I purchased STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl over Direct2Drive. Stalker has multiple versions - Worldwide, US, and Digital Distribution (mine.)
The physical discs (WW and US) get a patch up to 1.0006. The DD version only has a patch up to 1.0005, with no plans for 1.0006 to be released for the DD. THQ's support contract with GSC ended at patch 1.0005, and GSC is an overseas company, so I have no real chance of any legal recourse.
That leaves me 100% unable to play multiplayer, which is the ENTIRE reason I paid for the game in the first place.
No, nowdays they'll just get you on Federal wire fraud charges, which is the new reincarnation of the old phreaking laws from back in the 70s and 80s.
Also, since this lady's number is being falsely used, it could somewhat count as slander or defamation of character, potentially even identity theft since it's her name and phone number showing up in everyone's caller ID.
When Apple moved to EFI-based x86 they did not open themselves up to clones, as Apple is the only consumer computer maker using EFI in it's hardware.
Had Apple moved to a regular BIOS-based x86 platform, then yes, they would have opened themselves up for clone competition, BIGTIME.
Of course, you could just go BUY a USB-EFI chip and boot OSX like that. Apple can't stop someone from making a product that turns a regular BIOS X86 machine into an EFI-enabled machine, as that would be anti-competitive and since Apple is AFAIK the only EFI-based computer retailer, it'd be a monopoly suit as well.
Well, I know this, but I've seen some "musicians" using Macs loaded with well over five thousand dollars worth of software, when they could have bought hardware solutions (I own an old Yamaha SCSI DAW, 4 track, and a KORG N64 keyboard.)
As for the SBLive! the complaint was for the analog line-in jacks, yes. I had the digital SBLive!, so I used the SP/DIF to my external equipment, which had ZERO noise, combined with the kX driverset instead of Creative's bundled drivers and software, which allowed me to even create a noise reduction filter thru the EMU10K processor for the line-in jacks to reduce the signal noise for my guitars (not that that mattered since I always play with heavy distortion and you get a little hiss from the pedal.)
Also, I found that many of the line noise complaints were coming from guitar players using single-coil pickups in front of a CRT. Not very bright to say the least.
"I personally do not think that the software copyright holders have the right to limit the hardware it runs on."
So, what, you're going to SUE APPLE and force them to write OSX for your PS3 or your Dreamcast, or that system you built entirely from GPGPUs??
Give me a break. What gives you the right to dictate what hardware architecture they should write their software for? Unless you own the company that owns the software, you have NO LEGAL RIGHT.
"Pystar could definitely make the argument that owners have the right to install the software on any machine that they like without regards to who built and sold the machine."
Good luck suing to force Apple to write OSX for the Cell architecture or for the now gone DEC Alphas.
Off-topic. Anyone else getting major slowdowns under FF3 when doing other surfing in tabs while waiting for the chance to post your slashdot comment? This is happening under both XP and Vista. Timer will skip a couple numbers, make your whole system hang for a couple of seconds, then everything works again.
What you think Sony's the only company that'd try this shit?
Hello, Trusted Computing. Did you forget that was around? How about the old PIII? How about Skype scanning my hardware and artificially limiting my multi-way conversations to five people if I'm using AMD instead of Intel, even though there's NO REAL DIFFERENCE in performance?
I'm not paranoid, my eyes are wide open and observing EVERYTHING. If I was paranoid, I wouldn't even be on the internet.
Here in California, many people have already won against EULAs.
How about you read CA consumer protection laws and get back to me on that?
And while I 'keep going on' until they actually DO SOMETHING to me, all I can say is I *WILL* do it.
Sony should pray they never cross my path. I've got a few rabid lawyers for friends who have had a nice success record against larger companies, especially when damages are proved.
If you want a real comparison, try installing a USB 2.0 card in a 333MHz Celeron. Take the same USB controller card and toss it into a machine with at least a 533 MHz P2. Use the same OS (say, Windows 98, since there's is software overhead dependent upon the OS as well.)
