Not to mention the ONLY times I've ever heard of anybody losing access to their games on Steam is when they were being total cunts and using wallhacks and other cheater shit to ruin the games for everyone else and even then they got a warning before getting punted. Whether you buy the game retail or through Steam anybody that doesn't stop the douchebags cheating quickly finds nobody buying their games so i really can't fault Valve one single bit.
Plus you really can't beat their customer service. I've had to deal with so many tech companies shitastic CS I am filled with dread when i have to call as its gonna be a fucking mess but Valve? Their CS always went out of their way to be helpful and went above and beyond making sure i was happy which is rare as hell in this day and age. I even had to contact them over some DLC in the middle of the XMas sale, figuring I'd be lucky to hear from them in a week with all the traffic, yet they contacted me within 1 hour, worked with me to get the DLC straightened out and working, and even contacted twice after that just to make sure everything was going good.
So I really do not care even a little bit about Steam DRM, I never have a hassle with it, works perfectly fine offline, and the prices they sell AAA games at is so low its often cheaper to buy through Steam than to even rent the game for the XBox. During the last sale I got the Deus Ex complete series for $15, Saints Row 3 with the DLC I wanted for $14, the HL 1 series for $7, I haven't paid more than $12 for a single game since getting Steam so what's to complain about?
Well it would have to be evil AND incompetent to truly do EA justice so I propose...MSFT. Ballmer has shown he has no problem pissing money down a rathole and with EA he could kill Origin and move it all to GFWL, where every attempt at purchasing a Windows game would be while trying to fight your way through a maze of X360 offers.
They could then move Madden to the Kinnect so that all the players could have the "fun" of Kinnect trying to guess badly WTF they are trying to go in the game, replace every in game ad with commercials for Win 8 and finally make everyone sign up for a Live account before you can even play single player.
Which is why the USA would go for the classic "lone gunman" bit. Hell he's walking around a ground floor right passed windows constantly, it really wouldn't be hard. After a week or two "investigation" they find a nut dead with a note talking about how "Assange caused the death of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan!" and it would be cased close, bring on the next celeb scandal.
But the fact he has published and so far gotten away with it wouldn't be changed by that, hell those that might be in a position to publish might even buy the story and think if they are just more careful than Assange they could get away with it. Nope what they want is to publicly drag him through a show trial and dump him in a hole and to do THAT they need to grab him. I have a feeling he'll end up dragged out of Ecuador after the USA gives the UK a call and tells them to let his ass go, easier to snatch him once the heat dies down.
Because I'm the guy that ends up stuck having to support the damned thing, that's why. Its Vista all over again where I had to deal with one damned bug or stupid design fault after another with people bitching "Why the hell am I gonna have to buy XP? Can't you make it work like XP?" well no, I can't make MSFT grow a God damned brain and make it so people can actually work with their damned OS, call the OEM and bitch at them for awhile.
So I can see why companies like Dell are in talks with Canonical, at least there they have SOME measure of control. The amount of support this "Hai! Iz a cellphone LOL!" bullshit is gonna require is gonna raise costs in a dead fucking economy...thanks a lot Ballmer, you fat douchebag. I outta do like some of the other shops and have a "Win 7 all versions preactivated' sitting on my OS spindle so I can just kill the damned thing but silly me, i like actually being legal.
Now I'm just gonna have to write down the support numbers for all the OEMs and when I get the "Why can't you make it work like Windows 7?" just hand the customer the phone and say "bitch away friend, demand a Win 7 disc and I'll slap it on". Maybe when the OEMs get enough damned support calls for this trainwreck MSFT will have to give downgrade rights again.
Exactly it all comes down to margins and profits. I bet if you were to get your hands on a spreadsheet showing the profits on the various divisions the pro line is probably the worst performer they have...why? Because it uses much more expensive hardware and it only appeals to a teeny tiny niche compared to the iMac and Macbooks. It was Steve Jobs that pushed the Apple for creators mantra and he's gone, Cook hasn't said anything that would indicate he's excited about the Pro line and who can blame him? Pros need faster refreshes than the consumers, better hardware that cuts into the margins, and the sales don't back up the extra expense.
Finally lets not forget the control angle. Apple has always been about control and with Intel they have ZERO control of the chips and the roadmap whereas with ARM its their baby. This doesn't matter with the consumers because the hardware is frankly overpowered now so they can do smaller refreshes, just add a little faster CPU or better screen and keep the sales up, but the pros want the latest top end hardware which is the absolute most expensive parts that Intel makes. Apple simply isn't buying enough Xeons to get economies of scale like a Dell or HP and with no control of the roadmap or even what sockets Intel are gonna be using next year they can start to build a new unit now and have it out of date before they even reach the retail channel, I bet Cook doesn't like that one bit.
So I really wouldn't be surprised if this next refresh is probably the last for the pro line, Apple doesn't really need them and they cost Apple more than any other division on hardware. Its just good business sense to bail out of a niche that doesn't bring in the sales and the Apple pros simply don't move like the Macbooks and iMacs.
Thanks but I just figured it was pretty damned obvious, after all it isn't like being control freaks is some new revelation when it comes to Apple. If more and more devs would just give them the finger and refuse to play ball then they'd have no choice but to change, especially when the latest hot app is available on Android but not iOS, but greedy devs dreaming of iMoney frankly ruin it for everyone.
If you don't like jumping through their endless hoops then don't do business with Apple its as simple as that. Nobody puts a gun to their head and says "Go kiss the ring and try to make teh iMonies!" its a choice, you do it or you don't. If you don't want to be stuffed in a corner? Then have some fucking pride and tell them to fuck off. But in the end the reason Apple can get away with this shit is too many greedy devs think that THEY will be different, THEY won't be stuffed in the corner or have to jump through the hoops because THEY are just too damned good. Bullshit, its arrogance and the MPlayer guys got bitchslapped for it. Hopefully this will be a valuable lesson for others that there is NO negotiation with Apple, its their way or the highway.
Jim Sterling at Zero Punctuation spells out in this videos EXACTLY why EA is in the shape its in, and it all comes down to screwing the customers. day one DLC, online passes for single player games, overdone DRM crap, watch the video because he gives a list of just one douchebag practice after another with EA. he says they are a perfect example of the bloated, overblown, grey sludge spewing corporate game publisher. Everything the industry does wrong? EA does it worse and I have to agree.
Once upon a time EA was a great gaming house, now they just spit out one more generic POS after another and like Symantec and MSFT just destroy any company that is stupid enough to be bought by then instead of using that talent to make even better games. Bullfrog, Westwood, the list of companies gutted by EA is a long one and in each case EA lost what could have been another great team making great products. So yeah no surprise here, company puts out overpriced garbage and treats its customers like crap, company goes to hell.
I'd love to see how much Origin cost them, my guess is that was the final boat anchor that sunk them as I know a LOT of people, myself included, that were lined up to buy a product for them and when we saw it was Origin said "fuck that!" and bought something else. I learned after GFWL that if it requires anything other than Steam to avoid like the plague, and the rep EA got for banhammering any customer that dared to complain about bad service was just the shit icing on the fail cake.
But what if they just stop making Pro units? After all it was Jobs that was big on "Apple is the machines the movies are made on" while Cook really doesn't seem to care about the pro market. After all he's drug ass on a new pro line, pissed a LOT of people off with FCP, and with pro users frankly he makes less money, how? Simple the home users frankly don't need refreshing hardly at all, those Macbooks and iMacs already have more power than the average home user is gonna use so they can just swap for better screen and tiny CPU boosts and still make crazy profits whereas pros need more expensive hardware and faster refreshes.
