Actually I would argue that Oracle wins friend, simply because having this public lets everyone know that if a major software house has to be forced to support your platform? Well it's deader than BeOS friend, time to abandon ship.
I bet what little Itanic sales HP had are gonna dry up and blow away like a fart in the breeze and all Oracle has to do is provide some buggy half assed ports to comply with the ruling, certainly not gonna sell Itanic with those.
Lets face it folks Itanic was a BAD idea, just like netburst and on the AMD side Bulldozer. In the case of Itanic the ONLY way to get really superior to X86 performance was to have the compiler be able to perfectly predict and feed the code in and even Intel's compiler just couldn't do it, then AMD shot it in the head by bringing out Opteron64 which solved the 32bit problem which had led to hacks like PAE being implemented.
HP just needs to take Itanic out back, tell it to think about the rabbits and put one behind its ear.
Yeah Jim Fixx said the same thing...he dropped dead in his 50s, found by a couple of smokers. I've seen people that treated their body like garbage dumps live to be nearly 100, I've seen people that ate only the healthiest foods and clean water drop dead from cancer in their 50s. Steve Jobs anyone?
While doing all that may make you feel better, its really not gonna do much at the end of the day, either you have good genes or you don't, simple as that. In my family you either live to be in your 90s or you drop dead before 60, no in between there so who knows? Its just a toss up which genes you got from which part of the family friend, that's all.
Yeah you really gotta watch for the flaky PSUs. I had one customer, in the same building mind you, that kept bring his PC back because "it'll run for a little bit and just die" so after the first PSU replacement i called the super and had him check the line....it turned out his outlet was getting less than 87 volts on average which would stress the PSU as it struggled to boot and then it'd cook.
Be sure to also test the RAM though, i've been noticing a LOT more chips coming down the line with bad cells. my guess is because its a race to the bottom they are just cranking those suckers out with little QC and a bad cell will act a lot like malware or a flaky drive.
But if you don't already know about 'em WSUS Offline and ninite make a nuke and install pretty much a "clicky clicky, go have a smoke" kinda deal. Just let WSUS update all the patches (and service packs if your Windows disc is behind) ahead of time and when the OS is installed just let 'er run, you can put 'em on a DVD, flash, hell I just leave 'em in a network share, and when its done ninite will give you all the third party stuff like browsers, AV, flash, etc. Can't be simpler so when you DO have to nuke you don't have any real work, just clicky clicky and go.
"Throwing the racist insults" the age old defense of the PC police. Again I gave you CLEAR and CONCRETE reasons why using a TRIBAL culture reference for a HIGH TECH project is stupid...did you give ANY rationalizations why it isn't? Any counter examples? hell anything other than insults?
Nope because the PC police have ONLY insults because their bullshit is just that, bullshit, its just as fucking racist to say one culture is "better" because they are dark skinned as it does to say one if better because they are light. again its a classic "noble savages" PC horseshit, just as we went through in the late 80s with all the "Native Americans are wise and spiritual" horseshit.
Horseshit is horseshit and the ONLY racists here are the PC police pulling the noble savage card, which is just as fucking racist as calling them heathens.
My guess? Protected Path as you would be able to bypass the DRM of services like netflix if you could use a buffer exploit like this to gain control of the card.
Ironically this might be one of the only times when DRM could be a benefit to the end user.
Not to mention Nvidia hasn't been the greatest when it comes to support for old games so i doubt one could even use that as an excuse. More likely this is just some legacy crap that nobody wanted to throw out in case somebody somewhere was actually using it. Large companies with huge legacies tend to be VERY conservative about such things because you never know when some company somewhere is running some legacy program that requires this. I wonder if AMD has those older modes baked into its driver as well?
That said EGA and CGA haven't been mainstream in...what? Nearly 30 years? Yeah I think we can say goodbye to those by now.
Again how EXACTLY is it simple minded? whether you choose to accept it or not African tribal culture is just that TRIBAL and thus primitive, hell it hasn't really changed much in thousands of years, so naming an ultra high tech project after a culture that frankly probably doesn't even have words for deep space or high tech is more than a little...dumb.
Again its just more politically correct horseshit with no basis in reality, otherwise why not name it after Quaker or Mennonite? Because the PC police have put African tribal culture in the "noble savages" meme, just as they did with Native American for awhile. But pretending reality isn't reality if the skin color is the correct shade is just as dumb and just as racist if the shade is dark or light, its still bullshit.
Without AD support? Not happening, the PHBs ain't letting go of their iPads and iPhones when it doesn't have the IT guys pushing it and the IT guys ain't gonna be pushing it without GPO and AD support which last I checked WinPhone doesn't have.
It seems like your whole argument boils down to "I'm lazy so lawyers should get rich on my laziness' which frankly is REALLY not a good excuse. I know the UK and EU have something similar to small claims, frankly I wouldn't be surprised if most countries have similar courts just to keep the system from getting clogged, and if your principles aren't even worth a $40 filing fee and a little of your time why the fuck should we care about some blood sucking leech fucking ALL OF US by raising prices across the board (because that is what happens in a class action Gadget Guy, corp simply passes the buck to ME AND YOU) because you can't be arsed to spend a little of your time getting justice?
