Well if your network is shitty I'd say you have bigger problems than games, I know how you feel though because i'm having to send my nephew to the cableco and DSLco two or three times a week to bug the piss out of them trying to get them to run it to my mom's place (where they've lived since my sister passed on in 07) because its a whole fucking block and God forbid they run a block's worth of line. Without it they are stuck on shitty WISP that cuts in and out like crazy and the download speeds are bad enough that when they get a bunch of games on the Steam sale they'll bring their tower over to the shop to use my cablenet.
But if you even get something like their shitty WISP other than download speeds steam gaming can be nice, the games are as easy to back up as can be, just right click and choose "backup game files" with no hunting for reg keys and crap, the boys can just pop up a chat window at any time and say "hey uncle, feel like some MP or Co-op?" and all I do is push a single button and I'm in their game, no messing with server IP addresses or firewall crap, hell I can even just copypasta the folders for games we both have if they haven't downloaded them yet and Steam will just load it right up instead of waiting to redownload the thing, its nice.
But I know what you mean about the net, hell I could be living rent free in a 3 bedroom 2 bath instead of paying for my bachelor apt but as i said there is no cable and DSL out there, just WISP, and after being stuck on Hughesnet for 5 years i can't stomach the thought of going back to shitty net, even to save money.
That is why I said people should look at the history of GS to see what true "generational evil" looks like. They've been there over a century, profiting from the misery of the depression, controlling the fed from the day it was built, profiteering from two world wars, every kind of dirty dealing and evil multinational mess? You'll find GS. The people may come and go but GS remains, which is why they remind me of Wolfram and Hart which bragged "When the first man clubbed another to death we were there to profit from it". I have no doubt 5 centuries from now we'll still see GS, knee deep in evil back stabbing profiteering, for they are truly generational evil.
The thing that blew MY mind is I USED to make fun of people for the Yahoo portal, then my ex GF insisted on me setting up her browser for it on my machine which got me to actually try it and....its nice. It gives me the local, state, and national news, the headline "spinner" in the center of the page lets me spin through the headlines of the day without wasting time on crap i don't care about, it lets me preview my mail while i'm at it, its actually not bad at all. They probably need to advertise more because there is a ton of features there I didn't know about, their free games portal and classifieds for one, but all in all its really not a badly designed site once you try using it for a bit.
More likely just like the 50 bazillion other failed moneypits that Ballmer has pissed away MSFT simply couldn't figure out WTF to do with their half of the partnership. I mean seriously folks, HOW much money has that man flushed down the shitter? 15 billion? 20? Zune, Kin, Playsforsure which was actually profitable being killed for the lame Zune market, there is no telling how much Ballmer blew on MSNBC and probably didn't see jack shit in profits. Why in the hell isn't the stockholders screaming for his head?
Wanna know what I've noticed in the shop? Asking customers why they always seem to have that bloated as hell yahoo portal as their home page I've found that they are using it to replace the paper as the papers have gotten too slow, too much press release garbage, too much AP regurgitating. Instead the older folks and soccer moms have switched to the Yahoo Portal while the younger folks use Google News if they want to know what is going on. Hell even my parents who always had a newspaper subscription haven't had one in years, dad uses Yahoo and mom simply goes to CNN on the sat.
Can't say as i blame 'em, after picking up the local and state paper a couple of months back it was all nothing but old AP stories, who is having a bake sale, who died, and press releases. There wasn't a single article i couldn't have gotten online two days before i picked up the paper. It looks like the days of reporters actually digging and reporting are long gone, now they just copypasta from the corps to keep from pissing off a potential advertiser and reusing AP stuff. No thanks.
Uhhh...they DO have Steam cracks you know, no different than cracking any other game. And at an average of $7 a pop frankly i can't rent games at the price of Steam and with Steam i get all the updates automatically, MP matchmaking and chat, most of the Steam packs include all the MP, its just too easy.
If you got burnt on the HL 2 retail box sorry, but you can blame the douchebag that put out a keygen that would crank out legit keys which is one of the reasons i don't buy any retail anymore unless its just a dollar or two to get supsersaver on Amazon and i'll throw in a cheap game. With the retail boxes if some prick puts out a keygen that spits out legit keys you are just fucked, but with games I've bought on Steam they aren't going anywhere and I can play them no matter what some dick does in the retail market.
But with PC gaming you really only have THREE choices, 1.-You can buy retail box, risk losing any MP to some prick with a keygen, and deal with conflicting DRM schemas piling up on your PC, 2.-Go with a DD service like Steam or Origin, or 3.-Pirate and take your chances at getting a $3k+ visit from the BSA, your choice friend. Of course you can bend over and get boned by the consoles, and have to pay for everything if you want, but i happen to like getting MP for free and not being charged for every little thing like on the X360.
