Have you tried using active corners? I have the upper left (you can pick whatever corner seems most intuitive for you) set to expose. When I'm working with the mouse, all I have to do is flick my wrist to the corner and click on the window I'm trying to get to. No moving hands back to the keyboard. No cycling through lists of windows. It has become so fast and so natural, I find myself twitching around on my windows machine at work trying to switch active windows, much to my disappointment.
Very insightful. I have been long trying to boycott EB here in Canada for lots of the above mentioned reasons. Gouging on used buy/sell prices. Inflexibility in customer service. Refusal to sell things that are in stock because of pre-orders. Standard fare...
Yet I've still found myself in EB because I didn't really have any other choice. Big box stores focus on mostly the top 20%. I want Katamari-like games. I want early release GC games to play on my Wii. Future Shop and Best Buy just don't have that kind of stock, so unless I want to play for shipping online, I find myself back in EB.
I'm still hopeful that games only retailers will be able to stay afloat, no matter how much I hate their business practices, but I know that if they are targeting the more-than-casual gamer like me they'll have difficulty. I never buy warranties or strategy guides, I keep my old games and avoid buying used games where I save 2% for a scratched up case, and I never buy over priced game-branded peripherals.
I don't use Vista so I don't fully understand. Do the colours of the popups provide security-related information? Seems pretty ridiculous and unfair, considering I'm not the only person in the world who is colourblind...
I think we can agree that the only way to do it right is to not do it at all.
I don't want video games to turn into the same system as TV. Where you pay the provider for the privilege of them showing you ads that they are getting paid to show you.
If you get bumped off your ISP, just sign up with another one - there are many to choose from.
You couldn't be further from the truth. I live in the downtown area of the largest city in my province. There are two high speed internet providers, and my apartment building is only wired for one of them.
When I first tried Vista, it was running in a VM and there were serious problems with the Minesweep implementation
I know this is a serious comment, but it reads like a joke. The new MicroSoft OS has problems with their signature bundled puzzle game! Also, the calculator can only do multiplication on Thursdays!
Yup.
As an interesting off-topic asside, they also let you buy/download the stem mixes of uncompressed un-DRMed audio for six of their tracks. You can load them into your audio editing software of choice and mix your own version of their music. http://stems.barenakedladies.com/
I dislike Sony as much as the next guy right now, but you're forgetting a pretty key problem with the Dreamcast. Their copy protection had a serious flaw. Or more specifically, a hole big enough to drive a truck through. Near the end of the life of the DC, you could download and burn almost any game you wanted without voiding your warranty.
I wasn't quite so lucky. In Winnipeg, MB the laws for Sunday hours are apparently more strict than the rest of Canada, so all our stores opened at Noon. I was in a busy area and tried about a dozen stores in the area but they all had lines far longer than the number of consoles each store had. I hit some less likely places in the afternoon just to take a chance. Future Shop and BestBuy were each only getting about 30. The EB was even less. Went to Microplay and they only got 2. A million consoles sounds like lots of Wiis, but I guess when it comes down to a city with only 700k people, we get a very small percentage of that million.
The happy ending is that by 2:00 I had gone to sears.ca and ordered mine with Zelda (the only decent looking game they were selling online) and two controllers. The Wii doesn't even appear on their online store anymore and my order is still "in progress" status, but they sent me a confirmation. Here's to hoping I get my shipment sometime this week! I also found some sweet deals on used GC games in my travels!
The comic on an earlier comment sure hit it right on the mark though. I went to a few lines that I thought were promising, but found out after some waiting that I had missed the numbers they gave out already. The people there were so apologetic and were trying to help me find the best place to go and look.
I wonder... why I have seen no media stories about loads of people camping out in front of stores, for a chance to snag a new Wii?
That's because, in theory, there are plenty of Wiis to go around. Nintendo is manufacturing millions. It shouldn't be hard to get one within the first week or so. At least that's what I'm banking on and from what I've read I don't seem to be alone. With the PS3 everyone knew they didn't make enough to meet demand...
Jab at MS: I tried to pre-order but every store I went to said that after the Xbox360 scandal they've ditched pre-orders almost all together.
