guts, hell if I know, I just know that the "refresh your operating system" addition to Windows seems to be more a necessity added because there was serious issues they just couldn't fix before MSFT forced it out the door than for any kind of user convenience. I keep a cheat sheet with the steps printed at the shop so I can walk folks through it over the phone, yes it comes up THAT often. And always after hearing what they have to do I get "Can't I just put Windows 7 on it?" because Windows 7 just doesn't do that. Hell my Win 7 at home has been running since Aug 09, has over 300 programs installed, never even had to restore from backup, much less wipe and reinstall.
Windows 8 just isn't a good OS, any way you slice it. The fact that I have to keep a cheat sheet to do something which I've never had to do to a Win 7 machine that wasn't infected should be all the proof you need that there is something seriously wrong with that OS.
So we can put a separate CPU and RAM and storage in the docking station, we could call it...oh I don't know...a "personal computer" perhaps?
Dude the users ain't gaining SHIT from this, the only ones gaining are the corps who are able to push locked down game consoles instead of general purpose computing! Think its an accident that MSFT is trying to become as proprietary as Apple? That both are pushing for DRM baked into HTML standards? Its about game consoles, its about pushing the user into a model where the CORP decides what runs (and gets 30% of each program) and can force you to toss a working device simply by changing the API so that your programs can't be updated, duh!
Hell if you want to follow the batshit express all the way down the line all those mass killers? Had penises therefor the answer is obvious, ban everyone with a penis.
How many tens of millions of FPS players are out there? Hell does anybody have the figures on how many copies Medal Of Honor or Call Of Duty sold? yet you could put every mass murderer in a HS gym and have seats left over. There is "correlation does not equal causation" and there is pulling something out of your ass, this obviously is the latter. Considering that the same dipshits in congress tried to get Night Trap, a fricking lame B movie game that wasn't as gory as the movies them old farts watched in the 50s drive ins banned? Should tell you all you need to know.
So now that I have pointed out how damned stupid this line is, let me tear into the other stupidity this has caused, liberals and gun laws. hey liberals? One flaw in your logic, you see criminals DO NOT FOLLOW THE LAW hence why we call them criminals, duh! How long has your drug war been going on now, yet I can score dope in less than an hour pretty much anywhere in this country? Do you HONESTLY think scoring an AK47 would be ANY harder than scoring an 8 ball? The ONLY people your stupid gun laws affect are LAW ABIDING CITIZENS because the criminals are fucking criminals, they don't care about your laws against rape, robbery, and murder, you honestly think they are gonna give 2 shits about your fricking gun laws?
This is why, and I really fucking hate to agree with a libertarian because I'm as far from libertarian as one can get and remain on the same planet with them, that Rand Paul is right and we need a new party, but I would go one further and say we need TWO new parties, he and the other libertarians can have their new "Tea GOP" or whatever they want to call it while the rest of us can have the "Common Sense Party" where things such as logic will be demanded of candidates and words like science and common sense won't be fricking dirty words!
So we should go back to cheat sheets like we had back in 86? What progress! Be sure to let me know when they bring back DOS while they are at it, hell why not just replace the desktop completely with nothing but a "run" box? By the same logic that would be the bestest GUI evar!
Dude do you think keyboard and mouse survived for 30+ years because...what, nobody could build a pad? The K&M has survived this long because it is the most efficient interface for complex tasks. Sure if all you want to do is surf or passively watch video? Then touch is fine but all that content has to be created somewhere and pads just don't cut it once the software UI gets any measure of complexity.
Translation "Win 7 ends support in 2020, if they don't pull an XP and extend it" because frankly the ONLY difference between "mainstream" and extended is supposed new features but since we have never actually GOTTEN new features (just ask those who bought Vista ultimate about those "new features to be coming") all that matters is security patches which ends in 2020.
Dude you think you are joking but I've had to walk quite a few people through the "restore the Operating System" function because Win 8 shat itself, I've honestly not had to do anything like that for Windows 7. The only hosed Win 7 installs I deal with have had serious virus infestations but I've seen Win 8 just crap all over itself for no damned good reason, its just not very good.
Maybe I live in an area with a bunch of unlucky people but I don't see how anybody can say this is just Win 7 with TIFKAM because frankly it acts more like WinME when it comes to stability than Win 7.