Oh and before you say GoG while i do buy classics like redneck rampage from them the keyword with GoG is OLD, most of their stuff is a good decade plus old. If you want to only play old as dirt titles or the Witcher series (which I don't care for, too much submenu crap for me, feels like I'm playing MS Excel) that is fine, I'll be enjoying my Deus Ex complete set with DLC for $15, my Saints Row 3 for $12.50 (fun as hell game BTW, reminds me of GTA:VC in that its easy to play on keyboard and mouse) or my $7.50 Just Cause II with all the DLC. Like I said at those prices frankly you couldn't even rent them or buy them off Craigslist.
Sadly at least with drugs they KNOW they are on a drug, but with religion they will blindly follow, some of them for their entire lives, without ever the thought even crossing their mind that religion might even POSSIBLY be a form of control.
In a way it reminds of that bit from the Matrix, where Morpheus pointed out that the people they were there to help would react violently and fight to protect the system that is oppressing them, because that is exactly what many will do rather than even discuss the concept that religion may be bullshit.
And sadly its worked for thousands of years, see Jim Crow and how blacks would go to their little churches and be told that they'd get nicer things in heaven for being treated like shit here, hell you go throughout history and you see case after case of those at the top using religion to keep the peasants in line with threats of hell and promises of heaven. that is why i truly believe we won't get a better world until we put away such beliefs, because it is too easy to keep large numbers of the downtrodden in line with religion, the opiate of the masses.
I don't know if it shows up under new formatting, I use the classic format options. Anyway i'll post the entire list in case you need it, just copypasta it into a txt somewhere and you'll have it when you need it.
Allowed HTML <b> <i> <p> <br> <a> <ol> <ul> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <em> <strong> <tt> <blockquote> <div> <ecode> <quote> URLs <URL:http://example.com/> will auto-link a URL
The sad part is they won't win, and GS will NEVER go away. look at their history, they've been knee deep in dirty dealing for over a century now and have learned how to slime their way through the halls of power. its no coincidence that so many in the Fed are tied into GS, hell they are practically Wolfram and Hart on the evil scale. If they had demons in suits waltzing through their halls like on Angel frankly i wouldn't be surprised, any truly nasty corporate dealing that has made a lot of money while fucking people over? GS is there.
Uhhh...that is what the Steam sales are for drinkypoo. I make decent at the shop (its feast or famine so its not very predictable, but most weeks are decent) but I got two teen boys that like to play as well so I have to buy many things in multiples, hence the Steam sales. When you get Saints 3 for $12.50? or Deus Ex complete series for $15? It really don't hurt when you need to buy multiple copies. of course since the boys are as different as day and night I rarely need to be buying 3 copies, but even 2 copies at $60 a pop is just too painful for my wallet.
But I agree that companies like EA that are trying to gouge in a dead economy are retarded, they should be learning from Valve, especially when their game requires a decent number of players or the game dies. Hell while waiting on Deus Ex complete I fired up HL DM just for the hell of it and it STILL has plenty of players. I still suck at it and got a rocket right up the ass, but its nice to see there are plenty of players. I have a feeling all this gouging is gonna run off anyone but the hardcore and we know they move on quickly to the next map pack...err... i mean CoD/MoH/ tactical shooter. if they run off any new players by gouging they certainly won't be able to keep selling it as Valve does with their games.
If you look under the comment box you'll see "allowed HTML" which what you are wanting is the paragraph, third one from the left. Simply put a forward slash in the box in front of the p to end paragraph, here is the example
What's wrong with Steam? The games are DIRT cheap (I got the Deus Ex series for $15 with all the DLC, Saints 3 for $12.50) and it takes care of the MP, the patches, makes game backups beyond simple, matchmaking and chat for your friends, can't be simpler. And if you don't want to play online? just put it in offline mode, easy as that.
Hell the prices on Steam would be cheap for rentals, much less full games and all the extras make it worth it IMHO. It sure as hell beats having to restore a disc image because SecuROM or Starforce took a crap on your PC.
I don't know about him, but I'm sick of it because NOT ONLY do you pay more, but you pay more and THEN keep paying more just to keep from getting assraped by those that have the unlockables, AKA "I own your ass because I paid more" bullshit. I don't mind games where it has DLC or unlockables as long as it doesn't break the game, TF2 and their silly hats or SR3 and their crazy outfits, but too many of the games if you don't keep shelling out you are well and truly fucked, the advantages given to those that shell out just make you a walking target.
So I don't know about him, but I'm not shelling out $70 just to be someone else's practice dummy because I won't keep emptying my wallet for the greedy douchebags devs.
You can't magically give everyone more money in a dead economy friend, and you can't magically raise the prices and expect not to end up like HP, selling Touchpads at a loss on Woot! My biggest sellers are the $400-$500 units why? Because that is all people are willing to spend and more features won't change that opinion, they'll either go elsewhere or not buy at all. I should be thankful for MSFT because that kind of douchebaggery could seriously boost the repair side of my business, as more will be willing to actually buy desktops that can be fixed instead of cheap $400 laptops.