If I was an Apple Pro user I'd be seriously looking into buying me some top o' the line Win 7 box, since Windows has as much pro software tools as Apple and with Win 7 supported until 2020 that'd give me a nice long support cycle and you can always add OSX in a dual boot Hackentosh. Because frankly after this next rev I really wouldn't be surprised if the next time refreshes roll around for Cook to declare "The iPad X is the new tool for pros!" and kill everything but one iMac and maybe 2 Macbooks, regular and Air. Makes sense, less refreshes, less expensive hardware, cheaper and easier upgrade path equals lots more profits.
Simple what happened friend, the CIA. Ever since the war ended back in 45 the CIA just kept finding new places to stir up shit and often would get in bed with the corps while doing it, such as the coup in Iran in 56 that replaced a democratically elected president for the Shah who promised to kiss BP's ass if they made him ruler. Ever since then its been one corrupt deal after another, one nasty play after another, and with each passing year they just got more vicious and ugly. Look at this map friend and ask yourself why? Why would they want to stir up that much hatred for the USA and slaughter that many?
Because conflict is big business, they've known that since WWII and that is why we lose more of our liberties every year, they find more bogeyman to declare war on, more reasons to siphon money to their friends in the MIC, and with each bombing or coup they stir hatred for the USA which means more potential targets and more money.
Sadly thanks to the spooks and the MIC this country has become a death machine, producing war and suffering everywhere so some rich old soulless bastards can squeeze a little more profit and build a little larger empire.
Ya see, that's where i think you are wrong. I think the USSA milicom really don't give a rat's ass WHAT anybody else thinks and they know simply doing a framejob on Assange wouldn't make him an "example" of what happens when you don't kiss the ring. If all they wanted to do was get him out of the way I bet slipping something in his food really wouldn't be that hard, or hell just a shot through a window by "an unknown assailant" would do the job.
No friend what they want is a classic Soviet style show trial, where they can paint his ass with the MSM to be one step lower than Stalin and then throw him in the nastiest pen they can find and start making PMITA prison jokes about his little white ass. That way anybody in the future that gets anything classified from the USA, even if it showed the CIA popping Kennedy while giving the finger to the camera, will be so damned scared shitless of ending up in the same deep dank hole as Assange they'll just tear it up and pretend they never saw it.
Never underestimate the power of fear and the chilling effect, nor the feeling of untouchablility of those in power. Hell notice how quickly the world press stop giving a shit about the torture of Manning? or all the dirty evil shit in those leaks? Its been reported for years there are CIA moles in several major world MSM outlets so it wouldn't be hard to manufacture some "ZOMFG did you hear that celeb is teh gay?" story if they get tired of hearing how Assange is being bashed and buttraped and by then anybody who could be in a position to get the next leak will have already gotten the message...don't you dare publish jack shit without permission.
Did they fix the tile spam? Because I haven't time to futz with RTM as I'm swamped and frankly after dealing with DP, CP, and now RP I think I'm to my limit of fricking low res metro puke.
I mean its nice they brought back the Win 7 CPL because that works great, but some of us actually install programs in our OSes and the Tile crap quickly became this monsterous sea of little damned tiles everywhere.
I'll buy one of those $40 copies of Win 8 pro, simply to run it in a VM so I can keep up with the latest tricks for fixing the damned thing but if I can't get those tiles outta my face I'm gonna get one of those purple dildos like in SR3 and give Ballmer a good slapping. With Win 7 when i slap the wake button i have this revolving set of beautiful Hubble shots that never fail to give me a moment of Zen, having to face every day with that "LOL wanna check ur FB LOL?" every damned day? I'd rather get punched in the nuts, at least it would be over and done with.
Oh geez, I didn't even try the games but XBL? Seriously? To play fucking freecell? if that ain't proof that MSFT couldn't catch a damned clue if it was delivered at the end of a baseball bat to the head i don't know.
I pretty much gave up on any of the built in Tile app crap when i saw how absolutely shitty it looked on my 1600x900 22 inch screen. i mean this isn't even 1080p and it already looks like Win98 16bit color garbage. The ONLY screen where Win 8 actually looked nice? my 12 inch Asus EEE netbook. At 1366x768 it looked nice and since i never run more than one program at a time on a screen that small the "All must be teh fullscreen herpa derpa" stupidity really didn't bug me. On a 1600x900 widescreen? i wanted to pull an elvis on the damned screen.
Oh and for the guy that said "Its my job to customize metro" sincerely fuck off, it is NOT my job, its fucking MSFT'S damned job to make sensible defaults instead of shitting tiles all over the damned screen! WTF do you mean I have to tweak the God damned thing just to keep it from puking all over the screen? Why in the hell should i pay for something that doesn't even work OOTB without me constantly futzing with the damned thing?
With every other Windows OS I didn't have to futz with jack shit and with 7 they FINALLY, thank the FSM, came up with a start menu that would autosort with some damned sense..things I pin at the top, most recently used at the bottom, all easy to reach and sensible. hell I never even had to ever go beyond that initial start screen because everything i needed was just right there.
The deniers can deny all the want but it won't change the truth which is that Win 8 is a CELLPHONE OS, that's what it is, its just another phone OS only jammed onto actual computers without a sensible default to be had. Shouldn't they have enough sense to know that having apps low res and full screen on some 30 inch 1080p is the height of retarded? or that not having a collapsing tree style menu in places like control panel where you have several layers is dumb as shit?
If anything win 8 is a classic example of MSFT's long repeated "ZOMFG somebody is selling something! Quick put out a half ass barely working knockoff, so we can steal some share!" only in this case they are shooting one of the few money makers they have left square in the face to do it, just ignorant. It'll probably sell on low rent netbooks and things with itty bitty screens but on laptops and desktops its deep fried whaleshit.
But seriously who DIDN'T know Apple is a bunch of control freaks? this is like having a dozen people walk up to you and say "See that guy selling fruit on the corner? Yeah don't do business with him, he'll punch you in the nuts" but you go 'Hey, that guy is making the monies! I'll do business with him!" and right after you do business with him he gives you a Falcon Punch from hell that cracks your walnuts. Now why the fuck should we feel sorry or care when you didn't listen?
Apple is a bunch of control freaks, MSFT is run by dumbass PHBs, Google wants to know what you had for breakfast this morning...and now for the weather....water is wet Chuck, back to you!
Seriously folks Apple has a history of fucking over the little guys, going apeshit on their control over them and/or ripping off their ideas for a new "Apple Feature" down the line....who doesn't know this? Its been SOP there forever, its not exactly news folks. The moral of the story, if you get in bed with a control freak don't bitch when you end up tied to the bedpost with a ballgag mmkay?
I really wish that BS would DIAF because its such horseshit. i fought with Vista for nearly a year until i took it out back and told it to think about the rabbits while i put it down. Win 7 OTOH worked in alpha, beta, and OOTB and if the rumors are true its because Ballmer was too busy with Zune and left the office guys the fuck alone to gut Vista and build something good without his interference. Major bugs like "network shares disappear and won't work without a reboot" and "media playing kills network speed" were not only fixed but it has better memory management, better GPU acceleration, better UI, better superfetch and readyboost...it really is head and shoulders better than Vista or XP for that matter. Comparing 7 to Vista is like saying WinNT 4 and WinXP are the same.
