I agree with 1-3, but not with 4. I'll buy console games simply because of the illusion that I'm avoiding DRM. Console DRM does exist, but it doesn't slow down my system or have a chance of breaking it like PC DRM does (looking at you, Ubisoft). You don't need to worry about those POS license keys if you buy games new (which you basically have to do for all PC games anyway), and PC games also have the same DLC.
Before this announcement, I wished I had the PC version for the superior graphics, controls, and modding capabilities. Now I wish I had the PC version so I could play this DLC I've been looking forward to for a while.
Well, Bethesda themselves released Shivering Isles on the PS3, and that was a rather large piece of DLC.
As someone who owns the PS3 version of Skyrim (wasn't paying attention and ordered it instead of the PC version, said "screw it, I'm impatient" and played it instead of returning it, and now I'm regretting it more and more each day), I can't tell you if Dawnguard is more complex than Shivering Isles.
I spoke with Gamestop a couple weeks ago, and they offered $23 for Skyrim. Right now, they have a +50% trade-in bonus going on, making the trade-in value $34.50. I'm tempted to take advantage of it, and then watch Cheapshark for deals on the PC version of Skyrim. I've seen it for $30-$35 in the past.
Oh, good, somebody else said it. Everything is "green" nowadays. Even college Blue Books are now called "Green Books". And because it's such a nebulous concept, nobody understands it. My boss one time bought a recycling bin and said he got it so we would "be green" and please our clients.
If only they included a link to something kind of online encyclopedia to define that unfamiliar term...
Damn, this computer shit is fucking complicated. Links: How do they work?
Actually, there's a very good reason to define it inline rather than (or in addition to) providing a link: RSS readers. The link doesn't show up in RSS readers (at least not Google reader or my iOS reader), so I had to load the full article, find the (now tiny) link, tap it, and scan the overly wordy Wikipedia article--when all they had to do was add, "(making apps look like real-life things, such as leather)".
Anyways, no, I don't think it's a problem, so long as the skeuomorphic UI doesn't get in the way of work. With that said, I really don't like the OS X Contacts app. There's an example where skeuomorphic sensibilities get in the way of functionality. On the other hand, Calendar works just fine.
Exactly. I can't tell you the number of times I've wondered what the heck I would do if we didn't have a Honda Pilot or something of a similar/larger size. We routinely use all the seats and/or storage capacity, tow stuff, etc. I prefer driving smaller cars, but you can't beat the utility of something like an SUV or pickup.
Actually, this is a good time for a question. For those of you who only have compacts or subcompacts, what do you do in situations where you need to haul stuff? Or is my family just an outlier in that we actually use our SUV for its intended purpose?
A lot of people have fond memories of Nintendo Power because of the walkthroughs and hints the magazine had for various games. I, on the other hand, was always resentful of Nintendo Power, because it often felt like games were intentionally obtuse just to make you go out and get a subscription.
Hell I did it with Blizzard for what, $30 and I got a plush toy.
This has always bothered me. My Blizzard and SWTOR accounts have much stronger authentication (from a user perspective; not sure about the underlying technical security measures) schemes than my bank account. My bank only allows a maximum of 14 characters in a password and severely limits you on what special characters you can use. They also have no form of secondary authentication, such as Blizzard's Battle.net Authenticator. Finally, their security questions are a joke, all along the lines of those mentioned in TFS--"What is your mother's maiden name" and the like.
My solution to bad security questions? Answer unasked questions. What's your mother's maiden name? Pepperoni pizza. What street did you live on? Empire State Building. Then use different answers for different sites, like you should your passwords. Just be sure you can keep track of them--either an encrypted file or a password manager program.
An odd trend I noticed while going through the public school system is that every science teacher I ever had used Comic Sans--including two professors in college. The plural of anecdote is not data, but somehow I'm not surprised that Lisa Randall, a physicist, likes Comic Sans.