As for what killed the netbooks? The OEMs didn't give a fuck frankly. Did you TRY some of the shit they put out? drivers that didn't work, shitty UIs, lousy performance, it was obvious the OEMs were just using it for a quick make a buck. i would argue that it wasn't XP that saved the netbook, it was decent quality builds like the EEE that still sells today, with AMD Fusion and ION graphics so you could actually watch videos on the things. This will be different if MSFT decides to fuck the OEMs, because you are talking about giving up ALL your sub $550 sales, which is a good 80% of companies like Dell. When a third party tries to fuck you out of 80% of your sales in a dead economy? Your company WILL do something about it.
And the reason Android isn't ready is because again Google hasn't had a reason to give a fuck, MSFT was like Pepsi, a commodity product that is simply too cheap to care about competing with. All that changes if they hand over the sub $550 market to anybody that wants it, that's hundreds of millions of dollars right there for the plucking. And don't forget Google makes money TWO ways, their appstores AND their adviews. they could make out like bandits and frankly the Wine guys have taken the sting out of a lot of Windows software, all it would take is Google packaging it into a friendly Crossover style installer, really not hard.
Finally i'm seeing a lot of places like Geeks selling "No OS" laptops and desktops cheap and you KNOW what that is about...piracy. hell probably 30% of the Windows boxes I see are Windows Pirate Edition and I have no doubt MSFT fuckes the OEMs even harder there will be more "No OS" systems sold that will be loaded with "wink wink" Windows and be done with it. Hell Win 7 is supported until 2020 and the pirates have it cracked so well now that it even gets updates and looks legit to WGA.
In the end you can't just raise the price and expect KFC to be treated like Olive Garden, it just don't work that way. if they were starting a new brand then MAYBE that would work, but people think Windows they think cheap PCs and if its not then they will simply keep what they got or look at the iPad.
Actually the problem is the director of Avatar said 3D is fucking pointless and we should go to 60FPS instead. When the ONE director who everyone claims "got it right" says its shit? you are in serious trouble. look up Cameron on 3D and you'll find the interview, he wasn't nice at all about it.
Oh and I've found talking to my customers that around 40% of them can't watch 3D at all because it gives them headaches. in my own family 3 out of 5 can't watch 3D because of headaches. that means 1.-If there is only the 3D version playing we don't go and 2.-No 3D TV since the whole point of TV is to be able to enjoy it as a family which you can't if 3 out of 5 can't watch it.
So until we get Leia style holograms they can just give it up, it'll just be a fad. Its just not a nice experience for way too many people, as Angry Joe points out, we are just sick of it, just as we got sick of it in the 50s, 70s, and 90s.
Riiiight, can I have some of what you are smoking FOSSie? Sure if you are talking Angry fucking birds then sure, but if all you want is popcap you can use Gnash just as well. When was the last time you saw a 60 million plus OpenGL game? Been awhile ain't it? Oh and I'm sorry but BWA HA HA HA HA...thanks for the laugh. DX11 stomps the living shit out of OpenGL 4 which 1.-Doesn't work AT ALL on the sub $150 cards, which is 90% of the market, 2.-Doesn't work worth a shit on AMD cards, more than half the market,, and is 3.-Only fully supported on the $300+ Nvidia cards. Yeah, wouldn't be limiting your market there, huh sparky?
OpenGL ES is cell phone crap, and frankly will always BE cell phone crap, Sony is gonna go AMD for the PS4 and since AMD don't support OpenGL worth a crap there went the ONE console that wasn't years behind everyone else (The Mii Pii or whatever they call it isn't even up to this gen, much less next) so the multibillion dollar AAA gaming market? NO SHARE, hell even Id is talking DX now.
So give it the fuck up sparky, eithe fire kronos and get someone that gives a shit about something other than CAD or enjoy your plants VS zombies, you can put it right next to Tux Racer and call yourself a gamer. Meanwhile the DX games, even with 75% off sales on Steam right now, will make more in the next 2 weeks than OpenGL will make all fricking year. Its over, you've lost, quit being a delusional hippie and face it.
I don't know about that, I used to buy a ton of EA games, especially the MoH series and after they moved to Origin and cranked up the douchebaggery to 11 i haven't bought a single thing from them, and I know several people who have done the same.
Sure like Madden you'll always have the hardcores, like my friend Dale who actually has a deal set up with the local gamestop so every Madden and NASCAR game is dropped off at his house on release day so its waiting when he gets off work, but you're certainly not gonna grow if ALL you get is the hardcore. Since EA has cranked the asshole meter I'd love to see the before and after figures because i wouldn't be surprised if they are running off all but the hardcore which will limit the growth and longevity of the series. compare to valve that actually treats customers decently where I've already dropped a good $150 on the sale for me and my boys and its just getting started.
In the end if you support pricks? You deserve to get fucked. While I know the 3 sales that would have gone to me and my boys won't be noticed by EA if enough guys get tired of being treated like dirt by these corporate asswipes then we CAN see a difference. I bet the guys that are making Torchlight II are quite happy for example at the douchebag behavior surrounding D3 as i bought copies for my whole family and I know many that joined me in buying TL2 over D3. Support those that treat you right and be sure to send an email to EA telling them why you won't be buying from them. if they see sales drop enough they'll have to rethink being giant pricks or get into another line of work. I agree with Jim Sterling that EA is "A prime example of the bloated, wasteful, shitting mess that is triple A gaming" and frankly we should all give assholes like that a big piss off and go elsewhere.