Which I have to say is the ONLY nice thing about Win 8, its giving small shops like mine plenty of work as people buy those Best Buy special laptops with a "how bad can it be?" attitude only to get frustrated and pay somebody like me to wipe it for Windows 7.
I have to wonder if this isn't why damned near every system in the B&M stores has Win 8 home and not Pro, as Home doesn't have downgrade rights. I'm sure they got a nice little surge in XP sales when Vista flopped thanks to all those home users with no downgrade rights so even if Win 8 breaks like the wind they'll end up making more than they would have because the user will have to buy Win 7 to replace the shitastic Win 8. I know i had to order more OEM copies of Win 7 because I've already blown through the ones i had, folks REALLY don't like TIFKAM, I even tried giving some of them Classic Shell but its frankly just a buggy OS.
Bingo! For every app that works in wine you have a hundred that don't and just because it works in wine today does NOT mean it'll work in Wine when the latest version of either the app or wine is released.
Of course the little thing MSFT doesn't want to talk about is that Windows 7 has another 7 years worth of updates coming, which means they have 7 years to put out another decent OS. WinXP came out in 01, Win 7 came out in 09 which was well within the EOL of XP and thanks to their contracts with businesses and governments its not like they can just pull the plug on 7, not if they don't want to spend the next decade in court.
So just stick with Win 7, by the time 2020 rolls around either Ballmer will have been fired and MSFT will have gotten their shit together or Ballmer will have completely destroyed the company and something else will have all the programs and market, Android perhaps. Hell the vast majority of games still run great in WinXP, less than 20 games been put out for Dx10 and above so even if you're a gamer there is no reason to care, let MSFT wallow in their touch obsessed bullshit for a couple of releases, we can afford to wait it out.
Actually it takes all of 3 seconds to see if someone with a UID is a shill, hence why most of the shills post anon and why I've been begging for the banning (or at least severe downmodding by default) of anon posts. in this case Westlake is NOT a shill, he just has bad taste...it happens, i have a customer that kept WinME until 2010 because he just really liked it, got a little old lady that swears by Vista.
But when 999 out of 1000 posts on Win 8 are "Holy shit does this suuuuccckkk!" I'd say we can safely say it is bad taste on the 1 out of 1000, after all a few people liked New Coke but that didn't mean New Coke didn't suck, it just meant a few people were just weird;-)
Mind a bit of advice? If you aren't just married to Apple and really want the high res display but don't mind shelling out the money look into the Thinkpads they sell to the medical industry, they have some pretty kick ass displays and you still have Ethernet plus DVD drive. Or you can go to the Thinkpad forums and check out the aftermarket screens, slapping high res screens in Thinkpads is quite common and there are even places where you can send 'em your Thinkpad and they'll do the install for you and ship it back.
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I heard its just Steam, it seems like every game uses Steam these days. Not that I blame 'em, it makes patching and matchmaking a breeze while discouraging casual piracy without boning the user's PC like Starforce...man I hated that damned thing, dealt with more burnt DVDs because of that stupid DRM than I can count.
Now I have a question..how is the AI? I'm not too worried about the story and combat as I frankly liked both Bioshock I and II (although I thought Minerva's Den had a better plot than the main game) but one thing I loved about the first 2 was how the AI and character models...I don't know, they just had this kind of unnerving quality to it that I thought they did very well. The way the disfigured football jock would talk and move like he was talking to some unseen authority figure ("I can do better Mr Ryan, you'll see") with all the gestures like he was actually having this one sided conversation or the way the actress would just flit around talking about how she would be on top again...until you see her and she gets enraged about you seeing her face and attacks...it had this kind of realism to their madness, especially with the gestures and body movements, I thought they did that REALLY well.
So if it turns out the story is only as good as Bioshock II? I don't have a problem with that, lets face it you can't put a devastating twist into everything, just look at what that has gotten M. Night Shyamalan, so if its not as deep as Bioshock I? Fine. I'm also not real worried if the graphics aren't mind blowing since the new consoles aren't out yet (which is why I'm kinda shocked they didn't wait and make this a Xmas launch title for the new systems) so if they make the PC awesome or just okay on the graphics? Meh I still enjoy the first 2 and they can be played on an average laptop today so no biggie, but the one thing that can totally destroy the immersion of a game is totally dumbshit AI. I mean we have all sat there with a badly done AI and gone "really? You are gonna hide behind a box that leaves your head sticking out like watermelon? THIS is the bad guys I'm suppose to fear?" and just had it ruin the mood and I thought this was one thing the first 2 did really well so if they don't screw that up? Great, I'll be picking this up in a month or so when all the major bugs have been patched but if the AI is just retarded? Sigh, I really don't want to slog through another case of the stupids, i really don't. Please tell me the AI is good? Please?