I built a system two weeks ago, and I put in a 1TB drive and a 60GB cache SSD. The SSD definitely makes certain things nice--Windows boot time is down to ~7 seconds (I don't use Intel Rapid Start), and loading games (primary purpose of this machine) is also very quick, particularly on games with long load times, such as SWTOR.
That said, for common, everyday use, SSD cache drives are kind of meh. Shaving off a second from Chrome launch time, or even 20 seconds off of Windows boot time, isn't that big a deal in the vast majority of cases. Using an SSD as your primary drive has much more immediate, obvious benefits, and if you can handle the lower storage space, then it's a good idea to go for that and get a platter drive for your DVD collection.
I will say, one nice thing about a cache drive is you don't have to worry about wear on the SSD. If the cache drive starts slowing down, you can just chuck it and get a new one without having to do any data backup/restore, and because the cache drives are small, they're under $100 to replace.
I don't know what it's like in the Linux world, but I imagine things are much better.
YouTube made lots of sense when the iPhone first came out. Back then, youtube.com didn't work properly in Safari--the app was necessary to even watch YouTube videos. Since then, support was added and the.app never received much in the way of updates. This move is actually a good thing. Just go to youtube.com/mobile and tap "add it to the homescreen".
I'm all for hating on the telcos, but sometimes "just build more towers" is much, much easier said than done. For instance, it takes three years to get one built in San Francisco. Granted, not every place is as downright insane as San Francisco is, but it's worth mentioning.
Weird. I'd think that for him, it would be someone going from the past to the past. The 80s, the 50s -- it's all long before he was born. I'm not sure I'd be hooked on a movie of someone going from the 50s to the 20s.
Why? The world isn't that different from 1985--not in the ways that matter. Sure, the cars are dated, and Marty uses a Walkman, but he spends so little time in 1985 that it doesn't make much of a difference. (For the record, the movie is 3 years older than me, and it's always been one of my favorites.)
As a customer, I absolutely hate phone chat and sort of like live (text) chat. This is for a few reasons:
1. So long as the rep has decent grammar, I can always understand what they are saying and don't have to work through whatever accent the person may or may not have. This also means I don't have to ask them to repeat something they said--it's all there to re-read if I need to. 2. I can clearly explain my problem without them trying to interrupt me by asking me to do silly things like rebooting my computer in order to fix the problem that my DSL modem's lights are blinking. 3. I don't have to hear god-awful hold music. Actually, you have to wait less when you do the live chat.
I think the real proof Metro was more than a codename is that they've kept calling it that long after products (Windows Phone 7) that use the UI were released. If it were a codename, that never would have happened. Once Microsoft decided on the name "Vista", we never heard the name "Longhorn" again (outside of articles that talked about the history of the OS, at least).
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I agree with 1-3, but not with 4. I'll buy console games simply because of the illusion that I'm avoiding DRM. Console DRM does exist, but it doesn't slow down my system or have a chance of breaking it like PC DRM does (looking at you, Ubisoft). You don't need to worry about those POS license keys if you buy games new (which you basically have to do for all PC games anyway), and PC games also have the same DLC.
That said, I prefer PC gaming.
I doubt it's due to graphical requirements. The 360 has Dawnguard, and the 360 is weaker than the PS3. I'm guessing the reason here is incompetence.
Before this announcement, I wished I had the PC version for the superior graphics, controls, and modding capabilities. Now I wish I had the PC version so I could play this DLC I've been looking forward to for a while.
Oh, how appropriate this is today:
http://xkcd.com/1102/
Well, Bethesda themselves released Shivering Isles on the PS3, and that was a rather large piece of DLC.
As someone who owns the PS3 version of Skyrim (wasn't paying attention and ordered it instead of the PC version, said "screw it, I'm impatient" and played it instead of returning it, and now I'm regretting it more and more each day), I can't tell you if Dawnguard is more complex than Shivering Isles.
I spoke with Gamestop a couple weeks ago, and they offered $23 for Skyrim. Right now, they have a +50% trade-in bonus going on, making the trade-in value $34.50. I'm tempted to take advantage of it, and then watch Cheapshark for deals on the PC version of Skyrim. I've seen it for $30-$35 in the past.