Sadly more likely the studios other than Valve (EA and Activision, cough cough) will expect, nay DEMAND that the SteamBox be as high or higher than the assrape prices they charge on consoles and will thus screw the whole deal.
Lets face it folks, they sell PC games cheaper because they know the PC gamer can always pirate if they get too damned greedy for too long. Valve has shown with their Steam Sales the way you catch more flies is with honey and the other publishers look at the giant money truck valve gets every Steam sale and want a piece of the pie.
That is the exact opposite of a console, where thanks to being "DRM...in a box" they know Joe Average isn't gonna be able to pirate squat without breaking out a soldering iron and developing some skills, so they can keep the price jacked up longer. it won't matter to the game houses that it is basically a PC, so are the other consoles but the second you put it in a living room they start rubbing their hands together and figuring to the cent how much they can squeeze.
So while i personally would love the hell out of it if Valve pulls it off, as long as they don't abandon us PC Steam users of course, i'd wait until we saw what the other major publishers do. Having Valve games on a SteamBox is all well and good, but if ALL you get is Valve games its not gonna go anywhere.
Nice to see somebody remember their history! My mom actually used to go to Castle flicks when she was a kid, she said they'd do all kinds of stunts like having a "nurse" in case someone fainted or having a "monster" on a wire that would shoot out over an audience.
Sounds like it might be fun, in a Rocky Horror kind of way, but the fact that they are seriously talking about doing it makes me think the attendance is worse than they are letting on, because those kinds of stunts wouldn't be cheap today.
A MUCH smarter move would be to back some of that giant Valve money truck over to the ReactOS guys. Lets face it folks DirectX won years ago because the kronos group cared more about CAD than they did 3D gaming, but if Valve can get a stable Dx11 running on Linux then they can just do an end run around MSFT, and the ReactOS idea is a good one.
Imagine a gaming Linux that was "clicky clicky" simple when it came to things like drivers without being beholden to MSFT and their retarded dreams of being Apple? Hell if MSFT would have given XP X64 the support they should have most folks would have probably been happy to stay on XP, as RAM limits was the thing that pushed many over and now that they are gonna try to ram a stupid appstore down everyone's throat having an OS that'll run DirectX that valve can control would be a smart move.
Like it or not folks OpenGL just isn't as good as DirectX, its too hacky with all the extensions and its just not been given the love like it had in the late 90s when it looked like it had a shot at the title. if you were to suggest getting rid of kronos and focusing on gaming again? I'd be ALL for it, but it looks like OpenGL is gonna be for the CAD guys more than the gamers. If you really want decent gaming support you'r either gonna have to get both GPU manufacturers to focus a hell of a lot more on OpenGL or you're gonna need DirectX support, simple as that.
How do you figure? At least patents DO expire whereas thanks to lobbying what we have with copyrights is "forever minus a single day" and even cases of things that were PD being put BACK into copyright!
While I agree that software patents frankly should have never been allowed saying patents are in any way worse than copyrights is just crazy, at least you'll live to see many patents expire, i doubt our grandkids will live to see a copyright expire in this country.
Citation please? Because the last figures I saw put Apple at less than 6% of Samsung's business, which while not nothing helping a company try to crush you for a relatively small sale is seriously retarded. See all the companies that get treated like crap by Walmart only to have Wally World come out with a store brand and crush what remaining sales they had.
Supporting a company who is trying to put you out of business is just retarded any way you slice it, and I'd like to see those latest figures because unless they have jumped it would hurt Apple a hell of a lot more than it would hurt Samsung at this point to just pull the plug.
But without the OEMs they are seriously boned, and if the OEMs get together to support a single Linux? Actually sinking money into it instead of MSFT? They are fucked. look at Gabe from valve, who would have thought you'd have Steam on Linux, or a Steambox to compete with the X360? THAT is what happens when you fuck over your business partners and they have a shitload of money, they'll happily spend it to fuck you right back.
Finally do not forget the elephant in the room...Google. Don't think Google would be more than happy to help those OEMs with Android? hey it'll have all the casual games, all the web, and everything is tied into Google. Bet it would sure make Google happy, and it really wouldn't be hard to turn a decent chunk of the consumer market away from Windows when more folks are living on the net than ever and all the developers are working on Android and iOS.
In the end I think the OEMs are just about sick of MSFT's bullshit and if they push too hard you'll see 'em bail. just look at how HP bailed on WinRT, or how you see plenty of machines with Win 7 Starter whereas except for the Walmart specials you hardly ever saw a Vista Basic system. I seriously doubt the OEMs are gonna slit their own throats and give up a good 45%+ of their sales just because Ballmer has delusions of being the head of Apple, if MSFT doesn't want that business I'm sure they'll find another OS happy to take that share and MSFT would do well to remember that more and more people only care about the net, not the Winflag.