But is it because people don't want it, or the corps won't let them have it? because a programmer friend of mine and myself were working on a project to make playing these old games as simple as "clicky clicky" for Joe and Jane average but quickly ran into the minefield that is copyrights and trademarks and found a hell of a lot of those old gaming dev houses are now owned by bloodsuckers that dream of one day turning that old "IP" into iPhone money but never get off their lazy asses and do the work.
Considering how sites like GOG exists and make money and there is enough money to be made that actual NES consoles and the like are still being made I'd say there is a market there, its just too much of it is caught up in the IP minefield so Joe and Jane can't have it made simpler and easier because the person who did that would be sued to death. Slowly but surely we are seeing companies like Valve dip their toes in (such as having all the Sega Genesis games for sale through Steam, although Sega wants insane amounts for these ancient games) but it really has to be done by a supermegacorp with a shitload of money in the bank, nobody else can afford to brave the minefield.
Yeah but some of the games back then are just FUN, which sadly seems to be something that a lot of the new "ZOFG we HAVE to make this cinematic ZOMFG!" game devs forget to include.
I mean you want to try some just plain fun DOS games try the BUILD engine games, lots of humor and in-jokes (If you are a fan of horror films you'll get more from Blood than someone who isn't for example) and frankly a lot of jokes you just wouldn't be allowed to do today. I mean can you imagine them releasing a game today where the hero is a walking Bruce Lee stereotype that says things like "Who wants some Wang?" as a catchphrase? Man they would soooo get crucified in today's politically correct environment.
But anybody who likes classic games and has a Pi should be having a happy day today, and if you don't still have your discs put up somewhere GOG has a ton of the classic DOS games cheap. Don't know if they are still doing this but last I checked when you sign up they give you a handful of games like one of the Ultima games just to get your collection started which I thought was a nice touch. So if you don't have any DOS games to try this out with head over to GOG, sign up, and grab you some DOS games and enjoy.
Hey I don't blame ya, I got similar hate for asking what the point of AROS was, it wasn't like anybody was selling Amiga PPC hardware anymore and the hardware that was left was so damned old frankly its wasteful to even run the things for any length of time (lets face it, its only been in the last few years that chip makers cared about heat and electricity, the late 90s-mid 00s were all about speed which I find kinda ironic as you can get a 15w bobcat dual that runs rings around those "speed demons" while using less power at full load than they do at idle) so I frankly don't get the appeal of that one. At least with this I CAN get the appeal, GOG has dozens of great DOS games cheap (I even got Duke 3D for free from them during one of their promos) and the pi uses so little power that it would make for a dirt cheap, both in price and power, DOSBox gaming unit so in this case i can see the point.
That said if it were me personally I'd like to see DOSBox ported to those cheap "MP4 Players" that they have on Chinamart, those things are pretty decent as far as controls and size and they already have handhelds that have all the classic consoles like SNES and Genesis built in so having DOSBox loaded in there too would be fricking awesome. I mean you want to talk killer handheld imagine a $60 player with an actual D-Pad and buttons that had all the classic consoles AND all the great DOS games loaded onto one SD card, you could have everything from Yar's Revenge to Hexen in one unit? Sweet.
But I wish the Pi guys nothing but luck and good fortune, I'm buddies with a couple of guys that use pi units, one for his remote aircraft and the other for the local college rocketry program and they are cool little units. Its cheap, so you don't have to care if the thing gets busted on a bad landing yet its pretty sturdy and takes a lot of abuse, sips power yet is fast enough to do lots of different jobs and from what I was told by the students working on the rocket its easy to code for, its just a great little project and I can't wait to see what cool stuff will be coming from them in the future. Nothing but luck Pi guys, nothing but luck to you.
Actually the only ones keeping PCs above $200 is MSFT, remove the Windows license and I could build a COTS Bobcat dual core for around $120 and that is just me, I'm sure an OEM could do even better.