If some company fucks me over damned right I'm hauling their ass into small claims because its the principle of the thing. But my actions aren't gonna fuck YOU where class actions DO fuck everybody by raising prices. Hell if you've ever dealt with companies with disputes you'll know that frankly most will just give you your money back rather than be drug into small claims as they know the judges there can't be bullshitted and have a habit of awarding punitive if they thought the company should have just offered a refund or some other redress. I know relatives that have drug companies into small claims when they couldn't get a bill straightened out and frankly nothing could be easier, hell they said its like "The People's Court" TV show. You bring your receipts, state your side, and if the company don't have a damned good excuse? Their ass is paying out and probably with some extra for wasting the court's and your time.
So frankly there isn't any excuse. It takes less than a dinner for 4 to file and maybe an hour or two out of your life, and the alternative is raise prices for everyone just so some lawyer can get a Michael Jordan payday. It sure as fuck don't help YOU any, show me one case where a corp completely changed their ways thanks to a class action. Hell these corps just write it off as cost of doing business, raise prices 5% across the board, and probably make a nice little profit off the whole deal. Now tell me, how in the hell does that help anybody but the blood sucking lawyer?
Re:Let the bitching begin....
on
Windows 8 Is Ready
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Dude look YOU know what this is and I know what this is...its a Hail Mary pass. MSFT is finally starting to realize that one we hit muilticore PCs went from being the needed to constantly upgrade of the MHz wars right past good enough and into insanely overpowered territory for a good 80-90% of the buying public. What is Joe Average User or Bill Businessman gonna use their PC for that needs more than a Phenom I quad or even a Core Duo? As a PC seller and repairman I can tell you the answer is "not a damned thing" as I have plenty of customers on those first gen Phenom triples and quads or Intel Duos and quads and other than adding more RAM or HDD space those units are insanely overpowered compared to the work they have.
So all those users aren't gonna be buying new PCs until those die which could take years Hell I've done upgraded them to Win 7 and I can easily see those units lasting until win 7 goes EOL in 2020 because frankly? They're not even being stressed, the users just can't feed these multicore monsters enough useful work to really heat the chips. Hell I'm seeing the same thing with laptops, the work people do when mobile is pretty much netbook territory, webmail, surfing, videos, a little light office work, so even the laptops aren't getting slammed and thus just not wearing out like they used to. Oh there will always be people buying PCs, the gamers, the content creators, those that kill their current unit, but there isn't gonna be the kind of growth that gives wall street a stiffie.
So Win 8 is a Hail Mary pass for MSFT, a way for them to take one more shot at the juicy tablet/smartphone brass ring. Will it work? Doubtful but at this point MSFT really has nothing to lose by trying it. If businesses and consumers balk unlike with Vista where all they had to offer was a creaky old XP with 32 bit limitations now they can just say "Fine take Windows 7" and not lose anything. After all its not like they don't already pretty much own desktops and laptops. But by trying it now, when many are just now looking at Win 7 they think they can get people used to the "Metro" UI and then they won't balk when they see a WinPhone or WinTab like they have with WinPhone 7.
Would I have done it that way? Nope I think its a dumb move, they should have spun off mobile and let them innovate without being tied to the legacy of Windows and Office. But frankly at this point MSFT really has nothing to lose, as the money they blow on win 8 if it flops is nothing compared to how they will be tied to X86 which honestly will probably stay at the current numbers with zero growth unless some "killer app" comes along that can actually strain these monsters and we're not seeing that, even in gaming anymore for the most part. So they might as well throw the Hail Mary and see if they can pick up some ground because the clock is running out and they are waaaay behind in the game.
Are you telling me you have more fricking video games than would be covered in small claims, which Valve specifically points out you can do? At least there you would get your money back, whereas a class action you'll get a nice little coupon towards your next purchase.
Now you tell ME Gadget Guy, which is better? getting your money back and possibly some over (since you probably got plenty of those games on steam sales) or not getting jack shit but a fricking eCoupon? Because ask anyone that has been part of a class action YOU ain't getting shit friend, while the lawyer will be getting Michael Jordan money.
No its because the "victims" get NOTHING, nothing at all, understand? If you rip me off for $50 then WTF am I supposed to do with a $10 off coupon towards my next purchase FROM YOU?
The problem with class actions is the victims don't ever get jack shit while the lawyers make it like fucking robber barons. Frankly you'd be better off getting a lawyer on a contingency basis or hell, even taking them to small claims court as at least there you will get more than a fucking coupon!
Sure you can friend, its called Classic Shell and it kills Metro like Raid kills bugs, dead. I have a feeling that just like when Vista was released and any search for Vista automatically brought up "How to kill UAC" articles by the dozens we'll see "how to kill metro" articles when you type in win 8.
As for programming for winPhone 8? personally I'd wait and see if its a giant flop or not, frankly many of us in the trenches are predicting a Vista style backlash on win 8. Its just not a good UI for non touch devices and once you install more than a handful of programs metro becomes a cluttered mess. If consumers actually embrace it and WinPhone 8? Sure then you can waste some money supporting it but with both Intel and AMD reporting doom and gloom for sales this year i don't think win 8 is really gonna do much, not when the economy is toast. As you pointed out its win 8 integration that supposed to sell WinPhone 8, so if one flops the other doesn't have a real selling point.
That is why this doesn't really bug me, because I've seen time and time again what you "get" with a class action. YOU, the person that was actually wronged, gets a fucking coupon, while the lawyer gets a new house in the Cayman islands to go with the pile of money in the bank!