Now back to Win 8, works on cellphones, works on tablets and small screen netbooks, sucks hairy balls on a large screen. Where MSFT is screwing the pooch is they refuse to see the facts, Fact 1.-PCs aren't going anywhere, but it IS a mature market, Fact 2.- PCs passed good enough and went into insanely overpowered with multicore and huge amounts of RAM, Fact 3.- ARM will never EVER replace X86, its IPCs will never come even close. the latest ARM multicores still get spanked by a first gen Core Duo or Phenom Triple and those are nearly 7 years old. but Fact 4.- PCs last longer than ever so for many they simply won't need to replace until the previous one dies. Fact 5.- There simply hasn't been a "killer app" in years that can stress even a 5 year old multi, even gaming has a hard time stressing these monsters. What program is the average office worker gonna run that won't run perfectly fine on a Phenom I X4 or a C2Q? None.
So what does Ballmer "Herpa derpa I wanna work at Cupertino!" do when faced with the facts? Does he spin off mobile so they can innovate while he continues to refine their desktop and laptop OS to make them an even better value? Nope he pretends its still 1997 and he can use the Windows desktop monopoly, which as i pointed to earlier is a mature market and try to leverage it as they did in the days of IE.
Final verdict on Win 8? It'll sell some tablets and cellphones, especially if the rumor is true and Ballmer is willing to shit another billion down the toilet to sell a WinPad with iPad specs and a Kindle price but they'll still be lucky if they get even 9%. On desktops it'll most likely be another Vista sized turd, with the OEMs demanding (and most likely getting) the right to sell "Win 8 systems" that are just Win 7 with a disposable Win 8 DVD in the bottom of the box, finally Ballmer's douchebaggery will have a good chance of biting MSFT right in the ass when old Gabe releases a Steambox and cuts into one of the few "success stories" at MSFT. Quotes on success because I've yet to see a balance sheet that includes the 2 billion plus writeoff for the RRoD debacle or the R&D costs for the X360 so we can see if they've made a dime yet or not.
No shit. Zune, Kin, Sidekick, rushing the x360 out with a 2 billion dollar flaw...the man is a disaster.
For those that want an unbiased review of what to expect with Win 8 I've run DP, CP, and RP on nearly a half a dozen different machines here at the shop so I'd say that makes me at least qualified to give the review, along with watching my customers look lost and get frustrated on the win 8 CP I've had running on the shop floor, so here goes...
Do you have a little netbook or laptop, preferably 10-12 inches but no bigger than 15? Then you probably only run one app at a time and your screen is low res enough win 8 will look fine. Are you gonna buy this on a tablet or smartphone? then i'm sure it'll work fine there as well. Do you never ever install more than a half dozen programs? Then the new tile UI won't make you want to pull your hair out.
For everyone that doesn't fit that description? RUN, run as fast as you can and grab you a copy of Win 7 NOW, don't wait, get it and hang onto it like a drowning man hanging onto a lifejacket. Because the Tile UI quickly becomes a huge mess when you add programs so soon you end up with this multiple page PITA UI, most of the Tile "apps" and many of the Windows programs themselves are obviously written for low res screens and look like ass on anything 1600x900 or better, the only "advantage" which is faster boot is a lie and a hack (Google "Win 8 hybrid boot" to see what I mean) and in every appreciable way it feels like a boat anchor tied to your productivity. And ZOMFG do NOT open to any depth in control panel, it becomes this giant shotgun tile nightmare o' doom!
The sad part is while the guts are fine in reality...its WinPhone folks, that's ALL it is. Its WinPhone ported to the desktop so MSFT can try to force people to like the Tile UI and get a piece of that appstore iMoney that Apple has been rolling around in, but like everything else Ballmer touches its half assed, obviously designed by committee, its a trainwreck is what it is.
Just got off work so here ya go friend and the keywords to Google it are "Win 8 hybrid boot" which brings up 20 million fricking pages all about it. again its the old hibernate trick with a few nasty hacks thrown in, not something i'd get jazzed about. But if you want feel free to rename hiberfil.sys on your system and time the reboot, just make sure you have access to the console in case its left unbootable. Of course if it IS left unbootable then you'll know its using the hiberfil instead of doing a cold boot, but I wouldn't want you to end up with a broken system just to say "I told ya so".
Now if you'll excuse me its been a long day and the oldest boy just dropped me off a lotsa meat with extra meat and cheese so my butt is gonna kick back and enjoy some top notch pizza goodness...Peace.
Hey I'll have you know I have every damned right to be angry and frankly you should be too, as many of the problems in Linux don't have a technical reason, its all dogma, bullshit, and ego.
What do BSD, Solaris, OS/2, Windows, and OSX all have in common? A stable hardware ABI that lets the devs worry about the fucking system core and the hardware manufacturers worry about the fucking drivers, that's what. There is a REASON you can take a Win2K driver and slap it on XP, or a Vista driver on 7, because thanks to MSFT having a stable ABI they change only once a decade the OEMs can "write once, use for years" which makes a hell of a lot of the problems go bye bye.
Why doesn't Linux have one? Fucking religious dogma and Linus' big fat ego, that's why. The ONLY thing you'll find by kernel devs against an ABI is a RELIGIOUS TRACT that goes so far as to say "I hope those that use non free drivers get them broken constantly!". Now can you fucking imagine anyone on the OSX team saying that? Know how fast his ass would be iFired? Oh and BTW they ALREADY HAVE BINARY DRIVERS so the whole fucking religious angle is completely POINTLESS, all it does is makes sure many OEMs will simply not bother. The other reason is Linus' "I'm a superdouche" Torvalds swore up and down he didn't need an ABI...in 1994. Well in 1994 there were less than 50 driver all told for Linux and maybe half that many packages. Would you want YOUR OS to be based on what the original designer thought was right in 1994? Its as stupid as saying the old Bill Gates "640k" line was true but that Bill refused to upgrade the design because it would make that statement false!
I could go on all day pal, things getting thrown out the second they start getting stable for some asshole dev to scratch and itch and send everything back 5 years on quality, like with pukeaudio and the DEs, everyone reinventing the wheel rather than working together, a community that thinks a CLI interface from 1978 is the height of development and should be leaned on like a crutch...but why bother? Its never gonna get any better, not as long as its controlled by douchebags like Torvalds and those that treat FOSS as a religion. The best quote about Linux I've ever seen is "Linux is always looking to be ready for the masses in about three years...only it never gets any better" and the guy fucking nailed it. The drivers don't get any better, the system doesn't ever get stable, its nothing but a million devs scratching itches which is why it'll always be a programmer's toy until someone like Google takes it away and shows how to make the fucking thing work. Devs without someone to crack the whip is like herding cats and will never get their shit together, its just a mess.
Yep welcome to the USSA comrade, where the only free men are the rich.
BTW I think every one of us that have said about a billion fucking times here that "Its not about rape, its about the USSA snatching his ass" deserves a fricking apology from all those "No its not, its about a crime, its raaape!" dumbasses, so line the hell up. Oh and WE TOLD YA SO!
Its pretty God damned sad when fricking Ecuador is the symbol of freedom and the USSA is the slimy country, but this ain't the country your grandparents fought for in WWII, its turned foul, the ground has gone sour thanks to a cabal of WallStreet, the MICs and PMCs, and the gov, all in bed together.
They don't, because part of the point was iSteve didn't want to have any way to support games on the web, he wanted everything to go through the appstores so he could get his cut.
This is what made me fucking gobsmacked at the whole thing, Steve couldn't have been more blatant if he had wore an "all ur monies belong 2 us" t-shirt yet the press and sadly many here all tripped over themselves to hail King iSteve and give Flash the boot. MPEG-LA is one of the worst patent trolls around, with over 2000 patents covering every vague idea you could possibly have with video and while Adobe paid the fees so everyone could use it Apple and MSFT will pay...for users of Apple and MSFT products.
The sad thing is if Steve Ballmer would have said the exact same speech killing flash, word for fucking word, every site and every blogger would have been pointing out what a self serving shill he was, yet iSteve could create nasty lock in, with a format that they and MSFT pretty much own ATM, and nobody says shit. Not a fucking word.
