Surely you've got an old PC laying around yes? there are several free DNS servers that run on Linux and Windows, just use one of those and block anything you want blocked there. As a bonus a recursive DNS will speed up your web browsing as you aren't needing to call DNS for anyplace you've already been since you have your own DNS on the LAN, easy peasy.
Hell if you are worried about power you can buy one of those little plug computers or my personal favorite the little cheap E350 AMD kits. Those things are cheap, make great mini-servers or office boxes, only draw about 18w under load and less than 6w on average, great little units. Newegg usually has them the cheapest if you want one.
As for TFA if anybody didn't doubt that MSFT is expecting businesses and users with a brain to stay with Win 7 hopefully this will be your wakeup call. Hell frankly i wouldn't be surprised if MSFT takes an LTS approach to businesses because as we know businesses simply don't jump on the upgrade wagon like consumers so they can have 7 for business, 8 and 9 for consumers, 10 for business, etc. That would give business users around 7 years an OS which would be just about perfect now that PCs are lasting so much longer and the consumers can be the beta testers just like Fedora is used by RH.
Sorry pal but most of us have Windows programs that are mission critical so that's right out. Not that it matters though, MSFT can keep their "Oh Hai! I Iz Teh Social Phone now!" OS and the rest of us will have Win 7. Its stable, runs great, and supported until 2020 so if MSFT doesn't catch a clue by then all the big name programs will have moved to OSX or Ubuntu therefor fixing any problems those with must have programs face. Its a win/win as i see it.
It sounds like what you are wanting is one of the bazillion knockoffs they have at Chinamart. This is why I'm glad that for the most part i have completely weaned my two teen boys off of consoles (I say most part because the youngest will be buying one of these for a single game series he loves that isn't sold on any other platform) because of all the waste. Once its done as a game system? Into the closet it goes, right beside the GC and PS-2.
Its just a damned shame, that's what it is. as we saw with the Xbox I hack that made it into a pretty damned nice SD media center these systems have more than enough power to do a ton of stuff but the lock in and lack of a homebrew community means that they just end up chunked when no longer useful as a gaming system. At least with the PC you can always take that old gaming rig and use it for other purposes, the youngest boy's old gaming rig is now my mom's kitchen PC and even my gaming rig from 1995 is still in use, its the controller for a lathe at the local lumber co.
But sadly that seems to be the future the corps are pushing us towards, little locked down all to hell devices that are worthless the second the parent corp quits supporting it.
Exactly, no different than in the private sector where all it takes is getting burnt once and good luck ever getting another contract. I know several businesses where Dell could offer them hookers and blow and Dells for 10% of cost and they won't allow a single one in because they were treated like shit by Dell during the whole bad cap deal a decade ago. No matter how big of a price difference there is there will NEVER be a Dell computer in their business PERIOD, all because they fucked them over 10 years ago.
I do have to wonder with the way they just up and canceled like that if some middle management PHB screamed because he wouldn't be getting an iPad. I swear some of those PHB types are worse than little kids when it comes to having the latest toys. I can just picture one going "Waaah, that isn't an iPad, its crap!" and throwing a royal hissy fit.
Yeah lets just ignore those leaks about how the US government covered for a PMC selling 9 year old boys as sex toys to gain arms deals, which BTW they covered for the SAME PMC a decade earlier when they pulled the same shit in Kosovo. Look up "children sold Afghanistan" on wikileaks if you want to see it yourself.
So sorry pal, you lose your moral high horse when you are pimping kiddies for dollars. Every one of them fuckers, including the members of the US government that tried to cover it up should be the ones executed NOT Manning.
Riiight, after one of the "rape victims" left him alone, sleeping in her bed the sleep of the well fucked and what did she do when she was away from her "rapist"? She...went and bought him breakfast, followed by screwing him AGAIN after he ate. Does that SOUND like rape to you? Frankly it sounds like an insult to every woman that has ever been raped to me. Oh and the other one BRAGGED she had the Wikileaks guy as her BOYFRIEND. You're gonna brag about your rapist? I don't think so.
He asked the cops multiple times in Sweden before he took a single step out of the country if they wanted to speak with him and they said no. Swedish law says clearly they can question him anywhere, including where he is at now. Ecuador asked for a simple statement from the UK and Sweden that this wasn't some bullshit to give him a rendition ride to the USA and they refused...over a rape charge? BULLSHIT.
The Swedes and Brits are bowing down and kissing the ring like good little toadies and his ass will NEVER make it to Sweden, hell I doubt the Swedes would even land the plane, they'd just divert to the nearest USA military base where he can enjoy a nice waterboarding or drugging before they drop him in a box somewhere.
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious...Oscar Wilde.
I think they are gonna give Assange a rendition ride one way or another and frankly don't give a rat's ass what any other country says or thinks about it because he aired their dirty laundry so they want to make an example out of him. After they throw Assange in a deep dark hole and make some PMITA prison jokes the next guy that gets any clues about the truly evil shit the USA, CIA, and the PMCs are doing will be so scared shitless they'll tear up the evidence and pretend they never saw it which is exactly why Assange will never have a minute's rest, they will hunt him like a dog to the ends of the earth.
In the end I think we'll get to see the rats jump from the sinking ship in our lifetime as the stock bubble will burst which will make 1929 look like a minor hiccup and the whole thing will come crashing down. I have to wonder if that isn't why we've been seeing the government drop any pretense of acting civilized, if they know when everyone loses everything, the 401ks, the SSI and welfare, the medicare and medicaid that they'll have to roll the tanks on us so pretending to give a shit really isn't in their best interests anymore.