Its not like they are saying you can't sue valve, and its not like there aren't plenty of lawyers that would take on a company like Valve on a contingency basis, so its not like its gonna affect John Q Average. The only ones this "hurts" is those scum sucking ambulance chasers that get frankly obscene money in the class action lotto while getting the victims maybe enough to buy a fucking Big Mac.
Now that said, with me and two boys on steam I've had plenty of chances to deal with Valve support, the last one when my oldest tried to buy something with his Steam Bux and the money disappeared (turned out he had a flaky WISP connection and it caused the server to glitch) and I have to say in all honesty, out of all the tech companies I've had to deal with over the years? They are one of the easiest and most quick to try to get things right I've EVER seen. Hell I had a problem with some DLC right in the middle of their huge Xmas sale, when they had their servers practically melting from the strain, what did I get? I was contacted, on a weekend no less, less than an hour after i filed a ticket, the guy spent about an hour helping me fix the issue, and then even checked back not once but twice just to make sure everything worked. I was damned impressed. Same with the oldest and the Steam Bux which even they had admitted they had never seen that particular error before but they were quick, had his money back in an hour and a half and even gifted him the TF2 accessories he was trying to buy. Just damned good service.
That's right, I check the "allow Google text ads" when i installed ABP into Comodo dragon. Again I have NO PROBLEM with ads, hell i don't even mind picture ads if they are just that, a simple jpg or png, but this flipping flashy loud bullshit has GOT to go!
Uhhh...how EXACTLY is that racist? Is it true only if the skin color is correct? African tribal culture frankly has changed much in the last thousand years so naming deep space exploration using a word from African tribal culture makes as much as much sense as naming your new supersonic aircraft after Quaker culture.
If its as much of a 'success' as their GFWL constantly trying to sell me fucking Xbox games in GAMES FOR WINDOWS LIVE which apparently so fucking retarded it can't grasp the concept that when surfing a service that sells games for Windows i might actually want...gasp!...games for Windows?
Yeah....just gonna have to give that one a big old pass there. Of course that's MSFT in a nutshell, they have a success anywhere and they think that is ALL anybody wants. What? You actually want a game for WINDOWS? No you don't! You secretly want an Xbox and just don't know it yet! What do you mean you don't want Windows on your phone? Of course you do, its Windows!...sigh...I have to wonder if the guy that wrote Dilbert ever worked for MSFT as the PHB would probably be right under Sinofsky and Ballmer and fit right in with the "Microsoft Web 3.0 synergy Paradigm".
Thanks, because this lets me go off on another rant that has been bugging me for awhile which is WE ARE NOT FREELOADERS!!! Why? because they fricking started it, that's why!
For years i didn't give enough of a shit about ads one way or another to care, hell i even sometimes bought something thanks to an ad, like Tiger having a deal on a new GPU or Amazon having some game or movie I wanted...but that ALL changed when ads became "Punch the clown and win an iPhone LOL!" flashy loud obnoxious horseshit!
I will happily whitelist ANY site that wants to show me ads, as long as they meet the following conditions...1.-NO DAMNED FLASH ADS! 2.-No blinking epileptic crap getting in my face! 3.-No music or audio blasting my fucking ears off! 4.-Finally no splitting what could have been a simple single page article into 40 damned sections just to slam me with yet MOAR ads!
Do this and I will be happy to see your ads, hell i'll even fill out the occasional survey just so you can make the ads be more towards stuff I might actually buy, but until the STFU and quit whining about how we won't see your ads because YOU started the bullshit! YOU allowed ads from any third party, thus making infected ads a malware vector, YOU let them spam your site with loud as hell flash ads that are as obnoxious as a fart in the face, YOU are the ones that ruining your content by allowing every ads to be a blinking flashing whorehouse!
So don't bitch about me not putting up with your horseshit when you make your site about as enjoyable as being repeatedly bitchslapped by a clown on speed because it was YOU website owners that let the ad companies make ads into one of the most irritating fucking things on the web!
You see that's the thing Mrs AC, we shouldn't HAVE to go digging just for a decent DEFAULT, we should ONLY have to go digging if we want something a little off the beaten track.
Ya know I'm really fucking sick of those that think "obtuse and fiddly" should be badges of honor, that anything more than a blinking cursor on a black screen is somehow "dumbing down". Computers shouldn't be the new fricking priesthood, okay? They should have sensible defaults but then GTFO of the way of the ones that want MORE than what the sensible default gives.
Its sad that we USED to know this, KDE 3, Gnome 2, Win2K, they gave good basic controls but got out of your way and let you get into the guts if you needed or wanted more. Now its either iPhone or blinking cursor, no damned middle ground and frankly it sucks serious ass.
But why should we HAVE to fiddle with settings just to get a functional UI? The whole point of defaults if that they should be sensible as that is what a good 90% of the public will stick with, so why make them such a mess?
Frankly ever since that damned iPhone came out UIs have been sent back a good decade or more because now everything is style over substance. You can't just have sensible icons and easy to read text, nope that wouldn't be 'cool" or "modern' its ALL gotta be " funky hard to tell WTF its supposed to be icons" or you just ain't hip daddy-o!
Personally i'll be happy as hell when the whole "everything needs to be like a smartphone!" UI fad DIAF because its gotten more than a little irritating.