Mark my words in 5 years web video will ALL be walled gardens and those that don't stay strictly in those gardens controlled by Apple, Google, or MSFT ain't gonna be playing shit or watching shit on the web. Web animation will be toast so the ONLY gaming will be in appstores and the videos will have H.265 which MPEG-LA will sue the asses off of anyone that don't pay the tolls...yay.
You missed the point which was Adobe paid your $699 license fee and did so for Windows, Mac AND Linux. You think Apple or MSFT gonna pay that fee? Or do you think they'll just have MPEG-LA send some C&Ds your way?
In the end the world traded a format that worked but was buggy for a corporate assraping without lube, all because iSteve was for it...yay. Like the head of one of the most locked down, charge everybody crazy money while trolling with patents corps wouldn't have ANY ulterior motives....BTW are you interested in some magic beans? Touched by iSteve, swear.
Wish I could spare the time to find ya a better link but I'm ass deep in work right now bro and when you type shutdown and Win 8 in Google you find 50 bazillion people having problems...gee i wonder why? Anyway this is the best I can do but el Reg reported after the CP release (maybe you should search their site) that this is indeed the default behavior and you have to use a MS KB article to disable and force "classic" shutdown. Maybe look up "Win 8 hybrid boot"? I just ain't got the time to spare friend, sorry.
Ubuntu 11 new enough for you? I ended up with two half ass working devices (as in "it works right now, cough and it won't") and one that supposedly was 'working" in the it would connect...as long as security wasn't anything you actually cared about on your wireless network.
Frankly I'm so God damned sick of FOSS zealots going "La la la no problems exist, its all candy and RMS in a dress passing flowers la la la" if I ever run into one on the street I'm just gonna bitchslap them, i swear to fricking God.
It is YOU and your type that continue to take the shit shoveled by the devs that make sure Linux doesn't go anywhere. if Linus "ego come and it won't go away" was working on a proprietary OS his ass would have been pink slipped so fast it'd make his head spin, but because the OS he works on is "free" that means he can crap in a box and nobody will say boo. if I hand you a sandwich that is 95% shit and 5% ham, would you call it a ham sandwich?
Hell even one of the Red Hat devs says Linux is in its death cries because of one bad move after another that has made the entire system a fucking mess, but will anybody listen? Nope, they'll just go "La la la" and then mod down anybody who points out emperor RMS is walking bare assed. If you'd like a list of fucked up shit here is a small one, only about two hundred major problems that just FYI many of which have been there for YEARS.
In the end I'll happily take the pepsi challenge with ANY user of Linux and LMAO when it falls down and goes Boom! Take any "normal" distro, don't give me that LTS bullshit because as we've seen with Ubuntu LTS means "see this list of things we fixed? Well fuck off, you can't have it unless you upgrade biotch" that was released at the same time as Win 7, install it clean, NO forum hunts or googling fixes allowed, and IF, which is a big fucking if, if you have the drivers working OOTB upgrade it to current and see what you are left with at the end. I can tell you because I've done it with over a dozen Linux distros and what you get is a pile of broken garbage, drivers fucked, programs gone to shit, its a mess. And don't try to pull that "Windows has to be installed clean too!" horseshit because you get TEN YEARS of updates minimum with windows, with Linux if you get a year and a half before doing the upgrade shuffle its a fucking miracle.
So far the ONLY one that has come close to passing the Hairyfeet challenge is RHEL which surprise! Costs $400 a year. Windows? $40 if you want Win 8, $80 if you want Win 7...kinda a BIG fricking difference there huh?
if you wanna push "free as in freedom!" or the whole "Linux works on dumpster dived hardware!" that's cool, but don't fucking lie. it makes the whole Linux community look like a bunch of FOSSies, with little RMS altars and pictures of Linus with hearts around it. Hell even Dell, one of the biggest OEMs on the fricking planet has to run their own repos because the drivers shit themselves....great QC you got there. Meanwhile the XP machine I'm typing on with an OS install from 2004 is running just fine with original drivers and the whole system is updated to current. And don't give me the "U must have teh viruz!" horseshit because any one of a dozen free AVs and 10 minutes of instruction from me and there ain't no fucking viruses getting on my builds. Yeah....no fricking contest, WinVista on its worse day is 1000 times better.
They don't sell them because most of the public won't pay 60% margins just to get a higher screen. This is why you see all those 1366 and 1600 res laptops, economies of scale thanks to LCD TVs make those resolutions MUCH cheaper and when it doubt most will go for cheaper.
If you DO want an extremely high resolution you'll need to look at units designed for the medical industry or even go to the Thinkpad forums and look under "high resolution" where you'll find lists of several vendors that sell aftermarket screens (again most for the medical industry) that will let your Thinkpad have truly crazy high resolutions.
But you can't blame the public for going with what works for them. I've found most are quite happy with 1366 on monitors 17 inches and less because at the close up viewing angle higher resolutions simply don't justify the insane price differences. the reason Apple gets away with it is a "take it or shove it" attitude where if you want to play in Apple's playground you play by Apple's rules, and they have always made the public subsidize by giving them little to no choice when it comes to screens.
Linux TM number 17. in the future if you want to spread Linux BS please choose the appropriate TM, the first 30 usually cover every bit of BS ever posted here, thanks. Oh and BTW I have a single DVD that will install pretty much ANY Windows driver for ANY device and do so with a single click,where is yours? Oh right there isn't even a single repo for drivers yet, sorry bout that. And where is the find drivers and rollback drivers buttons? you know, the things Windows has had for over a decade? oh yeah, those don't exist either, bummer.
You can waste mod points but it won't make black into white, or straw into gold. Linux is great for embedded, kicks ass on web servers, but as long as Linus Torvalds has a pulse Linux drivers are gonna be dooky.
Here is some advice...get off XP dude, its twelve fricking years old now. Frankly I haven't needed a driver disc for Win 7 for the built in hardware in...well I honestly can't think of a time I've ever needed it, the Win 7 drivers just work. Now for funky third party wifi add on cards and the like? Sure you'll need it but WU usually has the drivers so you can just use that instead.
Now lets compare this to Linux: Where is the "find drivers" button? Or right its called "Google your damned ass off" and you had BETTER know the exact make/rev/model of driver you need and pray to a statue of RMS someone has one. Even if they DO have one you better have enough skillz to be able to tweak that sucker, because it'll no doubt be written for make f, rev g, firmware h and you'll have make F, rev I, firmware j and the picky bastard just won't work.
Linux does have its selling points, if you can't afford the $40 for Windows? Its free. If you are a programmer? You can automate the entire OS with scripts, but drivers? NOT A SELLING POINT in Linux and in fact I'd say since pulse and the DE messes drivers are worse than ever. I'm sure anybody who has read my previous thoughts on the subject know whom I blame (Linus Torvalds and his ego) but in the end you can that version of Win Vista or 7 RTM, have all the drivers load OOTB, upgrade it through all the service packs and patches and what happens? THE DRIVERS ALL WORK.
This is one thing that has always hamstringed Linux, too much kernel fucking and low level fiddling make drivers a fucking unstable mess. Things that work in foo, broken horribly in foo+1 and may not get fixed until Foo+4, driver hunts, CLI fixes, its just not a nice experience. This is why I refuse to carry Linux in my shop and if anyone asked for it I'd point them out a nice Android tablet, at least the drivers work there.
as for TFA? I'm sure they'll have it fixed....by the time the units are no longer sold. this has always been SOP in Linux land, by the time the drivers are worth a crap the thing that needed the drivers is no longer in the retail channel...yay, thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention the ONLY times I've ever heard of anybody losing access to their games on Steam is when they were being total cunts and using wallhacks and other cheater shit to ruin the games for everyone else and even then they got a warning before getting punted. Whether you buy the game retail or through Steam anybody that doesn't stop the douchebags cheating quickly finds nobody buying their games so i really can't fault Valve one single bit.