I do hope everyone learned a valuable lesson though, that the puppet on the left is just as evil and nasty as the puppet on the right so trying to change shit by voting is just pissing in the wind. After all is this the "Hope & Change" that everyone voted for? because it sure as hell seems like the exact same shit we've seen for a couple of decades to me, the government ignoring rights and ignoring laws and only giving a shit about the rules when it suits 'em.
The problem is how much money you're gonna have to spend getting those old Win9X games to run. That's a problem nobody has really been able to solve, with DOS we have DOSBox but what is needed is a "Win9X Box" that gives us a VM that responds to the old hacks they used to use for Win9X games. Try playing something like Mechwarrior 3 or i76 on a modern Windows and you'll see what I mean as they used a LOT of "speed hacks" that used the hybrid 16/32 bit nature of Windows 98 along with its ability to go more "bare metal" to squeeze a few more frames and it just makes them completely unplayable on a modern system. Hell some of them like i76 even used the CPU clock as a timer for in game events so the events don't work or work too fast thanks to our fast multicore CPUs.
So frankly i wouldn't be surprised if a good portion of their 90s titles are completely worthless except for the IP itself, you'd have to sink too much money into rewriting the engines to make them work on something newer than 9X.
The difference is the silly hats don't change the game in any way, unless you call looking funny a change. I'll never forget watching my oldest win $50 in Steambux in a TF2 contest as he had decked his sniper out in some of that crazy outfit stuff and there was someone on there that kept saying 'Will someone take down that damned sniper? Not THAT one, the one that looks like a damned VC!" and I had to actually explain to him what the hell a VC was.
But the big diff is that stupid outfit didn't give him a single advantage, it didn't make it easier to play, boost his power, or anything else, he just bought it because 'I think it looks cool". I have zero problem with day 1 DLC like that, such as the silly costumes in SR 3, because you can still play the game all the way through without it and not feel cheated. The problem is when they rip out what was obviously levels in the actual game so they can resell them as DLC, or sell gamebreaking weapons that make it "he who spends the most wins" because then you feel cheated and rightly so.
An easy rule of thumb is if it feels like it was supposed to be in the game from day 1 and the game feels incomplete if you don't buy it? its douchebaggery. if its just stupid shit that doesn't change the game and doesn't affect the story? Meh if they want to offer extra crap like that who cares, I might even buy a little of it like I did with SR 3 or the DLC for Just Cause II where they mounted a fricking tank gun to an ice cream scooter. stupid? Hell yes but funny and fun which is what DLC should be, just stupid fun stuff that didn't end up in the game but some dev thought was cool.
Or they could just pay a site license for Aston Secure Desktop or Astonshell and call it a day. Nice thing about Aston is between it and XYplorer you can have a fully customized shell that works on anything from XP- Win 8 and is the exact same no matter which OS you are using.
Hell even grandmas don't do that anymore friend. My last landlady was 72 fricking years old and on the PC she had in her office she always had a game of solitaire, her music playing, and a little chat window in case one of her friends came on and wanted to chat. and the grandmas that DO still have that pattern? Are still on XP and don't upgrade squat, hell I was replacing grandma Win98 machines in 2008 when they'd finally croak on granny and she'd come to me to fix or replace.
Lets face it, the only ones that really have that usage pattern? Those on cell phones and tablets, which is what Win 8 really is, its a cellphone/tablet OS being shoved down the throats of desktop users. Hell my dad is 74 and I gave it to him for a week to try and within 2 days he was "Come get this damned thing off my computer!" because the Tile UI and one app at a time was driving him batshit. He ALWAYS has at least a browser, his chat, and usually has either a weather gadget if they are calling for storms or the TV gadget so he can see when his shows come on, and he's about as bog standard average user as they come.
Yeah and if you sell 10 units for $10k VS 10,000 units for $1k you'd have the same money right? WRONG, because the parts that go into the $10k unit probably cost at least $7.5k and needs to be replaced with newer parts quicker than the $1k unit which thanks to economies of scale you aren't paying hardly squat for.
Finally didn't I say you'd get one more refresh? I believe I did. I wouldn't be surprised if the contracts they have with Intel cover one more refresh of the pro line not to mention you can't stop a production line on a dime like that, not without incurring costs. mark my words this will be the last refresh, followed by Cook milking it for as long as possible for declaring that "With iCloud the Macbook Air and iPad X are the new tools for developers!" which will be met by cheering and guys like you agreeing with everything he says. meanwhile the actual devs will simply finish the move to Windows and call it a day.
If you read the places devs like to hang out like OSNews you'd know that frankly a lot of them already began migrating when FCP came out with its lack of tape support, You had guys that had banks of Mac pros pulling them (complete with screenshots or links to the ebay sales so you know it wasn't idle talk) to replace them with new $7K+ Windows pro rigs simply because Cook has dicked them around too much and the roadmap doesn't give them any confidence.
So what you are about to see is a classic self fulfilling prophecy, Cook burns the devs, devs go elsewhere, next rev has low sales, Cook cancels line. The simple fact is that line isn't nearly as profitable as you think, they simply don't move enough of them. The devs needing real power have already moved on, not because of price but because Apple simply doesn't offer anything close enough to the cutting edge for guys that make their living in HD film and TV. Hell one I was talking to provided links to the Hackentosh he was building to cover as he learned the Windows tools and that thing cost $14K+ easily. when you are talking about guys that have no problem sinking THAT much cash into a single machine offering yesterday's parts at high prices really ain't gonna cut it.
Final verdict? pro line dead in 3, maybe 4 if Cook milks it. Hell after Intel fucked them out of the Nvidia chipsets they were using it really wouldn't surprise me if he has an exit strategy for X86 altogether, he's been making more and more powerful ARM chips and there he controls the entire cycle. I wouldn't be surprised to see an Apple ARM desktop in 2013 or 2014 with 6 or more ARM quads that scale with workload. I bet even with 6 quads they'd make more per unit than the midrange Macbooks while being able to offer all day battery life on the road, sounds like a winner to me.