NOT immaterial if you pick on the weaker players and use lawyer fees to slowly bleed them to death.Nothing in patent law says they have to go after the big guys first, they can go after your Tom Toms, your canonicals, those that don't have a ton in the bank and for whom a 4 or 5 year winding through the courts would cause serious bleeding of their coffers to fight back. Look at how many in the 90s "won" lawsuits against MSFT only to be dead and buried by the time the case was over. Stacker compression anyone?
Well my oldest was in the beta and subscribed to it for about 5 months afterward before quitting and he said by the time he quit it had become pretty badly unbalanced. He said the empire could just camp and slaughter the jedis at the spawn points. But other than that he said the same thing, front of the game was nice but once you got your character up there really wasn't much to do.
Kinda a shame, the Star Wars mythos has enough there you could build tons of new stories out of it but I just can't believe they spent a couple of hundred million on an MMO and thought they could take on WoW. With WoW its got network effect, where many i know play it because that's where their friends are, so trying to compete with that is kinda stupid. Its like FB in that it won't go down until they seriously fuck it up, just like how MySpace got greedy and turned it into a giant ad ridden spam dump and ran everyone off. As long as they keep adding new content WoW will have the big numbers although the F2P games do seem to be slowly lowering their stats but not by much.
With those MMOs they are such time sinks that people rarely play more than one at a time and I just can't see enough Star Wars nerds willing to shell out a monthly fee to make up a 200 million dollar development budget.
Well if you register the right one it could be a malware guy's wet dream. lets say you register.cpm or.cim, many people can slip up and mistype that and more importantly how many Joe Average are gonna notice that single letter typo in a link?
So then you have Microsoft.cpm, Adobe.cpm, Amazon.cpm, see where this is going? It'd also be a good way to extort some cash out of legit businesses, such as "hey I bet you don't want us using Washingtonstate.cum for college porn do ya? Well we'll be happy to sell the domain to ya, right decent price too!"
Frankly this whole thing just stinks and is gonna end up a big fucking mess all around. This is why we can't have nice things, greed takes a whiz on it every time.
For someone like Iran to hit the USA with even a single nuke they are gonna need rockets a HELL of a lot better than what they have now, which are basically just upgrades to the old Soviet Scud. Now Iran could hit Israel with a nuke Scud possibly, not even 50/50 since a nuke is heavier than the typical payload on one of those, but since Israel has enough nukes that the single nuke scud would be met with 50 more advanced bombs that would pretty much wipe Iran completely off the map its not that big of a risk. Sure Imahdajerk likes to work up the crowds but he likes breathing and I seriously doubt he's in a hurry to punch his own ticket, those type of despots usually hang onto life and power like old Dear leader in NK did.
No your bigger threat is the "group with a cause" because frankly they have nothing to lose. they aren't really beholden to a single nation, won't care if building the weapon gives them all fatal doses as they are 'ready to die for the cause' anyway and since they are willing to die for the cause they can just stick the sucker in a Ryder truck and drive the thing to wear they want to go boom.
Look at it THIS way...India and Pakistan hate each others guts, right? Both have nukes, yet how many times have they nuked each other? That would be none, because like it or not MAD works Both know that neither side would "win" anything by an exchange so its simply in their best interest to keep their hatred contained in border exchanges and back and forth than to go nuke. Meanwhile there are religious extremists that believe it requires the start of a massive holy war to call forth the Mahdi who will then save them with magic. Kinda hard to threaten MAD when one side thinks they have a 1000 year old warrior with the magic of Allah on his side.
Minecraft can be "played" by my mom, you are talking flight sims which has ALWAYS been a small niche to begin with. Hell its one of those things if you don't have the right controller they suck and how many people have a flight stick anymore? Not saying it can't be done, just saying its not gonna be no Plants VS Zombies.
BTW you ever thought about a space sim? If you want a flight genre that isn't crowded and which has a pretty damned dedicated community THAT would be the one right there. Also since you are talking Sci/Fi frankly you don't have to go realistic or crazy ultra detailed on the craft or flight models like you do with the flight sims. The guys in those hardcore flight sims can be so anal retentive they'll bitch if you get the fuel switch in the wrong place on that Huey LOL!
Besides as far as I know nobody has yet to see the potential there...I want to land on the planet dammit! Every one either has you insta-die if you touch a planet or just bounce off like its a big bumper and that sucks! sure if you're in a little fighter and banged up you wouldn't survive entry on a planet but I don't see why a capital ship couldn't land and be used like a base for repairs and even the fighters should be able to use something like a moon to fly along the terrain for cover. I don't see why you couldn't have the land procedural generated, wouldn't need much detail, just your basic ice planet, rock planet, desert planet, etc.
Anyway something to think about and good luck on your game. Oh and if you are having choppers...ever think about maybe adding the Loach? Everyone seems to put the big slow fat choppers like the HU-1 and the Hind but nobody ever seems to go for the light and nimble attack choppers like the Loach. I got to see the civilian version of one of those in flight and they can practically make those sucker dance, nimble as hell and would probably be a blast in a flying game. It would also be cool if you have the Huey and the Hind if a couple of friends could man the door guns, be awesome for MP to have one guy fly the chopper while a couple of other mount the door 50cal and go to town. Be a good way to give the slower choppers a chance against faster opponents.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I would argue that Oracle wins friend, simply because having this public lets everyone know that if a major software house has to be forced to support your platform? Well it's deader than BeOS friend, time to abandon ship.