Plus you really can't beat their customer service. I've had to deal with so many tech companies shitastic CS I am filled with dread when i have to call as its gonna be a fucking mess but Valve? Their CS always went out of their way to be helpful and went above and beyond making sure i was happy which is rare as hell in this day and age. I even had to contact them over some DLC in the middle of the XMas sale, figuring I'd be lucky to hear from them in a week with all the traffic, yet they contacted me within 1 hour, worked with me to get the DLC straightened out and working, and even contacted twice after that just to make sure everything was going good.
So I really do not care even a little bit about Steam DRM, I never have a hassle with it, works perfectly fine offline, and the prices they sell AAA games at is so low its often cheaper to buy through Steam than to even rent the game for the XBox. During the last sale I got the Deus Ex complete series for $15, Saints Row 3 with the DLC I wanted for $14, the HL 1 series for $7, I haven't paid more than $12 for a single game since getting Steam so what's to complain about?
Well it would have to be evil AND incompetent to truly do EA justice so I propose...MSFT. Ballmer has shown he has no problem pissing money down a rathole and with EA he could kill Origin and move it all to GFWL, where every attempt at purchasing a Windows game would be while trying to fight your way through a maze of X360 offers.
They could then move Madden to the Kinnect so that all the players could have the "fun" of Kinnect trying to guess badly WTF they are trying to go in the game, replace every in game ad with commercials for Win 8 and finally make everyone sign up for a Live account before you can even play single player.
Yep EASoft...a match made in hell.
Which is why the USA would go for the classic "lone gunman" bit. Hell he's walking around a ground floor right passed windows constantly, it really wouldn't be hard. After a week or two "investigation" they find a nut dead with a note talking about how "Assange caused the death of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan!" and it would be cased close, bring on the next celeb scandal.
But the fact he has published and so far gotten away with it wouldn't be changed by that, hell those that might be in a position to publish might even buy the story and think if they are just more careful than Assange they could get away with it. Nope what they want is to publicly drag him through a show trial and dump him in a hole and to do THAT they need to grab him. I have a feeling he'll end up dragged out of Ecuador after the USA gives the UK a call and tells them to let his ass go, easier to snatch him once the heat dies down.
Because I'm the guy that ends up stuck having to support the damned thing, that's why. Its Vista all over again where I had to deal with one damned bug or stupid design fault after another with people bitching "Why the hell am I gonna have to buy XP? Can't you make it work like XP?" well no, I can't make MSFT grow a God damned brain and make it so people can actually work with their damned OS, call the OEM and bitch at them for awhile.
So I can see why companies like Dell are in talks with Canonical, at least there they have SOME measure of control. The amount of support this "Hai! Iz a cellphone LOL!" bullshit is gonna require is gonna raise costs in a dead fucking economy...thanks a lot Ballmer, you fat douchebag. I outta do like some of the other shops and have a "Win 7 all versions preactivated' sitting on my OS spindle so I can just kill the damned thing but silly me, i like actually being legal.
Now I'm just gonna have to write down the support numbers for all the OEMs and when I get the "Why can't you make it work like Windows 7?" just hand the customer the phone and say "bitch away friend, demand a Win 7 disc and I'll slap it on". Maybe when the OEMs get enough damned support calls for this trainwreck MSFT will have to give downgrade rights again.
Exactly it all comes down to margins and profits. I bet if you were to get your hands on a spreadsheet showing the profits on the various divisions the pro line is probably the worst performer they have...why? Because it uses much more expensive hardware and it only appeals to a teeny tiny niche compared to the iMac and Macbooks. It was Steve Jobs that pushed the Apple for creators mantra and he's gone, Cook hasn't said anything that would indicate he's excited about the Pro line and who can blame him? Pros need faster refreshes than the consumers, better hardware that cuts into the margins, and the sales don't back up the extra expense.
Finally lets not forget the control angle. Apple has always been about control and with Intel they have ZERO control of the chips and the roadmap whereas with ARM its their baby. This doesn't matter with the consumers because the hardware is frankly overpowered now so they can do smaller refreshes, just add a little faster CPU or better screen and keep the sales up, but the pros want the latest top end hardware which is the absolute most expensive parts that Intel makes. Apple simply isn't buying enough Xeons to get economies of scale like a Dell or HP and with no control of the roadmap or even what sockets Intel are gonna be using next year they can start to build a new unit now and have it out of date before they even reach the retail channel, I bet Cook doesn't like that one bit.
So I really wouldn't be surprised if this next refresh is probably the last for the pro line, Apple doesn't really need them and they cost Apple more than any other division on hardware. Its just good business sense to bail out of a niche that doesn't bring in the sales and the Apple pros simply don't move like the Macbooks and iMacs.
Thanks but I just figured it was pretty damned obvious, after all it isn't like being control freaks is some new revelation when it comes to Apple. If more and more devs would just give them the finger and refuse to play ball then they'd have no choice but to change, especially when the latest hot app is available on Android but not iOS, but greedy devs dreaming of iMoney frankly ruin it for everyone.
If you don't like jumping through their endless hoops then don't do business with Apple its as simple as that. Nobody puts a gun to their head and says "Go kiss the ring and try to make teh iMonies!" its a choice, you do it or you don't. If you don't want to be stuffed in a corner? Then have some fucking pride and tell them to fuck off. But in the end the reason Apple can get away with this shit is too many greedy devs think that THEY will be different, THEY won't be stuffed in the corner or have to jump through the hoops because THEY are just too damned good. Bullshit, its arrogance and the MPlayer guys got bitchslapped for it. Hopefully this will be a valuable lesson for others that there is NO negotiation with Apple, its their way or the highway.
Jim Sterling at Zero Punctuation spells out in this videos EXACTLY why EA is in the shape its in, and it all comes down to screwing the customers. day one DLC, online passes for single player games, overdone DRM crap, watch the video because he gives a list of just one douchebag practice after another with EA. he says they are a perfect example of the bloated, overblown, grey sludge spewing corporate game publisher. Everything the industry does wrong? EA does it worse and I have to agree.
Once upon a time EA was a great gaming house, now they just spit out one more generic POS after another and like Symantec and MSFT just destroy any company that is stupid enough to be bought by then instead of using that talent to make even better games. Bullfrog, Westwood, the list of companies gutted by EA is a long one and in each case EA lost what could have been another great team making great products. So yeah no surprise here, company puts out overpriced garbage and treats its customers like crap, company goes to hell.
I'd love to see how much Origin cost them, my guess is that was the final boat anchor that sunk them as I know a LOT of people, myself included, that were lined up to buy a product for them and when we saw it was Origin said "fuck that!" and bought something else. I learned after GFWL that if it requires anything other than Steam to avoid like the plague, and the rep EA got for banhammering any customer that dared to complain about bad service was just the shit icing on the fail cake.
But what if they just stop making Pro units? After all it was Jobs that was big on "Apple is the machines the movies are made on" while Cook really doesn't seem to care about the pro market. After all he's drug ass on a new pro line, pissed a LOT of people off with FCP, and with pro users frankly he makes less money, how? Simple the home users frankly don't need refreshing hardly at all, those Macbooks and iMacs already have more power than the average home user is gonna use so they can just swap for better screen and tiny CPU boosts and still make crazy profits whereas pros need more expensive hardware and faster refreshes.