And by your logic why not just get rid of everything but cellphones, that's all folks will ever need, right? The "dirty little secret" nobody will talk about is the BEST chips made by ARM right now can't even match the IPC of a Pentium 4, that is a has been 8 year old X86 chip! Why do you think Nvidia is up to 5 cores, Samsung 6 cores? Because ARM just don't scale worth a crap, its like trying to get a Pinto to pull a boat, its just not built for what folks want it to do.
Now if they come out with some new CPU design or battery tech that lets you haul the equivalent of a core i7 or even an i5 in that iPad? THEN I'll agree with you, but now? Now its trying to fit a family of 6 into a 2 seater, its just not a good fit.
Well I can tell you that while the EasyShare tends to have more lens fails from what I've seen (also their docks are kinda iffy) they don't seem to have this problem as much. It still happens, just not as much. Look at the non Olympus models for around $100 at your local Wally World, write down make and model and hit the forums for those cameras and you'll find its not a rare thing. As I answered another poster personally I think they are all subcontracting from the same software firm that has this issue, and as far as the issue goes its just like the other guy wrote, delete from the front or the end? no problems. delete from the middle? BIG problems as the cameras don't seem to like having a chunk of free space in the middle of a bunch of non free.
As for the WHY, fuck if I know, I don't write camera software, I'm just the guy folks hire to fix the problem but if I had to guess something in the software doesn't know how to deal with empty space in the middle and freaks out. I mean its a software bug, they happen, these cameras get cranked out like flapjacks so you know QA ain't gonna be great anyway, i just wish they'd do a little more testing and just not have a delete button on those with this issue.
Never bothered writing down specific make and model but look at any of the non Olympus (as I said, never saw it with their models) that sell for $75-$150 in your local Walmart or Best Buy and then hit their forums and see, its really not that rare an occurrence. Personally I think many of them are buying their software from the same company in who knows where Asia and they have some issues, no different than how when Creative subcontracted their software out to India it went to crap. Not saying all Indian coders suck, just saying the ones Creative used blew chunks.
But like I said working retail 6 days a week I tend to see shit Joe Average may not run into, such as right now I suspect there may be a problem with AMD APU drivers and Win 8 as the only commonality I can find in those low to mid tier laptops that I have to keep doing a "refresh your PC" on with Win 8 seems to be AMD APUs. Maybe its the fact that Win 8 is so GPU heavy, maybe AMD is having trouble with the Win 8 DRM, hell if I know, I'm just a lowly PC shop guy, all I know is that folks buying the high end laptops don't seem to be having nearly as much trouble as those buying the low to mid tier stuff and it AIN'T the hardware, because when I put Win 7 on 'em they purr like fat contented kittens, so its gotta be Win 8.
But I am used to hearing the fanboys of this or that scream "bullshit" because they just don't have to deal with the volume of hardware I do. I usually am the first to know when a hard drive OEM has gotten a bad batch, when the fans they are using on this or that model ain't cutting the mustard, because for every one unit you have to deal with I have to deal with 100, that's just how it is when you have a little PC shop.
Well duh, America has been a corporatocracy for a few decades now, its common knowledge that laws affecting a specific business sector is often written by the lobbyists FOR that sector and simply handed to the congress critters for submission, so is anybody REALLY surprised by this?
This is why I really can't stand those that beat the "free market herpa derp" drum, because honestly the USA hasn't had a free market since the New Deal, probably even earlier than that before you can find a market that wasn't steered by insiders in one way or another (teapot dome, Standard Oil, the trusts, etc) so frankly shit like this is pretty much par for the course in the USA. We get lousy service, price gouging, backdoor bullshit like this, cheery picking and duopolies, its the same old insider "wink wink" crap we've had to put up with for ages now and it stinks but what can you do? Both sides are as crooked as a snake, there is 4 lobbyists for every person in congress, and voting is like playing 3 card monty with a street hustler and thinking if you put enough money on the table eventually you'll get ahead. unless your last name is Gates or Dell or Buffet you won't, its not a game for the citizen, its for the elite.
They broke multitasking not only in the mess that is Metro, frankly I'm seeing a LOT of crashed laptops that seems to come down to all that Live Tile horseshit having conflicts with desktop apps and making a poopie all over the place. Hell you'd be amazed how much money I've made since Win 8 just doing that stupid "refresh your PC" crap for folks, its just buggy as hell compared to Win 7 and most folks don't feel comfortable with that refresh bit so I get paid to push the button.