I bet what little Itanic sales HP had are gonna dry up and blow away like a fart in the breeze and all Oracle has to do is provide some buggy half assed ports to comply with the ruling, certainly not gonna sell Itanic with those.
Lets face it folks Itanic was a BAD idea, just like netburst and on the AMD side Bulldozer. In the case of Itanic the ONLY way to get really superior to X86 performance was to have the compiler be able to perfectly predict and feed the code in and even Intel's compiler just couldn't do it, then AMD shot it in the head by bringing out Opteron64 which solved the 32bit problem which had led to hacks like PAE being implemented.
HP just needs to take Itanic out back, tell it to think about the rabbits and put one behind its ear.
Yeah Jim Fixx said the same thing...he dropped dead in his 50s, found by a couple of smokers. I've seen people that treated their body like garbage dumps live to be nearly 100, I've seen people that ate only the healthiest foods and clean water drop dead from cancer in their 50s. Steve Jobs anyone?
While doing all that may make you feel better, its really not gonna do much at the end of the day, either you have good genes or you don't, simple as that. In my family you either live to be in your 90s or you drop dead before 60, no in between there so who knows? Its just a toss up which genes you got from which part of the family friend, that's all.
Yeah you really gotta watch for the flaky PSUs. I had one customer, in the same building mind you, that kept bring his PC back because "it'll run for a little bit and just die" so after the first PSU replacement i called the super and had him check the line....it turned out his outlet was getting less than 87 volts on average which would stress the PSU as it struggled to boot and then it'd cook.
Be sure to also test the RAM though, i've been noticing a LOT more chips coming down the line with bad cells. my guess is because its a race to the bottom they are just cranking those suckers out with little QC and a bad cell will act a lot like malware or a flaky drive.
But if you don't already know about 'em WSUS Offline and ninite make a nuke and install pretty much a "clicky clicky, go have a smoke" kinda deal. Just let WSUS update all the patches (and service packs if your Windows disc is behind) ahead of time and when the OS is installed just let 'er run, you can put 'em on a DVD, flash, hell I just leave 'em in a network share, and when its done ninite will give you all the third party stuff like browsers, AV, flash, etc. Can't be simpler so when you DO have to nuke you don't have any real work, just clicky clicky and go.
"Throwing the racist insults" the age old defense of the PC police. Again I gave you CLEAR and CONCRETE reasons why using a TRIBAL culture reference for a HIGH TECH project is stupid...did you give ANY rationalizations why it isn't? Any counter examples? hell anything other than insults?
Nope because the PC police have ONLY insults because their bullshit is just that, bullshit, its just as fucking racist to say one culture is "better" because they are dark skinned as it does to say one if better because they are light. again its a classic "noble savages" PC horseshit, just as we went through in the late 80s with all the "Native Americans are wise and spiritual" horseshit.
Horseshit is horseshit and the ONLY racists here are the PC police pulling the noble savage card, which is just as fucking racist as calling them heathens.
My guess? Protected Path as you would be able to bypass the DRM of services like netflix if you could use a buffer exploit like this to gain control of the card.
Ironically this might be one of the only times when DRM could be a benefit to the end user.
Not to mention Nvidia hasn't been the greatest when it comes to support for old games so i doubt one could even use that as an excuse. More likely this is just some legacy crap that nobody wanted to throw out in case somebody somewhere was actually using it. Large companies with huge legacies tend to be VERY conservative about such things because you never know when some company somewhere is running some legacy program that requires this. I wonder if AMD has those older modes baked into its driver as well?
That said EGA and CGA haven't been mainstream in...what? Nearly 30 years? Yeah I think we can say goodbye to those by now.
Again how EXACTLY is it simple minded? whether you choose to accept it or not African tribal culture is just that TRIBAL and thus primitive, hell it hasn't really changed much in thousands of years, so naming an ultra high tech project after a culture that frankly probably doesn't even have words for deep space or high tech is more than a little...dumb.
Again its just more politically correct horseshit with no basis in reality, otherwise why not name it after Quaker or Mennonite? Because the PC police have put African tribal culture in the "noble savages" meme, just as they did with Native American for awhile. But pretending reality isn't reality if the skin color is the correct shade is just as dumb and just as racist if the shade is dark or light, its still bullshit.
Without AD support? Not happening, the PHBs ain't letting go of their iPads and iPhones when it doesn't have the IT guys pushing it and the IT guys ain't gonna be pushing it without GPO and AD support which last I checked WinPhone doesn't have.
It seems like your whole argument boils down to "I'm lazy so lawyers should get rich on my laziness' which frankly is REALLY not a good excuse. I know the UK and EU have something similar to small claims, frankly I wouldn't be surprised if most countries have similar courts just to keep the system from getting clogged, and if your principles aren't even worth a $40 filing fee and a little of your time why the fuck should we care about some blood sucking leech fucking ALL OF US by raising prices across the board (because that is what happens in a class action Gadget Guy, corp simply passes the buck to ME AND YOU) because you can't be arsed to spend a little of your time getting justice?