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Well if your network is shitty I'd say you have bigger problems than games, I know how you feel though because i'm having to send my nephew to the cableco and DSLco two or three times a week to bug the piss out of them trying to get them to run it to my mom's place (where they've lived since my sister passed on in 07) because its a whole fucking block and God forbid they run a block's worth of line. Without it they are stuck on shitty WISP that cuts in and out like crazy and the download speeds are bad enough that when they get a bunch of games on the Steam sale they'll bring their tower over to the shop to use my cablenet.
But if you even get something like their shitty WISP other than download speeds steam gaming can be nice, the games are as easy to back up as can be, just right click and choose "backup game files" with no hunting for reg keys and crap, the boys can just pop up a chat window at any time and say "hey uncle, feel like some MP or Co-op?" and all I do is push a single button and I'm in their game, no messing with server IP addresses or firewall crap, hell I can even just copypasta the folders for games we both have if they haven't downloaded them yet and Steam will just load it right up instead of waiting to redownload the thing, its nice.
But I know what you mean about the net, hell I could be living rent free in a 3 bedroom 2 bath instead of paying for my bachelor apt but as i said there is no cable and DSL out there, just WISP, and after being stuck on Hughesnet for 5 years i can't stomach the thought of going back to shitty net, even to save money.
That is why I said people should look at the history of GS to see what true "generational evil" looks like. They've been there over a century, profiting from the misery of the depression, controlling the fed from the day it was built, profiteering from two world wars, every kind of dirty dealing and evil multinational mess? You'll find GS. The people may come and go but GS remains, which is why they remind me of Wolfram and Hart which bragged "When the first man clubbed another to death we were there to profit from it". I have no doubt 5 centuries from now we'll still see GS, knee deep in evil back stabbing profiteering, for they are truly generational evil.
The thing that blew MY mind is I USED to make fun of people for the Yahoo portal, then my ex GF insisted on me setting up her browser for it on my machine which got me to actually try it and....its nice. It gives me the local, state, and national news, the headline "spinner" in the center of the page lets me spin through the headlines of the day without wasting time on crap i don't care about, it lets me preview my mail while i'm at it, its actually not bad at all. They probably need to advertise more because there is a ton of features there I didn't know about, their free games portal and classifieds for one, but all in all its really not a badly designed site once you try using it for a bit.
More likely just like the 50 bazillion other failed moneypits that Ballmer has pissed away MSFT simply couldn't figure out WTF to do with their half of the partnership. I mean seriously folks, HOW much money has that man flushed down the shitter? 15 billion? 20? Zune, Kin, Playsforsure which was actually profitable being killed for the lame Zune market, there is no telling how much Ballmer blew on MSNBC and probably didn't see jack shit in profits. Why in the hell isn't the stockholders screaming for his head?
Wanna know what I've noticed in the shop? Asking customers why they always seem to have that bloated as hell yahoo portal as their home page I've found that they are using it to replace the paper as the papers have gotten too slow, too much press release garbage, too much AP regurgitating. Instead the older folks and soccer moms have switched to the Yahoo Portal while the younger folks use Google News if they want to know what is going on. Hell even my parents who always had a newspaper subscription haven't had one in years, dad uses Yahoo and mom simply goes to CNN on the sat.
Can't say as i blame 'em, after picking up the local and state paper a couple of months back it was all nothing but old AP stories, who is having a bake sale, who died, and press releases. There wasn't a single article i couldn't have gotten online two days before i picked up the paper. It looks like the days of reporters actually digging and reporting are long gone, now they just copypasta from the corps to keep from pissing off a potential advertiser and reusing AP stuff. No thanks.
Uhhh...they DO have Steam cracks you know, no different than cracking any other game. And at an average of $7 a pop frankly i can't rent games at the price of Steam and with Steam i get all the updates automatically, MP matchmaking and chat, most of the Steam packs include all the MP, its just too easy.
If you got burnt on the HL 2 retail box sorry, but you can blame the douchebag that put out a keygen that would crank out legit keys which is one of the reasons i don't buy any retail anymore unless its just a dollar or two to get supsersaver on Amazon and i'll throw in a cheap game. With the retail boxes if some prick puts out a keygen that spits out legit keys you are just fucked, but with games I've bought on Steam they aren't going anywhere and I can play them no matter what some dick does in the retail market.
But with PC gaming you really only have THREE choices, 1.-You can buy retail box, risk losing any MP to some prick with a keygen, and deal with conflicting DRM schemas piling up on your PC, 2.-Go with a DD service like Steam or Origin, or 3.-Pirate and take your chances at getting a $3k+ visit from the BSA, your choice friend. Of course you can bend over and get boned by the consoles, and have to pay for everything if you want, but i happen to like getting MP for free and not being charged for every little thing like on the X360.