What is really fucking sad is these FOSSies worship their OS like its a sacred cow which makes them not only retarded but blind as well. Notice how they ALWAYS say I'm some sort of "pro M$ Shill" yet I've written dozen of times how Steve "LOL I wanna work in Cupertino LOL" is probably the shittiest tech CEO in history, how for every decent product they've put out a half a dozen stinkers, and how they are completely fucking over their business customers with their "ZOMFG we gotta be like teh Apple!" consumers over all strategy.
Hey FOSSies? if your OS sucks I'm gonna point that out, no sacred cows for me. Kinda funny how one of the developers of Red Hat makes damned near the EXACT SAME ARGUMENT that I've been making here for years, is he a "M$ Shill" too? Hell Dell has to run their own repos because they can't even get any QA on Linux, even when they only sell a dozen units with Linux tops, are THEY "M$ Shills" as well?
I don't care who makes what, if it does what it says on the tin and does it reliably, be it footpedals or OSes, then I'll give it high marks and sing its praises. If it falls down and goes boom, if it needs to be constantly babied and futzed with just to keep it running, like a 75 Dodge with bad rings? Then damned right I'm gonna point out it sucks ass. Don't like it? Quit kissing dev ass and demand a better quality product, how about that?
Apparently so since I sure as hell can't find it, but that doesn't change the fact that there is an entire STORY missing in Bioshock II you can just go and buy anymore which sucks balls.
I mean did you try it? Anybody that said B II sucked should have gotten Minerva because its story is damned near as good as the first IMHO and unlike the original B II they actually have new weapons and enemies that feel fresh and new. The combos you can pull off just with the different kinds of bots is just unreal and it makes you try to plan ahead since you can only have two bots.
But it taught me a valuable lesson, don't buy from GFWL anymore. I've had no problem picking up older DLC off of Steam, in fact most of the bundle packs simply include all the DLC, so I was frankly shocked when I went to buy Minerva and found I couldn't even buy the damned thing anymore.
When I say gameplay I'm talking about missions and other levels and the like talked about or mentioned in the original non DLCed game, which makes it obvious that it was original content that got yanked. For a comparison look at SR 3, where you don't have anyone in the missions going "hey did you see that witch flying around? We really need that broom!"
I'd say SR 3 is a perfect example of DLC done right. Even the two little side quests they offered, Send In The Clones and Genki Super Ethical Reality, are obviously goof off shit some dev cooked up that doesn't affect the actual story gameplay in the slightest. My two boys got the full game with all the DLC on Steam while I took just the game and the 3 DLCs I actually cared for, the tank pack, Genki, and the Genkimobile, and we play the story co-op it doesn't affect anything in the slightest....well unless you consider me LMAO at some of the costumes the boys wear in the thing as affecting the game...I mean a walking shitter?
But if its required to finish the story as talked about in game, such as Fallout:NV then i would consider it core gameplay that had been gutted and that's just douchebaggery. You could buy nothing but the game itself and you and i could play the entire SR 3 campaign and not get any difference in our games whereas with NV you'll hear all this talk and see places on the map marked off you can't even get to without whipping out your CC now THAT is just bullshit. if they want to throw in hats or crazy shit like witches brooms and walking shitter outfits? NO problem with that, just don't be cutting core bits of the story out and trying to make me pay twice for the damned game just to finish the thing.
I doubt they are talking about the RPGs and RTS genres, most likely talking about the shooters that have been getting criminally short lately. I picked up Bulletstorm on the Steam sale and that thing I blew through in about 3 and a half hours and I wasn't even trying to rush, there simply wasn't much to it and the MP was shit. If I'd have paid full price I'd have been royally pissed which is why I've been getting all my shooters from Steam lately as i don't feel like I've been ripped if I only pay $7-$10 for those 4 hours.
Kinda sad though, a good shooter used to be able to last you for at least a couple of weeks and by the time you were finished the modders had started putting out new levels and you could squeeze another few months just playing the new stuff. Now I get a hell of a lot more for my money with the sandbox games than i do the shooters but even those are starting to shrink, as SR 2 takes about 40 hours and SR 3 is like 16.
10 years from now? Try buying "Minerva's Den" for Bioshock II off of GFWL, you can't do it, at least not in anyway I could find. you can buy it for the X360 but not Windows anymore. It royally sucks as my oldest got Bioshock II off the Steam sale and I was gonna just give him Minerva since frankly the story in Minerva was better than the story in Bioshock II but they don't even have a way to buy it anymore. I guess if my GFWL account ever screws then I'm screwed as i don't think anyone ever released a pirate version of Minerva.
The problem with your argument is thus: Most here are not against CONTENT being released we are against GAMEPLAY being released. As an example Fallout:NV where the DLC is talked about in the original game and even fast travel hubs to the DLC is already in the original game. That isn't a content release, that's a gameplay release as its obvious those bits were meant to be in the game but were cut out to sell later. An example of content being released is SR 3 costumes or TF 2 hats, nobody in those games talk about the need for a costume to finish a mission or needing a hat of ultimate coolness.
I think you'll find many don't mind and in fact enjoy extra content, because its just cool little treats you can take or leave without affecting core gameplay in the slightest. What has people royally pissed at is huge gameplay chunks missing with a "pay $X to get what used to be here" sign. Most of us would consider that epic asshole behavior and try to avoid games that do BS like that.
Uhhh...didn't they do this already? I seem to remember a major stink last year when one of the racing games, may have been a Gran Turismo but don't quote me as I'm not into racing games, had only 5 or 6 cars and tracks out of the gate and the rest were all paid DLC.