But a gun only has one purpose: To hurt living things.
All a gun can ever do is hurt people, be it for good or evil. Arguably shooting someone is never a good thing even if it is in self defense. Comparing guns to computers is a highly flawed analogy.
Always remember, if guns make people safe then why isn't the United States the safest place on earth?
WTFZOMGBBQ? This is a bill that America needs to have. If law-abiding citizens refrained from encryption and anonymizers and onion routers and that sort of thing, the terrorists and drug cartels that need such anonymity to hide from our law-enforcement and intelligence agencies would find that much more difficult to do so.
That is the most disgustingly American (read "Republican") view on privacy and legislation that I have ever heard. Why should everyone have to give up their right to privacy? Just because we have nothing to hide doesn't mean that we want everyone to know it.
Tell you what... Since you have nothing to hide, why don't you send me your email login? I'll just take a look around. No? How about you do some online banking from my subnet? Maybe some online purchases. I'll just sniff out your credit card number that you're passing over an unencrypted channel. No? Maybe you can give me your address? I'll come down and root through your house for a while. After all, why should you or I have privacy? It makes it much harder for the government to see what we're up to. It helps them stop The Terrorists...
Can anyone tell me one good reason why I would even want to consider vista?
If you play games, you need Windows. Virtually nobody develops for anything but MS. Game makers don't need to bother with that >10% of the market that are using other OSs, it doesn't make financial sense. Now with DirectX 10, you won't be able to play on that old version of XP for long.
If you buy a PC and you don't build it yourself, you will almost definitely be buying Vista bundled into the price. This is where MS makes their real money. This is where most copies of Vista will be licensed (or "sold"). See Windows Tax
As much as I'm a supporter of the VC and plan to buy games off of there, I do understand why people have objections to paying for the same old games again...
It's possible to enjoy all of these without paying Sony for the privelge:
Unfortunately, that's not the case. Just because you're not paying them directly, doesn't mean that they don't indirectly benefit.
Buy a PS3 and sell it, well then someone else will be using it and buying games etc. from Sony
Buying a used PS3 is still taking one more console off the market, possibly indirectly causing someone else to buy a new one. Then you're still buying games and accessories which follows the same pattern. You buy game X, someone else has to buy it new.
Renting movies and games? Because the video store doesn't have to buy copies to start with (at a much higher cost than you or I buy it for because of rental licensing). Plus, the quantity they buy is based on how many of them get rented.
TV shows are a rough call, but if you're watching them you're still watching the ads. Weather you know it or not, that's all they need.
Same deal with buying used DVDs
Best way is to contact the artists for CDs. Tell them that you're sad you can't support them because of their distributor. I've done that and had the artist respond to me directly. Once even got a copy of his master burned to CD-RW.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I can speak for most Canadians when I say:
Please, leave us alone. We can run our own country just fine without you.
Have you tried using active corners? I have the upper left (you can pick whatever corner seems most intuitive for you) set to expose. When I'm working with the mouse, all I have to do is flick my wrist to the corner and click on the window I'm trying to get to. No moving hands back to the keyboard. No cycling through lists of windows. It has become so fast and so natural, I find myself twitching around on my windows machine at work trying to switch active windows, much to my disappointment.
Very insightful. I have been long trying to boycott EB here in Canada for lots of the above mentioned reasons. Gouging on used buy/sell prices. Inflexibility in customer service. Refusal to sell things that are in stock because of pre-orders. Standard fare...
Yet I've still found myself in EB because I didn't really have any other choice. Big box stores focus on mostly the top 20%. I want Katamari-like games. I want early release GC games to play on my Wii. Future Shop and Best Buy just don't have that kind of stock, so unless I want to play for shipping online, I find myself back in EB.
I'm still hopeful that games only retailers will be able to stay afloat, no matter how much I hate their business practices, but I know that if they are targeting the more-than-casual gamer like me they'll have difficulty. I never buy warranties or strategy guides, I keep my old games and avoid buying used games where I save 2% for a scratched up case, and I never buy over priced game-branded peripherals.