If some company fucks me over damned right I'm hauling their ass into small claims because its the principle of the thing. But my actions aren't gonna fuck YOU where class actions DO fuck everybody by raising prices. Hell if you've ever dealt with companies with disputes you'll know that frankly most will just give you your money back rather than be drug into small claims as they know the judges there can't be bullshitted and have a habit of awarding punitive if they thought the company should have just offered a refund or some other redress. I know relatives that have drug companies into small claims when they couldn't get a bill straightened out and frankly nothing could be easier, hell they said its like "The People's Court" TV show. You bring your receipts, state your side, and if the company don't have a damned good excuse? Their ass is paying out and probably with some extra for wasting the court's and your time.
So frankly there isn't any excuse. It takes less than a dinner for 4 to file and maybe an hour or two out of your life, and the alternative is raise prices for everyone just so some lawyer can get a Michael Jordan payday. It sure as fuck don't help YOU any, show me one case where a corp completely changed their ways thanks to a class action. Hell these corps just write it off as cost of doing business, raise prices 5% across the board, and probably make a nice little profit off the whole deal. Now tell me, how in the hell does that help anybody but the blood sucking lawyer?
Dude look YOU know what this is and I know what this is...its a Hail Mary pass. MSFT is finally starting to realize that one we hit muilticore PCs went from being the needed to constantly upgrade of the MHz wars right past good enough and into insanely overpowered territory for a good 80-90% of the buying public. What is Joe Average User or Bill Businessman gonna use their PC for that needs more than a Phenom I quad or even a Core Duo? As a PC seller and repairman I can tell you the answer is "not a damned thing" as I have plenty of customers on those first gen Phenom triples and quads or Intel Duos and quads and other than adding more RAM or HDD space those units are insanely overpowered compared to the work they have.
So all those users aren't gonna be buying new PCs until those die which could take years Hell I've done upgraded them to Win 7 and I can easily see those units lasting until win 7 goes EOL in 2020 because frankly? They're not even being stressed, the users just can't feed these multicore monsters enough useful work to really heat the chips. Hell I'm seeing the same thing with laptops, the work people do when mobile is pretty much netbook territory, webmail, surfing, videos, a little light office work, so even the laptops aren't getting slammed and thus just not wearing out like they used to. Oh there will always be people buying PCs, the gamers, the content creators, those that kill their current unit, but there isn't gonna be the kind of growth that gives wall street a stiffie.
So Win 8 is a Hail Mary pass for MSFT, a way for them to take one more shot at the juicy tablet/smartphone brass ring. Will it work? Doubtful but at this point MSFT really has nothing to lose by trying it. If businesses and consumers balk unlike with Vista where all they had to offer was a creaky old XP with 32 bit limitations now they can just say "Fine take Windows 7" and not lose anything. After all its not like they don't already pretty much own desktops and laptops. But by trying it now, when many are just now looking at Win 7 they think they can get people used to the "Metro" UI and then they won't balk when they see a WinPhone or WinTab like they have with WinPhone 7.
Would I have done it that way? Nope I think its a dumb move, they should have spun off mobile and let them innovate without being tied to the legacy of Windows and Office. But frankly at this point MSFT really has nothing to lose, as the money they blow on win 8 if it flops is nothing compared to how they will be tied to X86 which honestly will probably stay at the current numbers with zero growth unless some "killer app" comes along that can actually strain these monsters and we're not seeing that, even in gaming anymore for the most part. So they might as well throw the Hail Mary and see if they can pick up some ground because the clock is running out and they are waaaay behind in the game.
Are you telling me you have more fricking video games than would be covered in small claims, which Valve specifically points out you can do? At least there you would get your money back, whereas a class action you'll get a nice little coupon towards your next purchase.
Now you tell ME Gadget Guy, which is better? getting your money back and possibly some over (since you probably got plenty of those games on steam sales) or not getting jack shit but a fricking eCoupon? Because ask anyone that has been part of a class action YOU ain't getting shit friend, while the lawyer will be getting Michael Jordan money.
No its because the "victims" get NOTHING, nothing at all, understand? If you rip me off for $50 then WTF am I supposed to do with a $10 off coupon towards my next purchase FROM YOU?
The problem with class actions is the victims don't ever get jack shit while the lawyers make it like fucking robber barons. Frankly you'd be better off getting a lawyer on a contingency basis or hell, even taking them to small claims court as at least there you will get more than a fucking coupon!
Sure you can friend, its called Classic Shell and it kills Metro like Raid kills bugs, dead. I have a feeling that just like when Vista was released and any search for Vista automatically brought up "How to kill UAC" articles by the dozens we'll see "how to kill metro" articles when you type in win 8.
As for programming for winPhone 8? personally I'd wait and see if its a giant flop or not, frankly many of us in the trenches are predicting a Vista style backlash on win 8. Its just not a good UI for non touch devices and once you install more than a handful of programs metro becomes a cluttered mess. If consumers actually embrace it and WinPhone 8? Sure then you can waste some money supporting it but with both Intel and AMD reporting doom and gloom for sales this year i don't think win 8 is really gonna do much, not when the economy is toast. As you pointed out its win 8 integration that supposed to sell WinPhone 8, so if one flops the other doesn't have a real selling point.
That is why this doesn't really bug me, because I've seen time and time again what you "get" with a class action. YOU, the person that was actually wronged, gets a fucking coupon, while the lawyer gets a new house in the Cayman islands to go with the pile of money in the bank!