The only nice thing I can say about this is all the AAA douchebaggery has left a ton of money on the table for the indies. Now if we'll only get some indie shooter devs like we have for the puzzler and platformer genres I'll be a happy little camper.
But on the fliside compare a modern shooter to the late 90s ones. You could take a game like duke 3D or Redneck Rampage or Blood and actually get lost in the huge levels just looking for all the cool stuff and places to go, now its "straight line, cutscene, lather rinse repeat".
Take Bulletstorm for example. i bought it because I loved the previous People Can Fly games but its just another "on rails lead you by the nose" borefest. Sure it had cute scenes with decent acting, but so what? Who gives a shit when you are BORED out of your damned mind because you feel like you are shooting pop up targets in a shooting gallery? NO exploration, NO cool things to find, just walk to the next spawn point, wait for bad guys to duck behind cover and pop their heads when they pop up...yawn. Hell even the weapons were boring and from PCF that is saying a lot, after all painkiller had a fricking stakegun.
If there are any devs out there? Hi, seen how much games like Limbo have made without super graphics? I'll be happy to take a shooter game with Far Cry 1 or even No One Lives Forever II graphics if you give me 1.-large levels to explore, 2.-AI that isn't retarded, 3.-More than 2 &%&$&%$& guns with lousy amounts of bullets!, 4.-A halfway decent story. Is that REALLY so much to ask for? Hell you could make that in the 90s, why not now? Fuck hiring Tommy Lee Jones to voice grunt #2 and just give us decently large levels with fun shit to do in them please!
Not to mention Valve has already shown us that with digital distribution its better to have LOWER not higher prices if you want maximum profits. I wish I'd thought to save the link because there was a little article I read when origin was about to roll out where one of the guys from Valve pointed out when they sold L4D 2 at some crazy low price like $10 their profits for that game went up something like 1700% because it doesn't cost shit to distribute digitally and the amount of people they had buying caused their returns on the game to go through the roof.
People hate the day 1 DLC because its often EXACTLY what it feels like, core sections of the game removed and then resold, so that a $60 game becomes a $90+ game just to have a complete working game, its a fricking ripoff. There is only ONE type of day 1 DLC that doesn't piss me off and that is the non gameplay related silly shit, the TF2 hats and SR 3 silly costumes kinda stuff where you can tell its just the devs goofing off. I mean nowhere in SR 3 that I saw were the characters talking about how they needed to get a witch costume and fly on a broom or drive around in a people shooting Genkimobile.
Not to mention you could find players that tried to excuse the Diablo 3 always online douchebaggery as well, never underestimate the ability of the fanbois to take a good asspounding by the corps and beg for more.
Personally if they want to sell hats or some other non game changing crap? I have no problem with that. A good example would be Saints Row 3 and the silly costumes, hell I bought a few of those on the last Steam sale because I thought some of it looked like a good goof. But yeah when they are selling core gameplay day 1? Fuck you greedy bastards.
Here's the thing about piracy that nobody ever seems to mention. I've known a ton of guys that would pirate "modern shooter crapfest of the week" but were they actually playing it? Good God no, its total crap unless you are into the MP and you can't get the MP from a pirate copy. No what they were doing was using it for benchmarking because that is what all the other gaming sites were using for benchmarking. Once they had the scores to see how their PC stacked up they'd just toss the poo. So I have to wonder how many of those "modern snore-fests" that are being pirated are being done so they can check how they match up.
As for EA they are a classic example of MSFT/Symantec syndrome. Bioware, Bullfrog, Westwood, how many great gaming houses have been utterly destroyed by EA over the years? If you were to figure up how much money they have blown buying up gaming houses where they ended up squandering the talent and pissing the IP away the numbers I'm sure would be staggering, only unlike MSFT and Symantec their sacred cows can't bring in the kind of cash the other two can so they really couldn't afford to keep pissing away talent and customers like they have.
Riccitiello is the classic "Apple Pepsi Guy" CEO brought in that knows jack and shit about the business and simply went about fucking his customers AND his employees as much as humanly possible and the worst part? He'll get a golden parachute and then move on to another company he can then trash. So goodbye EA, I frankly wouldn't be surprised if you have no takers at $20, after all they can simply wait and watch you bleed money until they can snatch you up at firesale prices. Good riddance to a company that went out of its way to be assholes. The only ones I feel sorry for are the devs from all those companies that got to see their IP destroyed by EA mismanagement like Bullfrog and Westwood.
Or you could just...look at what the person wrote? I have written several 5 star reviews on Amazon but anybody reading them will see that I am quick to point out what is good and what is not, just because a product gets 5 stars doesn't mean its perfect, just that it does what it is supposed to do well.
Take the review I made on a bass multieffect pedal. i was quick to point out there were a couple of effects that weren't useful for day to day (as it is in ALL multieffects) and that with all multiunits there is a bit of a learning curve, but the sound is clear, it has both user defined and a ROM with the original effects so you can tweak all day without losing a favorite sound, and most of the effects were obvious written by bass players as they didn't drown the bass in effect and made for useful stage and recording sounds. So don't judge a 5 star as an automatic shill, those are easy enough to spot if you read the review. For many of us if it does what it says on the tin and does it reliably it deserves 5 stars because we got exactly what we paid for. If it doesn't do as advertised I'll be the first to give it low reviews but what I've seen is most of the 1 star reviews got a bad unit and didn't even try to resolve it, just bitched.
As for TFA? Google frankly needs to be scared because that is what I and many of my friends have been doing for awhile. If its sold there I usually go straight to Amazon or at least pop it up along with Newegg and Tiger and compare and for me its worked great. Why use a middleman if you don't need one?