And a MUCH better point is this: What do YOU gain by going Win 8 on a non touch device? And I think those articles make it clear that you gain nothing but a whole bunch of hassles, DRM, and bullshit in return for zero gains. Hell even their "faster boot" is just a lie, look up "Win 8 hybrid sleep" to see what is REALLY going on, you have to drop to a fricking command prompt just to get a clean boot in win 8! Makes it REALLY fun to try to do a clean install of drivers on Win 8 as it'll keep loading the old crap from the disc image and reinstalling them until you CLI and kill hybrid boot.
Look you can stay with the flaming turd if you want, the fact I got 3 more laptops at the shop waiting on my next batch of Win 7 discs to get here tells me all I need to know counting the cost of the OS that is a $200 job but given the choice of sticking with Windows 8 or shelling out 2 C-notes? Folks are choosing the latter...well all those that have to make a choice, i'm proud to say I've caused no less than a half a dozen laptops to be returned and 3 folks to get handed free copies of Win 7 Home to keep from losing the sale (Protip:pitching a fit and threatening a chargeback if they won't take it back seems to work well) because...its just not good friend. Hell I was one of those that defended Vista...well right up until they went RTM and I saw they hadn't fixed the problems we'd repeatedly pointed out in the beta that is.
And again I have NO PROBLEM learning new OSes, hell I used to run Blackbox DE on Win98 and Fluxbox and JWM in Linux, but in all those cases I got SOMETHING, anything, in return for the effort, more performance, better memory usage, something, but Win 8 sucks bandwidth, CPU cycles, memory, I'm sorry but it just sucks and slapping one of those patched together fake start menus is like a bandaid on a bullet wound, it don't fix the major problems with the OS. Hell last week I even got to "Pepsi challenge" Windows 8 since a guy came in with a laptop with damned near perfectly identical hardware to my netbook so we put them side by side (after a refresh of Win 8 of course, which is why he brought it) and we put the same software on both...final verdict? When we started putting heavy loads that slowed my netbook it locked Win 8 smooth up, we had to do a hard reset just to get control back. Its 2013 dude, that is frankly inexcusable in this day and age.
You load it if you want but if you were to put Win 7 on the same hardware and dual boot and give both a good testing you'll see win 8 just don't cut the mustard. If I had to take a guess I'd say that some of the "social" crap they shoehorned in along with all the extra tablet centric crap is causing low level conflicts that get worse with time until it craps itself. I truly believe that "refresh my PC" bit, which considering the OEMs all use restore partitions now really wasn't needed, was stuck in there as a "get out of jail free" card by the devs who couldn't fix the serious issues they were seeing before Ballmer squirted it out the door.
Right me and that other guy just made it up for...why exactly? Or maybe, just maybe, you got lucky or chose a really good model? The Olympus cameras don't seem to have this problem but a LOT of the cameras sold in your B&M stores DO have this problem. Looking at the forums its just as the other guy described it in that their software doesn't know what to make of free blocks in the middle of non free blocks and freaks the hell out.
But just because you haven't seen it, especially when you don't actually work in retail, don't mean squat. Hell I can introduce you to a guy that swears WinME is a great OS because hey! Works for him. Don't mean its a great OS though, just means it works for him. Working computer retail I tend to see things that the average Joe may not run into, like how Win 8 seems to shit itself quite often on low to mid tier laptops. If you never buy low or mid tier? Hell you'd never know it, doesn't seem to happen on the high end systems, just the way it works.
Dude it ain't ExFAT, hell you can use any file system and it ain't gonna matter with the shitty software on those cameras. I don't know how many times i've had to try to recover photos because somebody used the delete button....WTF? If its gonna shit itself practically every time you use it, why in satan's balls would they put that button on there in the first place?
as I have told many a customer the delete button should be called "hose your photos NOW" button because a good 9 times out of 10 that is what the stupid thing does.
Dude if you HAVE to use the keyboard in an OS that ironically MSFT is pushing for tablets? Then its broken, end of story. I can remove the keyboard from any Windows 7 PC and you'll be just fine, the fact that only "keyboard commanders" can tolerate that flaming turd known as Windows 8 should be all the proof one needs that its broken.