You can't get higher bandwidth without improving the hardware, period. You're not going to get USB 1.1 to run on a 396, there's just not enough internal bandwidth for the computer to effectively handle it. UNIVERSAL should automatically mean "Software-controlled" Since there's no hardware implementation that's universal with everything that comes around.
As stated, 17 inches. quite a few of HP's laptops have a second hard drive bay.
Actually, for this laptop, I use it more for on the go video and audio editing, but if I wish to play a game, the 8600 will suffice just fine for the few games I would play.
As for the "desktop in a laptop" crowd - businesses, not consumers, made that demand. So the laptop was made.
On occasion I'll also use the laptop for folding@home along with my PS3. nearly 3 TFLOPS going to a good cause right there, so the extra power is a good thing.
THANK GOD someone knows what they're talking about. There's seriously pure HARDWARE out there that destroys a full-powered MBP with $5,000 worth of software.
Hell, my CELERON 450 with 224 megs of PC-133 and COOLEDIT (Way to fuck it up, Adobe,) and a SBLive! could stomp a macbook pro in audio recording. Good and great musicians can take cheap stuff and get a GREAT SOUND. Crappy musicians can take everything, compress the fuck out of it, and make it LOUD. Ain't no Mac going to fix a lack of basic knowledge.
The reason the USB2 is screwing up is a driver issue or software issue. USB controllers all rely upon software, not hardware, and are very limited by the hardware your system is running.
I have NO issues, and every USB port on my computer is filled, with usually my webcam, an external hard drive, wireless keyboard and laser mouse (both on separate receivers,) active nearly 100% of the time I'm at the computer.
USB is software, thus limited by CPU and RAM (and all related overhead in the OS.) Firewire is all hardware-controlled and isn't limited as such, because a firewire device can communicate with another firewire device withuot a computer. Hard drives are a different story, though, most fall sort of even gigabit-speed transfers.
Oh, snap. I can just take the hard drive out and plug it into the second slot of my laptop. Wait, do the new Mac laptops even have a second hard drive bay?
And this is why I stick with the "PC" side - I get more hardware features. Oh, and I can change my laptops GPU - I don't think there's a Mac notebook/laptop on the market that allows for it. Oh, and I only paid a grand for the laptop, 17", 4GB RAM, 512meg 8600 (discrete, not integrated,) DUAL hard drive bays, remote control, USB, Firewire, Lightscribe Dual-Layer DVD drive (Already own a PS3 for Blu-ray) HDMI, etc, etc.
I own a PS3 as well, but never will it get connected to PSN, at least not by me, maybe my fiance. I'm looking forward to installing a different OS on the PS3 since it's allowed, and I swear it better not monitor a damned thing when I'm not using their network and am on the regular internet. If the hypervisor or some piece of hardware is monitoring me when I'm not on PSN and in a different OS altogether, there will be hell to pay. I will try to get them on hacking and wire fraud at bare minimum.
They should have NO REASON to wipe a damned thing out when they give me EXPLICIT OPTIONS to install a separate OS. From that point on, it's MY HARDWARE, MY SOFTWARE. Do all you want with YOUR SOFTWARE, you TOUCH mine and I'll have your ass on wire fraud charges and hacking.
Almost all batteries are dangerous to store in one form or another. In a solar bank, make damned sure you've got LOADS of ventilation - recharging batteries emit hydrogen. Ever seen a solar installation blow up? I have, it's rather impressive. (Watch "The Abyss" for a good idea.)
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I purchased STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl over Direct2Drive. Stalker has multiple versions - Worldwide, US, and Digital Distribution (mine.)
The physical discs (WW and US) get a patch up to 1.0006. The DD version only has a patch up to 1.0005, with no plans for 1.0006 to be released for the DD. THQ's support contract with GSC ended at patch 1.0005, and GSC is an overseas company, so I have no real chance of any legal recourse.
That leaves me 100% unable to play multiplayer, which is the ENTIRE reason I paid for the game in the first place.
So what am I supposed to do about that, huh?