I don't use Vista so I don't fully understand. Do the colours of the popups provide security-related information? Seems pretty ridiculous and unfair, considering I'm not the only person in the world who is colourblind...
I think we can agree that the only way to do it right is to not do it at all.
I don't want video games to turn into the same system as TV. Where you pay the provider for the privilege of them showing you ads that they are getting paid to show you.
I'd give up my dog sled for mod points right about now...
The new MicroSoft OS has problems with their signature bundled puzzle game! Also, the calculator can only do multiplication on Thursdays!
Yup.
As an interesting off-topic asside, they also let you buy/download the stem mixes of uncompressed un-DRMed audio for six of their tracks. You can load them into your audio editing software of choice and mix your own version of their music.
http://stems.barenakedladies.com/
Great Canadian artists, thinking progressively...
Where's the video?
I completely agree. I read this headline as Take-Two Loses Another Customer.
I dislike Sony as much as the next guy right now, but you're forgetting a pretty key problem with the Dreamcast. Their copy protection had a serious flaw. Or more specifically, a hole big enough to drive a truck through. Near the end of the life of the DC, you could download and burn almost any game you wanted without voiding your warranty.
I wasn't quite so lucky. In Winnipeg, MB the laws for Sunday hours are apparently more strict than the rest of Canada, so all our stores opened at Noon. I was in a busy area and tried about a dozen stores in the area but they all had lines far longer than the number of consoles each store had. I hit some less likely places in the afternoon just to take a chance. Future Shop and BestBuy were each only getting about 30. The EB was even less. Went to Microplay and they only got 2. A million consoles sounds like lots of Wiis, but I guess when it comes down to a city with only 700k people, we get a very small percentage of that million.
The happy ending is that by 2:00 I had gone to sears.ca and ordered mine with Zelda (the only decent looking game they were selling online) and two controllers. The Wii doesn't even appear on their online store anymore and my order is still "in progress" status, but they sent me a confirmation. Here's to hoping I get my shipment sometime this week! I also found some sweet deals on used GC games in my travels!
The comic on an earlier comment sure hit it right on the mark though. I went to a few lines that I thought were promising, but found out after some waiting that I had missed the numbers they gave out already. The people there were so apologetic and were trying to help me find the best place to go and look.
Jab at MS: I tried to pre-order but every store I went to said that after the Xbox360 scandal they've ditched pre-orders almost all together.
But a gun only has one purpose: To hurt living things.
All a gun can ever do is hurt people, be it for good or evil. Arguably shooting someone is never a good thing even if it is in self defense. Comparing guns to computers is a highly flawed analogy.
Always remember, if guns make people safe then why isn't the United States the safest place on earth?
Tell you what... Since you have nothing to hide, why don't you send me your email login? I'll just take a look around. No? How about you do some online banking from my subnet? Maybe some online purchases. I'll just sniff out your credit card number that you're passing over an unencrypted channel. No? Maybe you can give me your address? I'll come down and root through your house for a while. After all, why should you or I have privacy? It makes it much harder for the government to see what we're up to. It helps them stop The Terrorists...
Your country scares me.
As much as I'm a supporter of the VC and plan to buy games off of there, I do understand why people have objections to paying for the same old games again...
Oblig: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/09/14
Alternately: Bishy
- Buy a PS3 and sell it, well then someone else will be using it and buying games etc. from Sony
- Buying a used PS3 is still taking one more console off the market, possibly indirectly causing someone else to buy a new one. Then you're still buying games and accessories which follows the same pattern. You buy game X, someone else has to buy it new.
- Renting movies and games? Because the video store doesn't have to buy copies to start with (at a much higher cost than you or I buy it for because of rental licensing). Plus, the quantity they buy is based on how many of them get rented.
- TV shows are a rough call, but if you're watching them you're still watching the ads. Weather you know it or not, that's all they need.
- Same deal with buying used DVDs
Best way is to contact the artists for CDs. Tell them that you're sad you can't support them because of their distributor. I've done that and had the artist respond to me directly. Once even got a copy of his master burned to CD-RW.Oh, and buy a Wii.
Sad, but extremely helpful. Thank you.
Mod parent up!