If I was an Apple Pro user I'd be seriously looking into buying me some top o' the line Win 7 box, since Windows has as much pro software tools as Apple and with Win 7 supported until 2020 that'd give me a nice long support cycle and you can always add OSX in a dual boot Hackentosh. Because frankly after this next rev I really wouldn't be surprised if the next time refreshes roll around for Cook to declare "The iPad X is the new tool for pros!" and kill everything but one iMac and maybe 2 Macbooks, regular and Air. Makes sense, less refreshes, less expensive hardware, cheaper and easier upgrade path equals lots more profits.
Simple what happened friend, the CIA. Ever since the war ended back in 45 the CIA just kept finding new places to stir up shit and often would get in bed with the corps while doing it, such as the coup in Iran in 56 that replaced a democratically elected president for the Shah who promised to kiss BP's ass if they made him ruler. Ever since then its been one corrupt deal after another, one nasty play after another, and with each passing year they just got more vicious and ugly. Look at this map friend and ask yourself why? Why would they want to stir up that much hatred for the USA and slaughter that many?
Because conflict is big business, they've known that since WWII and that is why we lose more of our liberties every year, they find more bogeyman to declare war on, more reasons to siphon money to their friends in the MIC, and with each bombing or coup they stir hatred for the USA which means more potential targets and more money.
Sadly thanks to the spooks and the MIC this country has become a death machine, producing war and suffering everywhere so some rich old soulless bastards can squeeze a little more profit and build a little larger empire.
Ya see, that's where i think you are wrong. I think the USSA milicom really don't give a rat's ass WHAT anybody else thinks and they know simply doing a framejob on Assange wouldn't make him an "example" of what happens when you don't kiss the ring. If all they wanted to do was get him out of the way I bet slipping something in his food really wouldn't be that hard, or hell just a shot through a window by "an unknown assailant" would do the job.
No friend what they want is a classic Soviet style show trial, where they can paint his ass with the MSM to be one step lower than Stalin and then throw him in the nastiest pen they can find and start making PMITA prison jokes about his little white ass. That way anybody in the future that gets anything classified from the USA, even if it showed the CIA popping Kennedy while giving the finger to the camera, will be so damned scared shitless of ending up in the same deep dank hole as Assange they'll just tear it up and pretend they never saw it.
Never underestimate the power of fear and the chilling effect, nor the feeling of untouchablility of those in power. Hell notice how quickly the world press stop giving a shit about the torture of Manning? or all the dirty evil shit in those leaks? Its been reported for years there are CIA moles in several major world MSM outlets so it wouldn't be hard to manufacture some "ZOMFG did you hear that celeb is teh gay?" story if they get tired of hearing how Assange is being bashed and buttraped and by then anybody who could be in a position to get the next leak will have already gotten the message...don't you dare publish jack shit without permission.
Did they fix the tile spam? Because I haven't time to futz with RTM as I'm swamped and frankly after dealing with DP, CP, and now RP I think I'm to my limit of fricking low res metro puke.
I mean its nice they brought back the Win 7 CPL because that works great, but some of us actually install programs in our OSes and the Tile crap quickly became this monsterous sea of little damned tiles everywhere.
I'll buy one of those $40 copies of Win 8 pro, simply to run it in a VM so I can keep up with the latest tricks for fixing the damned thing but if I can't get those tiles outta my face I'm gonna get one of those purple dildos like in SR3 and give Ballmer a good slapping. With Win 7 when i slap the wake button i have this revolving set of beautiful Hubble shots that never fail to give me a moment of Zen, having to face every day with that "LOL wanna check ur FB LOL?" every damned day? I'd rather get punched in the nuts, at least it would be over and done with.
Oh geez, I didn't even try the games but XBL? Seriously? To play fucking freecell? if that ain't proof that MSFT couldn't catch a damned clue if it was delivered at the end of a baseball bat to the head i don't know.
I pretty much gave up on any of the built in Tile app crap when i saw how absolutely shitty it looked on my 1600x900 22 inch screen. i mean this isn't even 1080p and it already looks like Win98 16bit color garbage. The ONLY screen where Win 8 actually looked nice? my 12 inch Asus EEE netbook. At 1366x768 it looked nice and since i never run more than one program at a time on a screen that small the "All must be teh fullscreen herpa derpa" stupidity really didn't bug me. On a 1600x900 widescreen? i wanted to pull an elvis on the damned screen.
Oh and for the guy that said "Its my job to customize metro" sincerely fuck off, it is NOT my job, its fucking MSFT'S damned job to make sensible defaults instead of shitting tiles all over the damned screen! WTF do you mean I have to tweak the God damned thing just to keep it from puking all over the screen? Why in the hell should i pay for something that doesn't even work OOTB without me constantly futzing with the damned thing?
With every other Windows OS I didn't have to futz with jack shit and with 7 they FINALLY, thank the FSM, came up with a start menu that would autosort with some damned sense..things I pin at the top, most recently used at the bottom, all easy to reach and sensible. hell I never even had to ever go beyond that initial start screen because everything i needed was just right there.
The deniers can deny all the want but it won't change the truth which is that Win 8 is a CELLPHONE OS, that's what it is, its just another phone OS only jammed onto actual computers without a sensible default to be had. Shouldn't they have enough sense to know that having apps low res and full screen on some 30 inch 1080p is the height of retarded? or that not having a collapsing tree style menu in places like control panel where you have several layers is dumb as shit?
If anything win 8 is a classic example of MSFT's long repeated "ZOMFG somebody is selling something! Quick put out a half ass barely working knockoff, so we can steal some share!" only in this case they are shooting one of the few money makers they have left square in the face to do it, just ignorant. It'll probably sell on low rent netbooks and things with itty bitty screens but on laptops and desktops its deep fried whaleshit.
But seriously who DIDN'T know Apple is a bunch of control freaks? this is like having a dozen people walk up to you and say "See that guy selling fruit on the corner? Yeah don't do business with him, he'll punch you in the nuts" but you go 'Hey, that guy is making the monies! I'll do business with him!" and right after you do business with him he gives you a Falcon Punch from hell that cracks your walnuts. Now why the fuck should we feel sorry or care when you didn't listen?
Apple is a bunch of control freaks, MSFT is run by dumbass PHBs, Google wants to know what you had for breakfast this morning...and now for the weather....water is wet Chuck, back to you!
Seriously folks Apple has a history of fucking over the little guys, going apeshit on their control over them and/or ripping off their ideas for a new "Apple Feature" down the line....who doesn't know this? Its been SOP there forever, its not exactly news folks. The moral of the story, if you get in bed with a control freak don't bitch when you end up tied to the bedpost with a ballgag mmkay?
I really wish that BS would DIAF because its such horseshit. i fought with Vista for nearly a year until i took it out back and told it to think about the rabbits while i put it down. Win 7 OTOH worked in alpha, beta, and OOTB and if the rumors are true its because Ballmer was too busy with Zune and left the office guys the fuck alone to gut Vista and build something good without his interference. Major bugs like "network shares disappear and won't work without a reboot" and "media playing kills network speed" were not only fixed but it has better memory management, better GPU acceleration, better UI, better superfetch and readyboost...it really is head and shoulders better than Vista or XP for that matter. Comparing 7 to Vista is like saying WinNT 4 and WinXP are the same.