Oh and before you say GoG while i do buy classics like redneck rampage from them the keyword with GoG is OLD, most of their stuff is a good decade plus old. If you want to only play old as dirt titles or the Witcher series (which I don't care for, too much submenu crap for me, feels like I'm playing MS Excel) that is fine, I'll be enjoying my Deus Ex complete set with DLC for $15, my Saints Row 3 for $12.50 (fun as hell game BTW, reminds me of GTA:VC in that its easy to play on keyboard and mouse) or my $7.50 Just Cause II with all the DLC. Like I said at those prices frankly you couldn't even rent them or buy them off Craigslist.
Sadly at least with drugs they KNOW they are on a drug, but with religion they will blindly follow, some of them for their entire lives, without ever the thought even crossing their mind that religion might even POSSIBLY be a form of control.
In a way it reminds of that bit from the Matrix, where Morpheus pointed out that the people they were there to help would react violently and fight to protect the system that is oppressing them, because that is exactly what many will do rather than even discuss the concept that religion may be bullshit.
When in doubt, at least for me, I'll go with Neil deGrasse Tyson who says we shouldn't be counting as planets, but like to like.
And sadly its worked for thousands of years, see Jim Crow and how blacks would go to their little churches and be told that they'd get nicer things in heaven for being treated like shit here, hell you go throughout history and you see case after case of those at the top using religion to keep the peasants in line with threats of hell and promises of heaven. that is why i truly believe we won't get a better world until we put away such beliefs, because it is too easy to keep large numbers of the downtrodden in line with religion, the opiate of the masses.
I don't know if it shows up under new formatting, I use the classic format options. Anyway i'll post the entire list in case you need it, just copypasta it into a txt somewhere and you'll have it when you need it.
The sad part is they won't win, and GS will NEVER go away. look at their history, they've been knee deep in dirty dealing for over a century now and have learned how to slime their way through the halls of power. its no coincidence that so many in the Fed are tied into GS, hell they are practically Wolfram and Hart on the evil scale. If they had demons in suits waltzing through their halls like on Angel frankly i wouldn't be surprised, any truly nasty corporate dealing that has made a lot of money while fucking people over? GS is there.
Uhhh...that is what the Steam sales are for drinkypoo. I make decent at the shop (its feast or famine so its not very predictable, but most weeks are decent) but I got two teen boys that like to play as well so I have to buy many things in multiples, hence the Steam sales. When you get Saints 3 for $12.50? or Deus Ex complete series for $15? It really don't hurt when you need to buy multiple copies. of course since the boys are as different as day and night I rarely need to be buying 3 copies, but even 2 copies at $60 a pop is just too painful for my wallet.
But I agree that companies like EA that are trying to gouge in a dead economy are retarded, they should be learning from Valve, especially when their game requires a decent number of players or the game dies. Hell while waiting on Deus Ex complete I fired up HL DM just for the hell of it and it STILL has plenty of players. I still suck at it and got a rocket right up the ass, but its nice to see there are plenty of players. I have a feeling all this gouging is gonna run off anyone but the hardcore and we know they move on quickly to the next map pack...err... i mean CoD/MoH/ tactical shooter. if they run off any new players by gouging they certainly won't be able to keep selling it as Valve does with their games.
What's wrong with Steam? The games are DIRT cheap (I got the Deus Ex series for $15 with all the DLC, Saints 3 for $12.50) and it takes care of the MP, the patches, makes game backups beyond simple, matchmaking and chat for your friends, can't be simpler. And if you don't want to play online? just put it in offline mode, easy as that.
Hell the prices on Steam would be cheap for rentals, much less full games and all the extras make it worth it IMHO. It sure as hell beats having to restore a disc image because SecuROM or Starforce took a crap on your PC.
I don't know about him, but I'm sick of it because NOT ONLY do you pay more, but you pay more and THEN keep paying more just to keep from getting assraped by those that have the unlockables, AKA "I own your ass because I paid more" bullshit. I don't mind games where it has DLC or unlockables as long as it doesn't break the game, TF2 and their silly hats or SR3 and their crazy outfits, but too many of the games if you don't keep shelling out you are well and truly fucked, the advantages given to those that shell out just make you a walking target.
So I don't know about him, but I'm not shelling out $70 just to be someone else's practice dummy because I won't keep emptying my wallet for the greedy douchebags devs.
You can't magically give everyone more money in a dead economy friend, and you can't magically raise the prices and expect not to end up like HP, selling Touchpads at a loss on Woot! My biggest sellers are the $400-$500 units why? Because that is all people are willing to spend and more features won't change that opinion, they'll either go elsewhere or not buy at all. I should be thankful for MSFT because that kind of douchebaggery could seriously boost the repair side of my business, as more will be willing to actually buy desktops that can be fixed instead of cheap $400 laptops.