Slashdot Mirror
Surely you've got an old PC laying around yes? there are several free DNS servers that run on Linux and Windows, just use one of those and block anything you want blocked there. As a bonus a recursive DNS will speed up your web browsing as you aren't needing to call DNS for anyplace you've already been since you have your own DNS on the LAN, easy peasy.
Hell if you are worried about power you can buy one of those little plug computers or my personal favorite the little cheap E350 AMD kits. Those things are cheap, make great mini-servers or office boxes, only draw about 18w under load and less than 6w on average, great little units. Newegg usually has them the cheapest if you want one.
As for TFA if anybody didn't doubt that MSFT is expecting businesses and users with a brain to stay with Win 7 hopefully this will be your wakeup call. Hell frankly i wouldn't be surprised if MSFT takes an LTS approach to businesses because as we know businesses simply don't jump on the upgrade wagon like consumers so they can have 7 for business, 8 and 9 for consumers, 10 for business, etc. That would give business users around 7 years an OS which would be just about perfect now that PCs are lasting so much longer and the consumers can be the beta testers just like Fedora is used by RH.
Sorry pal but most of us have Windows programs that are mission critical so that's right out. Not that it matters though, MSFT can keep their "Oh Hai! I Iz Teh Social Phone now!" OS and the rest of us will have Win 7. Its stable, runs great, and supported until 2020 so if MSFT doesn't catch a clue by then all the big name programs will have moved to OSX or Ubuntu therefor fixing any problems those with must have programs face. Its a win/win as i see it.
It sounds like what you are wanting is one of the bazillion knockoffs they have at Chinamart. This is why I'm glad that for the most part i have completely weaned my two teen boys off of consoles (I say most part because the youngest will be buying one of these for a single game series he loves that isn't sold on any other platform) because of all the waste. Once its done as a game system? Into the closet it goes, right beside the GC and PS-2.
Its just a damned shame, that's what it is. as we saw with the Xbox I hack that made it into a pretty damned nice SD media center these systems have more than enough power to do a ton of stuff but the lock in and lack of a homebrew community means that they just end up chunked when no longer useful as a gaming system. At least with the PC you can always take that old gaming rig and use it for other purposes, the youngest boy's old gaming rig is now my mom's kitchen PC and even my gaming rig from 1995 is still in use, its the controller for a lathe at the local lumber co.
But sadly that seems to be the future the corps are pushing us towards, little locked down all to hell devices that are worthless the second the parent corp quits supporting it.
Exactly, no different than in the private sector where all it takes is getting burnt once and good luck ever getting another contract. I know several businesses where Dell could offer them hookers and blow and Dells for 10% of cost and they won't allow a single one in because they were treated like shit by Dell during the whole bad cap deal a decade ago. No matter how big of a price difference there is there will NEVER be a Dell computer in their business PERIOD, all because they fucked them over 10 years ago.
I do have to wonder with the way they just up and canceled like that if some middle management PHB screamed because he wouldn't be getting an iPad. I swear some of those PHB types are worse than little kids when it comes to having the latest toys. I can just picture one going "Waaah, that isn't an iPad, its crap!" and throwing a royal hissy fit.
Yeah lets just ignore those leaks about how the US government covered for a PMC selling 9 year old boys as sex toys to gain arms deals, which BTW they covered for the SAME PMC a decade earlier when they pulled the same shit in Kosovo. Look up "children sold Afghanistan" on wikileaks if you want to see it yourself.
So sorry pal, you lose your moral high horse when you are pimping kiddies for dollars. Every one of them fuckers, including the members of the US government that tried to cover it up should be the ones executed NOT Manning.
Riiight, after one of the "rape victims" left him alone, sleeping in her bed the sleep of the well fucked and what did she do when she was away from her "rapist"? She...went and bought him breakfast, followed by screwing him AGAIN after he ate. Does that SOUND like rape to you? Frankly it sounds like an insult to every woman that has ever been raped to me. Oh and the other one BRAGGED she had the Wikileaks guy as her BOYFRIEND. You're gonna brag about your rapist? I don't think so.
He asked the cops multiple times in Sweden before he took a single step out of the country if they wanted to speak with him and they said no. Swedish law says clearly they can question him anywhere, including where he is at now. Ecuador asked for a simple statement from the UK and Sweden that this wasn't some bullshit to give him a rendition ride to the USA and they refused...over a rape charge? BULLSHIT.
The Swedes and Brits are bowing down and kissing the ring like good little toadies and his ass will NEVER make it to Sweden, hell I doubt the Swedes would even land the plane, they'd just divert to the nearest USA military base where he can enjoy a nice waterboarding or drugging before they drop him in a box somewhere.
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious...Oscar Wilde.
I think they are gonna give Assange a rendition ride one way or another and frankly don't give a rat's ass what any other country says or thinks about it because he aired their dirty laundry so they want to make an example out of him. After they throw Assange in a deep dark hole and make some PMITA prison jokes the next guy that gets any clues about the truly evil shit the USA, CIA, and the PMCs are doing will be so scared shitless they'll tear up the evidence and pretend they never saw it which is exactly why Assange will never have a minute's rest, they will hunt him like a dog to the ends of the earth.
In the end I think we'll get to see the rats jump from the sinking ship in our lifetime as the stock bubble will burst which will make 1929 look like a minor hiccup and the whole thing will come crashing down. I have to wonder if that isn't why we've been seeing the government drop any pretense of acting civilized, if they know when everyone loses everything, the 401ks, the SSI and welfare, the medicare and medicaid that they'll have to roll the tanks on us so pretending to give a shit really isn't in their best interests anymore.
I do hope everyone learned a valuable lesson though, that the puppet on the left is just as evil and nasty as the puppet on the right so trying to change shit by voting is just pissing in the wind. After all is this the "Hope & Change" that everyone voted for? because it sure as hell seems like the exact same shit we've seen for a couple of decades to me, the government ignoring rights and ignoring laws and only giving a shit about the rules when it suits 'em.