No, nowdays they'll just get you on Federal wire fraud charges, which is the new reincarnation of the old phreaking laws from back in the 70s and 80s.
Also, since this lady's number is being falsely used, it could somewhat count as slander or defamation of character, potentially even identity theft since it's her name and phone number showing up in everyone's caller ID.
When Apple moved to EFI-based x86 they did not open themselves up to clones, as Apple is the only consumer computer maker using EFI in it's hardware.
Had Apple moved to a regular BIOS-based x86 platform, then yes, they would have opened themselves up for clone competition, BIGTIME.
Of course, you could just go BUY a USB-EFI chip and boot OSX like that. Apple can't stop someone from making a product that turns a regular BIOS X86 machine into an EFI-enabled machine, as that would be anti-competitive and since Apple is AFAIK the only EFI-based computer retailer, it'd be a monopoly suit as well.
You need to go back to 9th grade reading comprehension. To quote the relevant part that made my comment CORRECT:
"without regards to who built and sold the machine."
Without ANY FURTHER SPECIFICS FROM THE POSTER one can SAFELY assume the poster means ANY HARDWARE ARCHITECTURE.
I mean a third party as in perhaps another company who wishes to do THE EXACT THING Psystar's doing? not just any regular old Joe.
Well, I know this, but I've seen some "musicians" using Macs loaded with well over five thousand dollars worth of software, when they could have bought hardware solutions (I own an old Yamaha SCSI DAW, 4 track, and a KORG N64 keyboard.)
As for the SBLive! the complaint was for the analog line-in jacks, yes. I had the digital SBLive!, so I used the SP/DIF to my external equipment, which had ZERO noise, combined with the kX driverset instead of Creative's bundled drivers and software, which allowed me to even create a noise reduction filter thru the EMU10K processor for the line-in jacks to reduce the signal noise for my guitars (not that that mattered since I always play with heavy distortion and you get a little hiss from the pedal.)
Also, I found that many of the line noise complaints were coming from guitar players using single-coil pickups in front of a CRT. Not very bright to say the least.
"I personally do not think that the software copyright holders have the right to limit the hardware it runs on."
So, what, you're going to SUE APPLE and force them to write OSX for your PS3 or your Dreamcast, or that system you built entirely from GPGPUs??
Give me a break. What gives you the right to dictate what hardware architecture they should write their software for? Unless you own the company that owns the software, you have NO LEGAL RIGHT.
Could a third party sue to force the case to be brought into a court of law, claiming public interest in the matter?
"Pystar could definitely make the argument that owners have the right to install the software on any machine that they like without regards to who built and sold the machine."
Good luck suing to force Apple to write OSX for the Cell architecture or for the now gone DEC Alphas.
Off-topic. Anyone else getting major slowdowns under FF3 when doing other surfing in tabs while waiting for the chance to post your slashdot comment? This is happening under both XP and Vista. Timer will skip a couple numbers, make your whole system hang for a couple of seconds, then everything works again.
How will Apple make their money off of selling incremental updates to their OS if they make it download-only?
"In order to update your OS to the latest version with the latest security enhancements, you must pay us or buy a new computer."
That's damn-near extortion, right there.
One of those cameras belonged to CNN. I dare them to defend the TSA after that shit.
What you think Sony's the only company that'd try this shit?
Hello, Trusted Computing. Did you forget that was around? How about the old PIII? How about Skype scanning my hardware and artificially limiting my multi-way conversations to five people if I'm using AMD instead of Intel, even though there's NO REAL DIFFERENCE in performance?
I'm not paranoid, my eyes are wide open and observing EVERYTHING. If I was paranoid, I wouldn't even be on the internet.
Here in California, many people have already won against EULAs.
How about you read CA consumer protection laws and get back to me on that?
And while I 'keep going on' until they actually DO SOMETHING to me, all I can say is I *WILL* do it.
Sony should pray they never cross my path. I've got a few rabid lawyers for friends who have had a nice success record against larger companies, especially when damages are proved.