As for what killed the netbooks? The OEMs didn't give a fuck frankly. Did you TRY some of the shit they put out? drivers that didn't work, shitty UIs, lousy performance, it was obvious the OEMs were just using it for a quick make a buck. i would argue that it wasn't XP that saved the netbook, it was decent quality builds like the EEE that still sells today, with AMD Fusion and ION graphics so you could actually watch videos on the things. This will be different if MSFT decides to fuck the OEMs, because you are talking about giving up ALL your sub $550 sales, which is a good 80% of companies like Dell. When a third party tries to fuck you out of 80% of your sales in a dead economy? Your company WILL do something about it.
And the reason Android isn't ready is because again Google hasn't had a reason to give a fuck, MSFT was like Pepsi, a commodity product that is simply too cheap to care about competing with. All that changes if they hand over the sub $550 market to anybody that wants it, that's hundreds of millions of dollars right there for the plucking. And don't forget Google makes money TWO ways, their appstores AND their adviews. they could make out like bandits and frankly the Wine guys have taken the sting out of a lot of Windows software, all it would take is Google packaging it into a friendly Crossover style installer, really not hard.
Finally i'm seeing a lot of places like Geeks selling "No OS" laptops and desktops cheap and you KNOW what that is about...piracy. hell probably 30% of the Windows boxes I see are Windows Pirate Edition and I have no doubt MSFT fuckes the OEMs even harder there will be more "No OS" systems sold that will be loaded with "wink wink" Windows and be done with it. Hell Win 7 is supported until 2020 and the pirates have it cracked so well now that it even gets updates and looks legit to WGA.
In the end you can't just raise the price and expect KFC to be treated like Olive Garden, it just don't work that way. if they were starting a new brand then MAYBE that would work, but people think Windows they think cheap PCs and if its not then they will simply keep what they got or look at the iPad.
Actually the problem is the director of Avatar said 3D is fucking pointless and we should go to 60FPS instead. When the ONE director who everyone claims "got it right" says its shit? you are in serious trouble. look up Cameron on 3D and you'll find the interview, he wasn't nice at all about it.
Oh and I've found talking to my customers that around 40% of them can't watch 3D at all because it gives them headaches. in my own family 3 out of 5 can't watch 3D because of headaches. that means 1.-If there is only the 3D version playing we don't go and 2.-No 3D TV since the whole point of TV is to be able to enjoy it as a family which you can't if 3 out of 5 can't watch it.
So until we get Leia style holograms they can just give it up, it'll just be a fad. Its just not a nice experience for way too many people, as Angry Joe points out, we are just sick of it, just as we got sick of it in the 50s, 70s, and 90s.
Riiiight, can I have some of what you are smoking FOSSie? Sure if you are talking Angry fucking birds then sure, but if all you want is popcap you can use Gnash just as well. When was the last time you saw a 60 million plus OpenGL game? Been awhile ain't it? Oh and I'm sorry but BWA HA HA HA HA...thanks for the laugh. DX11 stomps the living shit out of OpenGL 4 which 1.-Doesn't work AT ALL on the sub $150 cards, which is 90% of the market, 2.-Doesn't work worth a shit on AMD cards, more than half the market,, and is 3.-Only fully supported on the $300+ Nvidia cards. Yeah, wouldn't be limiting your market there, huh sparky?
OpenGL ES is cell phone crap, and frankly will always BE cell phone crap, Sony is gonna go AMD for the PS4 and since AMD don't support OpenGL worth a crap there went the ONE console that wasn't years behind everyone else (The Mii Pii or whatever they call it isn't even up to this gen, much less next) so the multibillion dollar AAA gaming market? NO SHARE, hell even Id is talking DX now.
So give it the fuck up sparky, eithe fire kronos and get someone that gives a shit about something other than CAD or enjoy your plants VS zombies, you can put it right next to Tux Racer and call yourself a gamer. Meanwhile the DX games, even with 75% off sales on Steam right now, will make more in the next 2 weeks than OpenGL will make all fricking year. Its over, you've lost, quit being a delusional hippie and face it.
I don't know about that, I used to buy a ton of EA games, especially the MoH series and after they moved to Origin and cranked up the douchebaggery to 11 i haven't bought a single thing from them, and I know several people who have done the same.
Sure like Madden you'll always have the hardcores, like my friend Dale who actually has a deal set up with the local gamestop so every Madden and NASCAR game is dropped off at his house on release day so its waiting when he gets off work, but you're certainly not gonna grow if ALL you get is the hardcore. Since EA has cranked the asshole meter I'd love to see the before and after figures because i wouldn't be surprised if they are running off all but the hardcore which will limit the growth and longevity of the series. compare to valve that actually treats customers decently where I've already dropped a good $150 on the sale for me and my boys and its just getting started.
In the end if you support pricks? You deserve to get fucked. While I know the 3 sales that would have gone to me and my boys won't be noticed by EA if enough guys get tired of being treated like dirt by these corporate asswipes then we CAN see a difference. I bet the guys that are making Torchlight II are quite happy for example at the douchebag behavior surrounding D3 as i bought copies for my whole family and I know many that joined me in buying TL2 over D3. Support those that treat you right and be sure to send an email to EA telling them why you won't be buying from them. if they see sales drop enough they'll have to rethink being giant pricks or get into another line of work. I agree with Jim Sterling that EA is "A prime example of the bloated, wasteful, shitting mess that is triple A gaming" and frankly we should all give assholes like that a big piss off and go elsewhere.