The problem is how much money you're gonna have to spend getting those old Win9X games to run. That's a problem nobody has really been able to solve, with DOS we have DOSBox but what is needed is a "Win9X Box" that gives us a VM that responds to the old hacks they used to use for Win9X games. Try playing something like Mechwarrior 3 or i76 on a modern Windows and you'll see what I mean as they used a LOT of "speed hacks" that used the hybrid 16/32 bit nature of Windows 98 along with its ability to go more "bare metal" to squeeze a few more frames and it just makes them completely unplayable on a modern system. Hell some of them like i76 even used the CPU clock as a timer for in game events so the events don't work or work too fast thanks to our fast multicore CPUs.
So frankly i wouldn't be surprised if a good portion of their 90s titles are completely worthless except for the IP itself, you'd have to sink too much money into rewriting the engines to make them work on something newer than 9X.
The difference is the silly hats don't change the game in any way, unless you call looking funny a change. I'll never forget watching my oldest win $50 in Steambux in a TF2 contest as he had decked his sniper out in some of that crazy outfit stuff and there was someone on there that kept saying 'Will someone take down that damned sniper? Not THAT one, the one that looks like a damned VC!" and I had to actually explain to him what the hell a VC was.
But the big diff is that stupid outfit didn't give him a single advantage, it didn't make it easier to play, boost his power, or anything else, he just bought it because 'I think it looks cool". I have zero problem with day 1 DLC like that, such as the silly costumes in SR 3, because you can still play the game all the way through without it and not feel cheated. The problem is when they rip out what was obviously levels in the actual game so they can resell them as DLC, or sell gamebreaking weapons that make it "he who spends the most wins" because then you feel cheated and rightly so.
An easy rule of thumb is if it feels like it was supposed to be in the game from day 1 and the game feels incomplete if you don't buy it? its douchebaggery. if its just stupid shit that doesn't change the game and doesn't affect the story? Meh if they want to offer extra crap like that who cares, I might even buy a little of it like I did with SR 3 or the DLC for Just Cause II where they mounted a fricking tank gun to an ice cream scooter. stupid? Hell yes but funny and fun which is what DLC should be, just stupid fun stuff that didn't end up in the game but some dev thought was cool.
Or they could just pay a site license for Aston Secure Desktop or Astonshell and call it a day. Nice thing about Aston is between it and XYplorer you can have a fully customized shell that works on anything from XP- Win 8 and is the exact same no matter which OS you are using.
Hell why call the writers, ST:TNG was from 87-94 and the current tablets look a hell of a lot like the standard PADD minus the LCARS UI.
Hell even grandmas don't do that anymore friend. My last landlady was 72 fricking years old and on the PC she had in her office she always had a game of solitaire, her music playing, and a little chat window in case one of her friends came on and wanted to chat. and the grandmas that DO still have that pattern? Are still on XP and don't upgrade squat, hell I was replacing grandma Win98 machines in 2008 when they'd finally croak on granny and she'd come to me to fix or replace.
Lets face it, the only ones that really have that usage pattern? Those on cell phones and tablets, which is what Win 8 really is, its a cellphone/tablet OS being shoved down the throats of desktop users. Hell my dad is 74 and I gave it to him for a week to try and within 2 days he was "Come get this damned thing off my computer!" because the Tile UI and one app at a time was driving him batshit. He ALWAYS has at least a browser, his chat, and usually has either a weather gadget if they are calling for storms or the TV gadget so he can see when his shows come on, and he's about as bog standard average user as they come.
Yeah and if you sell 10 units for $10k VS 10,000 units for $1k you'd have the same money right? WRONG, because the parts that go into the $10k unit probably cost at least $7.5k and needs to be replaced with newer parts quicker than the $1k unit which thanks to economies of scale you aren't paying hardly squat for.
Finally didn't I say you'd get one more refresh? I believe I did. I wouldn't be surprised if the contracts they have with Intel cover one more refresh of the pro line not to mention you can't stop a production line on a dime like that, not without incurring costs. mark my words this will be the last refresh, followed by Cook milking it for as long as possible for declaring that "With iCloud the Macbook Air and iPad X are the new tools for developers!" which will be met by cheering and guys like you agreeing with everything he says. meanwhile the actual devs will simply finish the move to Windows and call it a day.
If you read the places devs like to hang out like OSNews you'd know that frankly a lot of them already began migrating when FCP came out with its lack of tape support, You had guys that had banks of Mac pros pulling them (complete with screenshots or links to the ebay sales so you know it wasn't idle talk) to replace them with new $7K+ Windows pro rigs simply because Cook has dicked them around too much and the roadmap doesn't give them any confidence.
So what you are about to see is a classic self fulfilling prophecy, Cook burns the devs, devs go elsewhere, next rev has low sales, Cook cancels line. The simple fact is that line isn't nearly as profitable as you think, they simply don't move enough of them. The devs needing real power have already moved on, not because of price but because Apple simply doesn't offer anything close enough to the cutting edge for guys that make their living in HD film and TV. Hell one I was talking to provided links to the Hackentosh he was building to cover as he learned the Windows tools and that thing cost $14K+ easily. when you are talking about guys that have no problem sinking THAT much cash into a single machine offering yesterday's parts at high prices really ain't gonna cut it.
Final verdict? pro line dead in 3, maybe 4 if Cook milks it. Hell after Intel fucked them out of the Nvidia chipsets they were using it really wouldn't surprise me if he has an exit strategy for X86 altogether, he's been making more and more powerful ARM chips and there he controls the entire cycle. I wouldn't be surprised to see an Apple ARM desktop in 2013 or 2014 with 6 or more ARM quads that scale with workload. I bet even with 6 quads they'd make more per unit than the midrange Macbooks while being able to offer all day battery life on the road, sounds like a winner to me.