But if you didn't like the video perhaps you'll like Infoworld or ZDnet which even has a picture of Wily Coyote, kinda like that one,or maybe Consumer Reports and while they highlight different things the final verdict? Windows 8 suuuuuuccccckkkkkssss, its crap, its the wrong direction, it doesn't work, its just a bad OS.
Uhhh...has anybody looked at the actual numbers? Both sales and profits are already back to pre 2008 levels, the company is firing on all cylinders frankly the ONLY thing that hasn't gone up is the stock price which considering how distorted the market is right now really isn't surprising and I would say should be expected. I just hope they keep Icahn the fuck away from it as that corporate raider has a history of destroying companies but Michael is just being smart, he sees the numbers and sees the stock is undervalued and is going for it, can't say as I blame 'em.
Bimbo Newton Crosby, all these "keyboard commanders" jumping through keyboard commands are merely trying to cover up a bad design because honestly you can drive Windows 7 (and Vista and XP for that matter) with JUST a mouse and it works fine, its ONLY Windows 8 that keyboard commands become mandatory. Which is ironic since MSFT is pushing what is supposed to be a tablet OS onto the desktop. The fact that their tablet OS needs a keyboard to be usable? Just shows how made of fail it is.
And all those keyboard commanders might want to read a study comparing mouse to keyboard and the verdict? if the UI is well designed then the mouse is faster. Of course since Win 8 practically requires a keyboard I think we can take from that that Win 8 is a bad UI design.
Oh good its not just me. Well not good for YOU obviously but the amount of people I've had to wipe and put 7 on because Windows 8 shat itself one too many times for their liking is NOT a small number. Maybe its the DRM they baked in, maybe its TIFKAM crapping all over the guts, hell if I know, I just know that the "refresh your operating system" addition to Windows seems to be more a necessity added because there was serious issues they just couldn't fix before MSFT forced it out the door than for any kind of user convenience. I keep a cheat sheet with the steps printed at the shop so I can walk folks through it over the phone, yes it comes up THAT often. And always after hearing what they have to do I get "Can't I just put Windows 7 on it?" because Windows 7 just doesn't do that. Hell my Win 7 at home has been running since Aug 09, has over 300 programs installed, never even had to restore from backup, much less wipe and reinstall.
Windows 8 just isn't a good OS, any way you slice it. The fact that I have to keep a cheat sheet to do something which I've never had to do to a Win 7 machine that wasn't infected should be all the proof you need that there is something seriously wrong with that OS.
So we can put a separate CPU and RAM and storage in the docking station, we could call it...oh I don't know...a "personal computer" perhaps?
Dude the users ain't gaining SHIT from this, the only ones gaining are the corps who are able to push locked down game consoles instead of general purpose computing! Think its an accident that MSFT is trying to become as proprietary as Apple? That both are pushing for DRM baked into HTML standards? Its about game consoles, its about pushing the user into a model where the CORP decides what runs (and gets 30% of each program) and can force you to toss a working device simply by changing the API so that your programs can't be updated, duh!
Hell if you want to follow the batshit express all the way down the line all those mass killers? Had penises therefor the answer is obvious, ban everyone with a penis.
How many tens of millions of FPS players are out there? Hell does anybody have the figures on how many copies Medal Of Honor or Call Of Duty sold? yet you could put every mass murderer in a HS gym and have seats left over. There is "correlation does not equal causation" and there is pulling something out of your ass, this obviously is the latter. Considering that the same dipshits in congress tried to get Night Trap, a fricking lame B movie game that wasn't as gory as the movies them old farts watched in the 50s drive ins banned? Should tell you all you need to know.
So now that I have pointed out how damned stupid this line is, let me tear into the other stupidity this has caused, liberals and gun laws. hey liberals? One flaw in your logic, you see criminals DO NOT FOLLOW THE LAW hence why we call them criminals, duh! How long has your drug war been going on now, yet I can score dope in less than an hour pretty much anywhere in this country? Do you HONESTLY think scoring an AK47 would be ANY harder than scoring an 8 ball? The ONLY people your stupid gun laws affect are LAW ABIDING CITIZENS because the criminals are fucking criminals, they don't care about your laws against rape, robbery, and murder, you honestly think they are gonna give 2 shits about your fricking gun laws?