Its not like they are saying you can't sue valve, and its not like there aren't plenty of lawyers that would take on a company like Valve on a contingency basis, so its not like its gonna affect John Q Average. The only ones this "hurts" is those scum sucking ambulance chasers that get frankly obscene money in the class action lotto while getting the victims maybe enough to buy a fucking Big Mac.
Now that said, with me and two boys on steam I've had plenty of chances to deal with Valve support, the last one when my oldest tried to buy something with his Steam Bux and the money disappeared (turned out he had a flaky WISP connection and it caused the server to glitch) and I have to say in all honesty, out of all the tech companies I've had to deal with over the years? They are one of the easiest and most quick to try to get things right I've EVER seen. Hell I had a problem with some DLC right in the middle of their huge Xmas sale, when they had their servers practically melting from the strain, what did I get? I was contacted, on a weekend no less, less than an hour after i filed a ticket, the guy spent about an hour helping me fix the issue, and then even checked back not once but twice just to make sure everything worked. I was damned impressed. Same with the oldest and the Steam Bux which even they had admitted they had never seen that particular error before but they were quick, had his money back in an hour and a half and even gifted him the TF2 accessories he was trying to buy. Just damned good service.
That's right, I check the "allow Google text ads" when i installed ABP into Comodo dragon. Again I have NO PROBLEM with ads, hell i don't even mind picture ads if they are just that, a simple jpg or png, but this flipping flashy loud bullshit has GOT to go!
Uhhh...how EXACTLY is that racist? Is it true only if the skin color is correct? African tribal culture frankly has changed much in the last thousand years so naming deep space exploration using a word from African tribal culture makes as much as much sense as naming your new supersonic aircraft after Quaker culture.
If its as much of a 'success' as their GFWL constantly trying to sell me fucking Xbox games in GAMES FOR WINDOWS LIVE which apparently so fucking retarded it can't grasp the concept that when surfing a service that sells games for Windows i might actually want...gasp!...games for Windows?
Yeah....just gonna have to give that one a big old pass there. Of course that's MSFT in a nutshell, they have a success anywhere and they think that is ALL anybody wants. What? You actually want a game for WINDOWS? No you don't! You secretly want an Xbox and just don't know it yet! What do you mean you don't want Windows on your phone? Of course you do, its Windows!...sigh...I have to wonder if the guy that wrote Dilbert ever worked for MSFT as the PHB would probably be right under Sinofsky and Ballmer and fit right in with the "Microsoft Web 3.0 synergy Paradigm".
Thanks, because this lets me go off on another rant that has been bugging me for awhile which is WE ARE NOT FREELOADERS!!! Why? because they fricking started it, that's why!
For years i didn't give enough of a shit about ads one way or another to care, hell i even sometimes bought something thanks to an ad, like Tiger having a deal on a new GPU or Amazon having some game or movie I wanted...but that ALL changed when ads became "Punch the clown and win an iPhone LOL!" flashy loud obnoxious horseshit!
I will happily whitelist ANY site that wants to show me ads, as long as they meet the following conditions...1.-NO DAMNED FLASH ADS! 2.-No blinking epileptic crap getting in my face! 3.-No music or audio blasting my fucking ears off! 4.-Finally no splitting what could have been a simple single page article into 40 damned sections just to slam me with yet MOAR ads!
Do this and I will be happy to see your ads, hell i'll even fill out the occasional survey just so you can make the ads be more towards stuff I might actually buy, but until the STFU and quit whining about how we won't see your ads because YOU started the bullshit! YOU allowed ads from any third party, thus making infected ads a malware vector, YOU let them spam your site with loud as hell flash ads that are as obnoxious as a fart in the face, YOU are the ones that ruining your content by allowing every ads to be a blinking flashing whorehouse!
So don't bitch about me not putting up with your horseshit when you make your site about as enjoyable as being repeatedly bitchslapped by a clown on speed because it was YOU website owners that let the ad companies make ads into one of the most irritating fucking things on the web!
You see that's the thing Mrs AC, we shouldn't HAVE to go digging just for a decent DEFAULT, we should ONLY have to go digging if we want something a little off the beaten track.
Ya know I'm really fucking sick of those that think "obtuse and fiddly" should be badges of honor, that anything more than a blinking cursor on a black screen is somehow "dumbing down". Computers shouldn't be the new fricking priesthood, okay? They should have sensible defaults but then GTFO of the way of the ones that want MORE than what the sensible default gives.
Its sad that we USED to know this, KDE 3, Gnome 2, Win2K, they gave good basic controls but got out of your way and let you get into the guts if you needed or wanted more. Now its either iPhone or blinking cursor, no damned middle ground and frankly it sucks serious ass.
But why should we HAVE to fiddle with settings just to get a functional UI? The whole point of defaults if that they should be sensible as that is what a good 90% of the public will stick with, so why make them such a mess?
Frankly ever since that damned iPhone came out UIs have been sent back a good decade or more because now everything is style over substance. You can't just have sensible icons and easy to read text, nope that wouldn't be 'cool" or "modern' its ALL gotta be " funky hard to tell WTF its supposed to be icons" or you just ain't hip daddy-o!
Personally i'll be happy as hell when the whole "everything needs to be like a smartphone!" UI fad DIAF because its gotten more than a little irritating.