What is really fucking sad is these FOSSies worship their OS like its a sacred cow which makes them not only retarded but blind as well. Notice how they ALWAYS say I'm some sort of "pro M$ Shill" yet I've written dozen of times how Steve "LOL I wanna work in Cupertino LOL" is probably the shittiest tech CEO in history, how for every decent product they've put out a half a dozen stinkers, and how they are completely fucking over their business customers with their "ZOMFG we gotta be like teh Apple!" consumers over all strategy.
Hey FOSSies? if your OS sucks I'm gonna point that out, no sacred cows for me. Kinda funny how one of the developers of Red Hat makes damned near the EXACT SAME ARGUMENT that I've been making here for years, is he a "M$ Shill" too? Hell Dell has to run their own repos because they can't even get any QA on Linux, even when they only sell a dozen units with Linux tops, are THEY "M$ Shills" as well?
I don't care who makes what, if it does what it says on the tin and does it reliably, be it footpedals or OSes, then I'll give it high marks and sing its praises. If it falls down and goes boom, if it needs to be constantly babied and futzed with just to keep it running, like a 75 Dodge with bad rings? Then damned right I'm gonna point out it sucks ass. Don't like it? Quit kissing dev ass and demand a better quality product, how about that?
Apparently so since I sure as hell can't find it, but that doesn't change the fact that there is an entire STORY missing in Bioshock II you can just go and buy anymore which sucks balls.
I mean did you try it? Anybody that said B II sucked should have gotten Minerva because its story is damned near as good as the first IMHO and unlike the original B II they actually have new weapons and enemies that feel fresh and new. The combos you can pull off just with the different kinds of bots is just unreal and it makes you try to plan ahead since you can only have two bots.
But it taught me a valuable lesson, don't buy from GFWL anymore. I've had no problem picking up older DLC off of Steam, in fact most of the bundle packs simply include all the DLC, so I was frankly shocked when I went to buy Minerva and found I couldn't even buy the damned thing anymore.
When I say gameplay I'm talking about missions and other levels and the like talked about or mentioned in the original non DLCed game, which makes it obvious that it was original content that got yanked. For a comparison look at SR 3, where you don't have anyone in the missions going "hey did you see that witch flying around? We really need that broom!"
I'd say SR 3 is a perfect example of DLC done right. Even the two little side quests they offered, Send In The Clones and Genki Super Ethical Reality, are obviously goof off shit some dev cooked up that doesn't affect the actual story gameplay in the slightest. My two boys got the full game with all the DLC on Steam while I took just the game and the 3 DLCs I actually cared for, the tank pack, Genki, and the Genkimobile, and we play the story co-op it doesn't affect anything in the slightest....well unless you consider me LMAO at some of the costumes the boys wear in the thing as affecting the game...I mean a walking shitter?
But if its required to finish the story as talked about in game, such as Fallout:NV then i would consider it core gameplay that had been gutted and that's just douchebaggery. You could buy nothing but the game itself and you and i could play the entire SR 3 campaign and not get any difference in our games whereas with NV you'll hear all this talk and see places on the map marked off you can't even get to without whipping out your CC now THAT is just bullshit. if they want to throw in hats or crazy shit like witches brooms and walking shitter outfits? NO problem with that, just don't be cutting core bits of the story out and trying to make me pay twice for the damned game just to finish the thing.
I doubt they are talking about the RPGs and RTS genres, most likely talking about the shooters that have been getting criminally short lately. I picked up Bulletstorm on the Steam sale and that thing I blew through in about 3 and a half hours and I wasn't even trying to rush, there simply wasn't much to it and the MP was shit. If I'd have paid full price I'd have been royally pissed which is why I've been getting all my shooters from Steam lately as i don't feel like I've been ripped if I only pay $7-$10 for those 4 hours.
Kinda sad though, a good shooter used to be able to last you for at least a couple of weeks and by the time you were finished the modders had started putting out new levels and you could squeeze another few months just playing the new stuff. Now I get a hell of a lot more for my money with the sandbox games than i do the shooters but even those are starting to shrink, as SR 2 takes about 40 hours and SR 3 is like 16.
10 years from now? Try buying "Minerva's Den" for Bioshock II off of GFWL, you can't do it, at least not in anyway I could find. you can buy it for the X360 but not Windows anymore. It royally sucks as my oldest got Bioshock II off the Steam sale and I was gonna just give him Minerva since frankly the story in Minerva was better than the story in Bioshock II but they don't even have a way to buy it anymore. I guess if my GFWL account ever screws then I'm screwed as i don't think anyone ever released a pirate version of Minerva.
The problem with your argument is thus: Most here are not against CONTENT being released we are against GAMEPLAY being released. As an example Fallout:NV where the DLC is talked about in the original game and even fast travel hubs to the DLC is already in the original game. That isn't a content release, that's a gameplay release as its obvious those bits were meant to be in the game but were cut out to sell later. An example of content being released is SR 3 costumes or TF 2 hats, nobody in those games talk about the need for a costume to finish a mission or needing a hat of ultimate coolness.
I think you'll find many don't mind and in fact enjoy extra content, because its just cool little treats you can take or leave without affecting core gameplay in the slightest. What has people royally pissed at is huge gameplay chunks missing with a "pay $X to get what used to be here" sign. Most of us would consider that epic asshole behavior and try to avoid games that do BS like that.
Uhhh...didn't they do this already? I seem to remember a major stink last year when one of the racing games, may have been a Gran Turismo but don't quote me as I'm not into racing games, had only 5 or 6 cars and tracks out of the gate and the rest were all paid DLC.