If you want a real comparison, try installing a USB 2.0 card in a 333MHz Celeron. Take the same USB controller card and toss it into a machine with at least a 533 MHz P2. Use the same OS (say, Windows 98, since there's is software overhead dependent upon the OS as well.)
You can't get higher bandwidth without improving the hardware, period. You're not going to get USB 1.1 to run on a 396, there's just not enough internal bandwidth for the computer to effectively handle it. UNIVERSAL should automatically mean "Software-controlled" Since there's no hardware implementation that's universal with everything that comes around.
As stated, 17 inches. quite a few of HP's laptops have a second hard drive bay.
Actually, for this laptop, I use it more for on the go video and audio editing, but if I wish to play a game, the 8600 will suffice just fine for the few games I would play.
As for the "desktop in a laptop" crowd - businesses, not consumers, made that demand. So the laptop was made.
On occasion I'll also use the laptop for folding@home along with my PS3. nearly 3 TFLOPS going to a good cause right there, so the extra power is a good thing.
THANK GOD someone knows what they're talking about. There's seriously pure HARDWARE out there that destroys a full-powered MBP with $5,000 worth of software.
Hell, my CELERON 450 with 224 megs of PC-133 and COOLEDIT (Way to fuck it up, Adobe,) and a SBLive! could stomp a macbook pro in audio recording. Good and great musicians can take cheap stuff and get a GREAT SOUND. Crappy musicians can take everything, compress the fuck out of it, and make it LOUD. Ain't no Mac going to fix a lack of basic knowledge.
The reason the USB2 is screwing up is a driver issue or software issue. USB controllers all rely upon software, not hardware, and are very limited by the hardware your system is running.
I have NO issues, and every USB port on my computer is filled, with usually my webcam, an external hard drive, wireless keyboard and laser mouse (both on separate receivers,) active nearly 100% of the time I'm at the computer.
S1600 and S3200 have been out on HP laptops for well near aayear now. Check the commercial line, not consumer line.
USB is software, thus limited by CPU and RAM (and all related overhead in the OS.) Firewire is all hardware-controlled and isn't limited as such, because a firewire device can communicate with another firewire device withuot a computer. Hard drives are a different story, though, most fall sort of even gigabit-speed transfers.
Oh, snap. I can just take the hard drive out and plug it into the second slot of my laptop. Wait, do the new Mac laptops even have a second hard drive bay?
And this is why I stick with the "PC" side - I get more hardware features. Oh, and I can change my laptops GPU - I don't think there's a Mac notebook/laptop on the market that allows for it. Oh, and I only paid a grand for the laptop, 17", 4GB RAM, 512meg 8600 (discrete, not integrated,) DUAL hard drive bays, remote control, USB, Firewire, Lightscribe Dual-Layer DVD drive (Already own a PS3 for Blu-ray) HDMI, etc, etc.
I own a PS3 as well, but never will it get connected to PSN, at least not by me, maybe my fiance. I'm looking forward to installing a different OS on the PS3 since it's allowed, and I swear it better not monitor a damned thing when I'm not using their network and am on the regular internet. If the hypervisor or some piece of hardware is monitoring me when I'm not on PSN and in a different OS altogether, there will be hell to pay. I will try to get them on hacking and wire fraud at bare minimum.
They should have NO REASON to wipe a damned thing out when they give me EXPLICIT OPTIONS to install a separate OS. From that point on, it's MY HARDWARE, MY SOFTWARE. Do all you want with YOUR SOFTWARE, you TOUCH mine and I'll have your ass on wire fraud charges and hacking.
Almost all batteries are dangerous to store in one form or another. In a solar bank, make damned sure you've got LOADS of ventilation - recharging batteries emit hydrogen. Ever seen a solar installation blow up? I have, it's rather impressive. (Watch "The Abyss" for a good idea.)
Their new pink slip is a damned blog post.
Pissed my cousin off to find out he had lost his job TWO DAYS PRIOR and had to log online to find out 90+% of the employees were laid off.
Someone already pointed this out to Steve - his 'response' was that most, if not all DV camcorders made nowdays use USB 2.0