This is why, and I really fucking hate to agree with a libertarian because I'm as far from libertarian as one can get and remain on the same planet with them, that Rand Paul is right and we need a new party, but I would go one further and say we need TWO new parties, he and the other libertarians can have their new "Tea GOP" or whatever they want to call it while the rest of us can have the "Common Sense Party" where things such as logic will be demanded of candidates and words like science and common sense won't be fricking dirty words!
So we should go back to cheat sheets like we had back in 86? What progress! Be sure to let me know when they bring back DOS while they are at it, hell why not just replace the desktop completely with nothing but a "run" box? By the same logic that would be the bestest GUI evar!
Dude do you think keyboard and mouse survived for 30+ years because...what, nobody could build a pad? The K&M has survived this long because it is the most efficient interface for complex tasks. Sure if all you want to do is surf or passively watch video? Then touch is fine but all that content has to be created somewhere and pads just don't cut it once the software UI gets any measure of complexity.
Translation "Win 7 ends support in 2020, if they don't pull an XP and extend it" because frankly the ONLY difference between "mainstream" and extended is supposed new features but since we have never actually GOTTEN new features (just ask those who bought Vista ultimate about those "new features to be coming") all that matters is security patches which ends in 2020.
Dude you think you are joking but I've had to walk quite a few people through the "restore the Operating System" function because Win 8 shat itself, I've honestly not had to do anything like that for Windows 7. The only hosed Win 7 installs I deal with have had serious virus infestations but I've seen Win 8 just crap all over itself for no damned good reason, its just not very good.
Maybe I live in an area with a bunch of unlucky people but I don't see how anybody can say this is just Win 7 with TIFKAM because frankly it acts more like WinME when it comes to stability than Win 7.
Which I have to say is the ONLY nice thing about Win 8, its giving small shops like mine plenty of work as people buy those Best Buy special laptops with a "how bad can it be?" attitude only to get frustrated and pay somebody like me to wipe it for Windows 7.
I have to wonder if this isn't why damned near every system in the B&M stores has Win 8 home and not Pro, as Home doesn't have downgrade rights. I'm sure they got a nice little surge in XP sales when Vista flopped thanks to all those home users with no downgrade rights so even if Win 8 breaks like the wind they'll end up making more than they would have because the user will have to buy Win 7 to replace the shitastic Win 8. I know i had to order more OEM copies of Win 7 because I've already blown through the ones i had, folks REALLY don't like TIFKAM, I even tried giving some of them Classic Shell but its frankly just a buggy OS.
Bingo! For every app that works in wine you have a hundred that don't and just because it works in wine today does NOT mean it'll work in Wine when the latest version of either the app or wine is released.
Of course the little thing MSFT doesn't want to talk about is that Windows 7 has another 7 years worth of updates coming, which means they have 7 years to put out another decent OS. WinXP came out in 01, Win 7 came out in 09 which was well within the EOL of XP and thanks to their contracts with businesses and governments its not like they can just pull the plug on 7, not if they don't want to spend the next decade in court.
So just stick with Win 7, by the time 2020 rolls around either Ballmer will have been fired and MSFT will have gotten their shit together or Ballmer will have completely destroyed the company and something else will have all the programs and market, Android perhaps. Hell the vast majority of games still run great in WinXP, less than 20 games been put out for Dx10 and above so even if you're a gamer there is no reason to care, let MSFT wallow in their touch obsessed bullshit for a couple of releases, we can afford to wait it out.
Actually it takes all of 3 seconds to see if someone with a UID is a shill, hence why most of the shills post anon and why I've been begging for the banning (or at least severe downmodding by default) of anon posts. in this case Westlake is NOT a shill, he just has bad taste...it happens, i have a customer that kept WinME until 2010 because he just really liked it, got a little old lady that swears by Vista.
But when 999 out of 1000 posts on Win 8 are "Holy shit does this suuuuccckkk!" I'd say we can safely say it is bad taste on the 1 out of 1000, after all a few people liked New Coke but that didn't mean New Coke didn't suck, it just meant a few people were just weird ;-)
Mind a bit of advice? If you aren't just married to Apple and really want the high res display but don't mind shelling out the money look into the Thinkpads they sell to the medical industry, they have some pretty kick ass displays and you still have Ethernet plus DVD drive. Or you can go to the Thinkpad forums and check out the aftermarket screens, slapping high res screens in Thinkpads is quite common and there are even places where you can send 'em your Thinkpad and they'll do the install for you and ship it back.