Now back to Win 8, works on cellphones, works on tablets and small screen netbooks, sucks hairy balls on a large screen. Where MSFT is screwing the pooch is they refuse to see the facts, Fact 1.-PCs aren't going anywhere, but it IS a mature market, Fact 2.- PCs passed good enough and went into insanely overpowered with multicore and huge amounts of RAM, Fact 3.- ARM will never EVER replace X86, its IPCs will never come even close. the latest ARM multicores still get spanked by a first gen Core Duo or Phenom Triple and those are nearly 7 years old. but Fact 4.- PCs last longer than ever so for many they simply won't need to replace until the previous one dies. Fact 5.- There simply hasn't been a "killer app" in years that can stress even a 5 year old multi, even gaming has a hard time stressing these monsters. What program is the average office worker gonna run that won't run perfectly fine on a Phenom I X4 or a C2Q? None.
So what does Ballmer "Herpa derpa I wanna work at Cupertino!" do when faced with the facts? Does he spin off mobile so they can innovate while he continues to refine their desktop and laptop OS to make them an even better value? Nope he pretends its still 1997 and he can use the Windows desktop monopoly, which as i pointed to earlier is a mature market and try to leverage it as they did in the days of IE.
Final verdict on Win 8? It'll sell some tablets and cellphones, especially if the rumor is true and Ballmer is willing to shit another billion down the toilet to sell a WinPad with iPad specs and a Kindle price but they'll still be lucky if they get even 9%. On desktops it'll most likely be another Vista sized turd, with the OEMs demanding (and most likely getting) the right to sell "Win 8 systems" that are just Win 7 with a disposable Win 8 DVD in the bottom of the box, finally Ballmer's douchebaggery will have a good chance of biting MSFT right in the ass when old Gabe releases a Steambox and cuts into one of the few "success stories" at MSFT. Quotes on success because I've yet to see a balance sheet that includes the 2 billion plus writeoff for the RRoD debacle or the R&D costs for the X360 so we can see if they've made a dime yet or not.
No shit. Zune, Kin, Sidekick, rushing the x360 out with a 2 billion dollar flaw...the man is a disaster.
For those that want an unbiased review of what to expect with Win 8 I've run DP, CP, and RP on nearly a half a dozen different machines here at the shop so I'd say that makes me at least qualified to give the review, along with watching my customers look lost and get frustrated on the win 8 CP I've had running on the shop floor, so here goes...
Do you have a little netbook or laptop, preferably 10-12 inches but no bigger than 15? Then you probably only run one app at a time and your screen is low res enough win 8 will look fine. Are you gonna buy this on a tablet or smartphone? then i'm sure it'll work fine there as well. Do you never ever install more than a half dozen programs? Then the new tile UI won't make you want to pull your hair out.
For everyone that doesn't fit that description? RUN, run as fast as you can and grab you a copy of Win 7 NOW, don't wait, get it and hang onto it like a drowning man hanging onto a lifejacket. Because the Tile UI quickly becomes a huge mess when you add programs so soon you end up with this multiple page PITA UI, most of the Tile "apps" and many of the Windows programs themselves are obviously written for low res screens and look like ass on anything 1600x900 or better, the only "advantage" which is faster boot is a lie and a hack (Google "Win 8 hybrid boot" to see what I mean) and in every appreciable way it feels like a boat anchor tied to your productivity. And ZOMFG do NOT open to any depth in control panel, it becomes this giant shotgun tile nightmare o' doom!
The sad part is while the guts are fine in reality...its WinPhone folks, that's ALL it is. Its WinPhone ported to the desktop so MSFT can try to force people to like the Tile UI and get a piece of that appstore iMoney that Apple has been rolling around in, but like everything else Ballmer touches its half assed, obviously designed by committee, its a trainwreck is what it is.
Just got off work so here ya go friend and the keywords to Google it are "Win 8 hybrid boot" which brings up 20 million fricking pages all about it. again its the old hibernate trick with a few nasty hacks thrown in, not something i'd get jazzed about. But if you want feel free to rename hiberfil.sys on your system and time the reboot, just make sure you have access to the console in case its left unbootable. Of course if it IS left unbootable then you'll know its using the hiberfil instead of doing a cold boot, but I wouldn't want you to end up with a broken system just to say "I told ya so".
Now if you'll excuse me its been a long day and the oldest boy just dropped me off a lotsa meat with extra meat and cheese so my butt is gonna kick back and enjoy some top notch pizza goodness...Peace.
Hey I'll have you know I have every damned right to be angry and frankly you should be too, as many of the problems in Linux don't have a technical reason, its all dogma, bullshit, and ego.
What do BSD, Solaris, OS/2, Windows, and OSX all have in common? A stable hardware ABI that lets the devs worry about the fucking system core and the hardware manufacturers worry about the fucking drivers, that's what. There is a REASON you can take a Win2K driver and slap it on XP, or a Vista driver on 7, because thanks to MSFT having a stable ABI they change only once a decade the OEMs can "write once, use for years" which makes a hell of a lot of the problems go bye bye.
Why doesn't Linux have one? Fucking religious dogma and Linus' big fat ego, that's why. The ONLY thing you'll find by kernel devs against an ABI is a RELIGIOUS TRACT that goes so far as to say "I hope those that use non free drivers get them broken constantly!". Now can you fucking imagine anyone on the OSX team saying that? Know how fast his ass would be iFired? Oh and BTW they ALREADY HAVE BINARY DRIVERS so the whole fucking religious angle is completely POINTLESS, all it does is makes sure many OEMs will simply not bother. The other reason is Linus' "I'm a superdouche" Torvalds swore up and down he didn't need an ABI...in 1994. Well in 1994 there were less than 50 driver all told for Linux and maybe half that many packages. Would you want YOUR OS to be based on what the original designer thought was right in 1994? Its as stupid as saying the old Bill Gates "640k" line was true but that Bill refused to upgrade the design because it would make that statement false!
I could go on all day pal, things getting thrown out the second they start getting stable for some asshole dev to scratch and itch and send everything back 5 years on quality, like with pukeaudio and the DEs, everyone reinventing the wheel rather than working together, a community that thinks a CLI interface from 1978 is the height of development and should be leaned on like a crutch...but why bother? Its never gonna get any better, not as long as its controlled by douchebags like Torvalds and those that treat FOSS as a religion. The best quote about Linux I've ever seen is "Linux is always looking to be ready for the masses in about three years...only it never gets any better" and the guy fucking nailed it. The drivers don't get any better, the system doesn't ever get stable, its nothing but a million devs scratching itches which is why it'll always be a programmer's toy until someone like Google takes it away and shows how to make the fucking thing work. Devs without someone to crack the whip is like herding cats and will never get their shit together, its just a mess.
Yep welcome to the USSA comrade, where the only free men are the rich.
BTW I think every one of us that have said about a billion fucking times here that "Its not about rape, its about the USSA snatching his ass" deserves a fricking apology from all those "No its not, its about a crime, its raaape!" dumbasses, so line the hell up. Oh and WE TOLD YA SO!
Its pretty God damned sad when fricking Ecuador is the symbol of freedom and the USSA is the slimy country, but this ain't the country your grandparents fought for in WWII, its turned foul, the ground has gone sour thanks to a cabal of WallStreet, the MICs and PMCs, and the gov, all in bed together.
They don't, because part of the point was iSteve didn't want to have any way to support games on the web, he wanted everything to go through the appstores so he could get his cut.
This is what made me fucking gobsmacked at the whole thing, Steve couldn't have been more blatant if he had wore an "all ur monies belong 2 us" t-shirt yet the press and sadly many here all tripped over themselves to hail King iSteve and give Flash the boot. MPEG-LA is one of the worst patent trolls around, with over 2000 patents covering every vague idea you could possibly have with video and while Adobe paid the fees so everyone could use it Apple and MSFT will pay...for users of Apple and MSFT products.
The sad thing is if Steve Ballmer would have said the exact same speech killing flash, word for fucking word, every site and every blogger would have been pointing out what a self serving shill he was, yet iSteve could create nasty lock in, with a format that they and MSFT pretty much own ATM, and nobody says shit. Not a fucking word.