NOT immaterial if you pick on the weaker players and use lawyer fees to slowly bleed them to death.Nothing in patent law says they have to go after the big guys first, they can go after your Tom Toms, your canonicals, those that don't have a ton in the bank and for whom a 4 or 5 year winding through the courts would cause serious bleeding of their coffers to fight back. Look at how many in the 90s "won" lawsuits against MSFT only to be dead and buried by the time the case was over. Stacker compression anyone?
Well my oldest was in the beta and subscribed to it for about 5 months afterward before quitting and he said by the time he quit it had become pretty badly unbalanced. He said the empire could just camp and slaughter the jedis at the spawn points. But other than that he said the same thing, front of the game was nice but once you got your character up there really wasn't much to do.
Kinda a shame, the Star Wars mythos has enough there you could build tons of new stories out of it but I just can't believe they spent a couple of hundred million on an MMO and thought they could take on WoW. With WoW its got network effect, where many i know play it because that's where their friends are, so trying to compete with that is kinda stupid. Its like FB in that it won't go down until they seriously fuck it up, just like how MySpace got greedy and turned it into a giant ad ridden spam dump and ran everyone off. As long as they keep adding new content WoW will have the big numbers although the F2P games do seem to be slowly lowering their stats but not by much.
With those MMOs they are such time sinks that people rarely play more than one at a time and I just can't see enough Star Wars nerds willing to shell out a monthly fee to make up a 200 million dollar development budget.
Well if you register the right one it could be a malware guy's wet dream. lets say you register .cpm or .cim, many people can slip up and mistype that and more importantly how many Joe Average are gonna notice that single letter typo in a link?
So then you have Microsoft.cpm, Adobe.cpm, Amazon.cpm, see where this is going? It'd also be a good way to extort some cash out of legit businesses, such as "hey I bet you don't want us using Washingtonstate.cum for college porn do ya? Well we'll be happy to sell the domain to ya, right decent price too!"
Frankly this whole thing just stinks and is gonna end up a big fucking mess all around. This is why we can't have nice things, greed takes a whiz on it every time.
For someone like Iran to hit the USA with even a single nuke they are gonna need rockets a HELL of a lot better than what they have now, which are basically just upgrades to the old Soviet Scud. Now Iran could hit Israel with a nuke Scud possibly, not even 50/50 since a nuke is heavier than the typical payload on one of those, but since Israel has enough nukes that the single nuke scud would be met with 50 more advanced bombs that would pretty much wipe Iran completely off the map its not that big of a risk. Sure Imahdajerk likes to work up the crowds but he likes breathing and I seriously doubt he's in a hurry to punch his own ticket, those type of despots usually hang onto life and power like old Dear leader in NK did.
No your bigger threat is the "group with a cause" because frankly they have nothing to lose. they aren't really beholden to a single nation, won't care if building the weapon gives them all fatal doses as they are 'ready to die for the cause' anyway and since they are willing to die for the cause they can just stick the sucker in a Ryder truck and drive the thing to wear they want to go boom.
Look at it THIS way...India and Pakistan hate each others guts, right? Both have nukes, yet how many times have they nuked each other? That would be none, because like it or not MAD works Both know that neither side would "win" anything by an exchange so its simply in their best interest to keep their hatred contained in border exchanges and back and forth than to go nuke. Meanwhile there are religious extremists that believe it requires the start of a massive holy war to call forth the Mahdi who will then save them with magic. Kinda hard to threaten MAD when one side thinks they have a 1000 year old warrior with the magic of Allah on his side.
Minecraft can be "played" by my mom, you are talking flight sims which has ALWAYS been a small niche to begin with. Hell its one of those things if you don't have the right controller they suck and how many people have a flight stick anymore? Not saying it can't be done, just saying its not gonna be no Plants VS Zombies.
BTW you ever thought about a space sim? If you want a flight genre that isn't crowded and which has a pretty damned dedicated community THAT would be the one right there. Also since you are talking Sci/Fi frankly you don't have to go realistic or crazy ultra detailed on the craft or flight models like you do with the flight sims. The guys in those hardcore flight sims can be so anal retentive they'll bitch if you get the fuel switch in the wrong place on that Huey LOL!
Besides as far as I know nobody has yet to see the potential there...I want to land on the planet dammit! Every one either has you insta-die if you touch a planet or just bounce off like its a big bumper and that sucks! sure if you're in a little fighter and banged up you wouldn't survive entry on a planet but I don't see why a capital ship couldn't land and be used like a base for repairs and even the fighters should be able to use something like a moon to fly along the terrain for cover. I don't see why you couldn't have the land procedural generated, wouldn't need much detail, just your basic ice planet, rock planet, desert planet, etc.
Anyway something to think about and good luck on your game. Oh and if you are having choppers...ever think about maybe adding the Loach? Everyone seems to put the big slow fat choppers like the HU-1 and the Hind but nobody ever seems to go for the light and nimble attack choppers like the Loach. I got to see the civilian version of one of those in flight and they can practically make those sucker dance, nimble as hell and would probably be a blast in a flying game. It would also be cool if you have the Huey and the Hind if a couple of friends could man the door guns, be awesome for MP to have one guy fly the chopper while a couple of other mount the door 50cal and go to town. Be a good way to give the slower choppers a chance against faster opponents.