The only nice thing I can say about this is all the AAA douchebaggery has left a ton of money on the table for the indies. Now if we'll only get some indie shooter devs like we have for the puzzler and platformer genres I'll be a happy little camper.
But on the fliside compare a modern shooter to the late 90s ones. You could take a game like duke 3D or Redneck Rampage or Blood and actually get lost in the huge levels just looking for all the cool stuff and places to go, now its "straight line, cutscene, lather rinse repeat".
Take Bulletstorm for example. i bought it because I loved the previous People Can Fly games but its just another "on rails lead you by the nose" borefest. Sure it had cute scenes with decent acting, but so what? Who gives a shit when you are BORED out of your damned mind because you feel like you are shooting pop up targets in a shooting gallery? NO exploration, NO cool things to find, just walk to the next spawn point, wait for bad guys to duck behind cover and pop their heads when they pop up...yawn. Hell even the weapons were boring and from PCF that is saying a lot, after all painkiller had a fricking stakegun.
If there are any devs out there? Hi, seen how much games like Limbo have made without super graphics? I'll be happy to take a shooter game with Far Cry 1 or even No One Lives Forever II graphics if you give me 1.-large levels to explore, 2.-AI that isn't retarded, 3.-More than 2 &%&$&%$& guns with lousy amounts of bullets!, 4.-A halfway decent story. Is that REALLY so much to ask for? Hell you could make that in the 90s, why not now? Fuck hiring Tommy Lee Jones to voice grunt #2 and just give us decently large levels with fun shit to do in them please!
Not to mention Valve has already shown us that with digital distribution its better to have LOWER not higher prices if you want maximum profits. I wish I'd thought to save the link because there was a little article I read when origin was about to roll out where one of the guys from Valve pointed out when they sold L4D 2 at some crazy low price like $10 their profits for that game went up something like 1700% because it doesn't cost shit to distribute digitally and the amount of people they had buying caused their returns on the game to go through the roof.
People hate the day 1 DLC because its often EXACTLY what it feels like, core sections of the game removed and then resold, so that a $60 game becomes a $90+ game just to have a complete working game, its a fricking ripoff. There is only ONE type of day 1 DLC that doesn't piss me off and that is the non gameplay related silly shit, the TF2 hats and SR 3 silly costumes kinda stuff where you can tell its just the devs goofing off. I mean nowhere in SR 3 that I saw were the characters talking about how they needed to get a witch costume and fly on a broom or drive around in a people shooting Genkimobile.
Not to mention you could find players that tried to excuse the Diablo 3 always online douchebaggery as well, never underestimate the ability of the fanbois to take a good asspounding by the corps and beg for more.
Personally if they want to sell hats or some other non game changing crap? I have no problem with that. A good example would be Saints Row 3 and the silly costumes, hell I bought a few of those on the last Steam sale because I thought some of it looked like a good goof. But yeah when they are selling core gameplay day 1? Fuck you greedy bastards.
Here's the thing about piracy that nobody ever seems to mention. I've known a ton of guys that would pirate "modern shooter crapfest of the week" but were they actually playing it? Good God no, its total crap unless you are into the MP and you can't get the MP from a pirate copy. No what they were doing was using it for benchmarking because that is what all the other gaming sites were using for benchmarking. Once they had the scores to see how their PC stacked up they'd just toss the poo. So I have to wonder how many of those "modern snore-fests" that are being pirated are being done so they can check how they match up.
As for EA they are a classic example of MSFT/Symantec syndrome. Bioware, Bullfrog, Westwood, how many great gaming houses have been utterly destroyed by EA over the years? If you were to figure up how much money they have blown buying up gaming houses where they ended up squandering the talent and pissing the IP away the numbers I'm sure would be staggering, only unlike MSFT and Symantec their sacred cows can't bring in the kind of cash the other two can so they really couldn't afford to keep pissing away talent and customers like they have.
Riccitiello is the classic "Apple Pepsi Guy" CEO brought in that knows jack and shit about the business and simply went about fucking his customers AND his employees as much as humanly possible and the worst part? He'll get a golden parachute and then move on to another company he can then trash. So goodbye EA, I frankly wouldn't be surprised if you have no takers at $20, after all they can simply wait and watch you bleed money until they can snatch you up at firesale prices. Good riddance to a company that went out of its way to be assholes. The only ones I feel sorry for are the devs from all those companies that got to see their IP destroyed by EA mismanagement like Bullfrog and Westwood.
Or you could just...look at what the person wrote? I have written several 5 star reviews on Amazon but anybody reading them will see that I am quick to point out what is good and what is not, just because a product gets 5 stars doesn't mean its perfect, just that it does what it is supposed to do well.
Take the review I made on a bass multieffect pedal. i was quick to point out there were a couple of effects that weren't useful for day to day (as it is in ALL multieffects) and that with all multiunits there is a bit of a learning curve, but the sound is clear, it has both user defined and a ROM with the original effects so you can tweak all day without losing a favorite sound, and most of the effects were obvious written by bass players as they didn't drown the bass in effect and made for useful stage and recording sounds. So don't judge a 5 star as an automatic shill, those are easy enough to spot if you read the review. For many of us if it does what it says on the tin and does it reliably it deserves 5 stars because we got exactly what we paid for. If it doesn't do as advertised I'll be the first to give it low reviews but what I've seen is most of the 1 star reviews got a bad unit and didn't even try to resolve it, just bitched.
As for TFA? Google frankly needs to be scared because that is what I and many of my friends have been doing for awhile. If its sold there I usually go straight to Amazon or at least pop it up along with Newegg and Tiger and compare and for me its worked great. Why use a middleman if you don't need one?