Mark my words in 5 years web video will ALL be walled gardens and those that don't stay strictly in those gardens controlled by Apple, Google, or MSFT ain't gonna be playing shit or watching shit on the web. Web animation will be toast so the ONLY gaming will be in appstores and the videos will have H.265 which MPEG-LA will sue the asses off of anyone that don't pay the tolls...yay.
You missed the point which was Adobe paid your $699 license fee and did so for Windows, Mac AND Linux. You think Apple or MSFT gonna pay that fee? Or do you think they'll just have MPEG-LA send some C&Ds your way?
In the end the world traded a format that worked but was buggy for a corporate assraping without lube, all because iSteve was for it...yay. Like the head of one of the most locked down, charge everybody crazy money while trolling with patents corps wouldn't have ANY ulterior motives....BTW are you interested in some magic beans? Touched by iSteve, swear.
Wish I could spare the time to find ya a better link but I'm ass deep in work right now bro and when you type shutdown and Win 8 in Google you find 50 bazillion people having problems...gee i wonder why? Anyway this is the best I can do but el Reg reported after the CP release (maybe you should search their site) that this is indeed the default behavior and you have to use a MS KB article to disable and force "classic" shutdown. Maybe look up "Win 8 hybrid boot"? I just ain't got the time to spare friend, sorry.
Ubuntu 11 new enough for you? I ended up with two half ass working devices (as in "it works right now, cough and it won't") and one that supposedly was 'working" in the it would connect...as long as security wasn't anything you actually cared about on your wireless network.
Frankly I'm so God damned sick of FOSS zealots going "La la la no problems exist, its all candy and RMS in a dress passing flowers la la la" if I ever run into one on the street I'm just gonna bitchslap them, i swear to fricking God.
It is YOU and your type that continue to take the shit shoveled by the devs that make sure Linux doesn't go anywhere. if Linus "ego come and it won't go away" was working on a proprietary OS his ass would have been pink slipped so fast it'd make his head spin, but because the OS he works on is "free" that means he can crap in a box and nobody will say boo. if I hand you a sandwich that is 95% shit and 5% ham, would you call it a ham sandwich?
Hell even one of the Red Hat devs says Linux is in its death cries because of one bad move after another that has made the entire system a fucking mess, but will anybody listen? Nope, they'll just go "La la la" and then mod down anybody who points out emperor RMS is walking bare assed. If you'd like a list of fucked up shit here is a small one, only about two hundred major problems that just FYI many of which have been there for YEARS.
In the end I'll happily take the pepsi challenge with ANY user of Linux and LMAO when it falls down and goes Boom! Take any "normal" distro, don't give me that LTS bullshit because as we've seen with Ubuntu LTS means "see this list of things we fixed? Well fuck off, you can't have it unless you upgrade biotch" that was released at the same time as Win 7, install it clean, NO forum hunts or googling fixes allowed, and IF, which is a big fucking if, if you have the drivers working OOTB upgrade it to current and see what you are left with at the end. I can tell you because I've done it with over a dozen Linux distros and what you get is a pile of broken garbage, drivers fucked, programs gone to shit, its a mess. And don't try to pull that "Windows has to be installed clean too!" horseshit because you get TEN YEARS of updates minimum with windows, with Linux if you get a year and a half before doing the upgrade shuffle its a fucking miracle.
So far the ONLY one that has come close to passing the Hairyfeet challenge is RHEL which surprise! Costs $400 a year. Windows? $40 if you want Win 8, $80 if you want Win 7...kinda a BIG fricking difference there huh?
if you wanna push "free as in freedom!" or the whole "Linux works on dumpster dived hardware!" that's cool, but don't fucking lie. it makes the whole Linux community look like a bunch of FOSSies, with little RMS altars and pictures of Linus with hearts around it. Hell even Dell, one of the biggest OEMs on the fricking planet has to run their own repos because the drivers shit themselves....great QC you got there. Meanwhile the XP machine I'm typing on with an OS install from 2004 is running just fine with original drivers and the whole system is updated to current. And don't give me the "U must have teh viruz!" horseshit because any one of a dozen free AVs and 10 minutes of instruction from me and there ain't no fucking viruses getting on my builds. Yeah....no fricking contest, WinVista on its worse day is 1000 times better.
They don't sell them because most of the public won't pay 60% margins just to get a higher screen. This is why you see all those 1366 and 1600 res laptops, economies of scale thanks to LCD TVs make those resolutions MUCH cheaper and when it doubt most will go for cheaper.
If you DO want an extremely high resolution you'll need to look at units designed for the medical industry or even go to the Thinkpad forums and look under "high resolution" where you'll find lists of several vendors that sell aftermarket screens (again most for the medical industry) that will let your Thinkpad have truly crazy high resolutions.
But you can't blame the public for going with what works for them. I've found most are quite happy with 1366 on monitors 17 inches and less because at the close up viewing angle higher resolutions simply don't justify the insane price differences. the reason Apple gets away with it is a "take it or shove it" attitude where if you want to play in Apple's playground you play by Apple's rules, and they have always made the public subsidize by giving them little to no choice when it comes to screens.
Linux TM number 17. in the future if you want to spread Linux BS please choose the appropriate TM, the first 30 usually cover every bit of BS ever posted here, thanks. Oh and BTW I have a single DVD that will install pretty much ANY Windows driver for ANY device and do so with a single click,where is yours? Oh right there isn't even a single repo for drivers yet, sorry bout that. And where is the find drivers and rollback drivers buttons? you know, the things Windows has had for over a decade? oh yeah, those don't exist either, bummer.
You can waste mod points but it won't make black into white, or straw into gold. Linux is great for embedded, kicks ass on web servers, but as long as Linus Torvalds has a pulse Linux drivers are gonna be dooky.
Here is some advice...get off XP dude, its twelve fricking years old now. Frankly I haven't needed a driver disc for Win 7 for the built in hardware in...well I honestly can't think of a time I've ever needed it, the Win 7 drivers just work. Now for funky third party wifi add on cards and the like? Sure you'll need it but WU usually has the drivers so you can just use that instead.
Now lets compare this to Linux: Where is the "find drivers" button? Or right its called "Google your damned ass off" and you had BETTER know the exact make/rev/model of driver you need and pray to a statue of RMS someone has one. Even if they DO have one you better have enough skillz to be able to tweak that sucker, because it'll no doubt be written for make f, rev g, firmware h and you'll have make F, rev I, firmware j and the picky bastard just won't work.
Linux does have its selling points, if you can't afford the $40 for Windows? Its free. If you are a programmer? You can automate the entire OS with scripts, but drivers? NOT A SELLING POINT in Linux and in fact I'd say since pulse and the DE messes drivers are worse than ever. I'm sure anybody who has read my previous thoughts on the subject know whom I blame (Linus Torvalds and his ego) but in the end you can that version of Win Vista or 7 RTM, have all the drivers load OOTB, upgrade it through all the service packs and patches and what happens? THE DRIVERS ALL WORK.
This is one thing that has always hamstringed Linux, too much kernel fucking and low level fiddling make drivers a fucking unstable mess. Things that work in foo, broken horribly in foo+1 and may not get fixed until Foo+4, driver hunts, CLI fixes, its just not a nice experience. This is why I refuse to carry Linux in my shop and if anyone asked for it I'd point them out a nice Android tablet, at least the drivers work there.
as for TFA? I'm sure they'll have it fixed....by the time the units are no longer sold. this has always been SOP in Linux land, by the time the drivers are worth a crap the thing that needed the drivers is no longer in the retail channel...yay, thanks.