Sadly more likely the studios other than Valve (EA and Activision, cough cough) will expect, nay DEMAND that the SteamBox be as high or higher than the assrape prices they charge on consoles and will thus screw the whole deal.
Lets face it folks, they sell PC games cheaper because they know the PC gamer can always pirate if they get too damned greedy for too long. Valve has shown with their Steam Sales the way you catch more flies is with honey and the other publishers look at the giant money truck valve gets every Steam sale and want a piece of the pie.
That is the exact opposite of a console, where thanks to being "DRM...in a box" they know Joe Average isn't gonna be able to pirate squat without breaking out a soldering iron and developing some skills, so they can keep the price jacked up longer. it won't matter to the game houses that it is basically a PC, so are the other consoles but the second you put it in a living room they start rubbing their hands together and figuring to the cent how much they can squeeze.
So while i personally would love the hell out of it if Valve pulls it off, as long as they don't abandon us PC Steam users of course, i'd wait until we saw what the other major publishers do. Having Valve games on a SteamBox is all well and good, but if ALL you get is Valve games its not gonna go anywhere.
Nice to see somebody remember their history! My mom actually used to go to Castle flicks when she was a kid, she said they'd do all kinds of stunts like having a "nurse" in case someone fainted or having a "monster" on a wire that would shoot out over an audience.
Sounds like it might be fun, in a Rocky Horror kind of way, but the fact that they are seriously talking about doing it makes me think the attendance is worse than they are letting on, because those kinds of stunts wouldn't be cheap today.
A MUCH smarter move would be to back some of that giant Valve money truck over to the ReactOS guys. Lets face it folks DirectX won years ago because the kronos group cared more about CAD than they did 3D gaming, but if Valve can get a stable Dx11 running on Linux then they can just do an end run around MSFT, and the ReactOS idea is a good one.
Imagine a gaming Linux that was "clicky clicky" simple when it came to things like drivers without being beholden to MSFT and their retarded dreams of being Apple? Hell if MSFT would have given XP X64 the support they should have most folks would have probably been happy to stay on XP, as RAM limits was the thing that pushed many over and now that they are gonna try to ram a stupid appstore down everyone's throat having an OS that'll run DirectX that valve can control would be a smart move.
Like it or not folks OpenGL just isn't as good as DirectX, its too hacky with all the extensions and its just not been given the love like it had in the late 90s when it looked like it had a shot at the title. if you were to suggest getting rid of kronos and focusing on gaming again? I'd be ALL for it, but it looks like OpenGL is gonna be for the CAD guys more than the gamers. If you really want decent gaming support you'r either gonna have to get both GPU manufacturers to focus a hell of a lot more on OpenGL or you're gonna need DirectX support, simple as that.
How do you figure? At least patents DO expire whereas thanks to lobbying what we have with copyrights is "forever minus a single day" and even cases of things that were PD being put BACK into copyright!
While I agree that software patents frankly should have never been allowed saying patents are in any way worse than copyrights is just crazy, at least you'll live to see many patents expire, i doubt our grandkids will live to see a copyright expire in this country.
Citation please? Because the last figures I saw put Apple at less than 6% of Samsung's business, which while not nothing helping a company try to crush you for a relatively small sale is seriously retarded. See all the companies that get treated like crap by Walmart only to have Wally World come out with a store brand and crush what remaining sales they had.
Supporting a company who is trying to put you out of business is just retarded any way you slice it, and I'd like to see those latest figures because unless they have jumped it would hurt Apple a hell of a lot more than it would hurt Samsung at this point to just pull the plug.
But without the OEMs they are seriously boned, and if the OEMs get together to support a single Linux? Actually sinking money into it instead of MSFT? They are fucked. look at Gabe from valve, who would have thought you'd have Steam on Linux, or a Steambox to compete with the X360? THAT is what happens when you fuck over your business partners and they have a shitload of money, they'll happily spend it to fuck you right back.
Finally do not forget the elephant in the room...Google. Don't think Google would be more than happy to help those OEMs with Android? hey it'll have all the casual games, all the web, and everything is tied into Google. Bet it would sure make Google happy, and it really wouldn't be hard to turn a decent chunk of the consumer market away from Windows when more folks are living on the net than ever and all the developers are working on Android and iOS.
In the end I think the OEMs are just about sick of MSFT's bullshit and if they push too hard you'll see 'em bail. just look at how HP bailed on WinRT, or how you see plenty of machines with Win 7 Starter whereas except for the Walmart specials you hardly ever saw a Vista Basic system. I seriously doubt the OEMs are gonna slit their own throats and give up a good 45%+ of their sales just because Ballmer has delusions of being the head of Apple, if MSFT doesn't want that business I'm sure they'll find another OS happy to take that share and MSFT would do well to remember that more and more people only care about the net, not the Winflag.