So, office computers got infected with viruses, and the headline makes it sound like their entire production was shut down. Yawn.
Oh, good, somebody else said it. Everything is "green" nowadays. Even college Blue Books are now called "Green Books". And because it's such a nebulous concept, nobody understands it. My boss one time bought a recycling bin and said he got it so we would "be green" and please our clients.
If only they included a link to something kind of online encyclopedia to define that unfamiliar term...
Damn, this computer shit is fucking complicated. Links: How do they work?
Actually, there's a very good reason to define it inline rather than (or in addition to) providing a link: RSS readers. The link doesn't show up in RSS readers (at least not Google reader or my iOS reader), so I had to load the full article, find the (now tiny) link, tap it, and scan the overly wordy Wikipedia article--when all they had to do was add, "(making apps look like real-life things, such as leather)".
Anyways, no, I don't think it's a problem, so long as the skeuomorphic UI doesn't get in the way of work. With that said, I really don't like the OS X Contacts app. There's an example where skeuomorphic sensibilities get in the way of functionality. On the other hand, Calendar works just fine.
Exactly. I can't tell you the number of times I've wondered what the heck I would do if we didn't have a Honda Pilot or something of a similar/larger size. We routinely use all the seats and/or storage capacity, tow stuff, etc. I prefer driving smaller cars, but you can't beat the utility of something like an SUV or pickup.
Actually, this is a good time for a question. For those of you who only have compacts or subcompacts, what do you do in situations where you need to haul stuff? Or is my family just an outlier in that we actually use our SUV for its intended purpose?
so the real solution is to just get rid of the gas guzzling behemoths
Or give everyone tanks.
DRM on demos? I would say I don't believe it, but sadly, I think I do...
A lot of people have fond memories of Nintendo Power because of the walkthroughs and hints the magazine had for various games. I, on the other hand, was always resentful of Nintendo Power, because it often felt like games were intentionally obtuse just to make you go out and get a subscription.
A good idea, but I'd hate having to remember--exactly--a 5,000 word essay in case I need to reset my password.
Hell I did it with Blizzard for what, $30 and I got a plush toy.
This has always bothered me. My Blizzard and SWTOR accounts have much stronger authentication (from a user perspective; not sure about the underlying technical security measures) schemes than my bank account. My bank only allows a maximum of 14 characters in a password and severely limits you on what special characters you can use. They also have no form of secondary authentication, such as Blizzard's Battle.net Authenticator. Finally, their security questions are a joke, all along the lines of those mentioned in TFS--"What is your mother's maiden name" and the like.
My solution to bad security questions? Answer unasked questions. What's your mother's maiden name? Pepperoni pizza. What street did you live on? Empire State Building. Then use different answers for different sites, like you should your passwords. Just be sure you can keep track of them--either an encrypted file or a password manager program.
An odd trend I noticed while going through the public school system is that every science teacher I ever had used Comic Sans--including two professors in college. The plural of anecdote is not data, but somehow I'm not surprised that Lisa Randall, a physicist, likes Comic Sans.
I would agree...if all of those features weren't entirely optional.
I built a system two weeks ago, and I put in a 1TB drive and a 60GB cache SSD. The SSD definitely makes certain things nice--Windows boot time is down to ~7 seconds (I don't use Intel Rapid Start), and loading games (primary purpose of this machine) is also very quick, particularly on games with long load times, such as SWTOR.
That said, for common, everyday use, SSD cache drives are kind of meh. Shaving off a second from Chrome launch time, or even 20 seconds off of Windows boot time, isn't that big a deal in the vast majority of cases. Using an SSD as your primary drive has much more immediate, obvious benefits, and if you can handle the lower storage space, then it's a good idea to go for that and get a platter drive for your DVD collection.
I will say, one nice thing about a cache drive is you don't have to worry about wear on the SSD. If the cache drive starts slowing down, you can just chuck it and get a new one without having to do any data backup/restore, and because the cache drives are small, they're under $100 to replace.
I don't know what it's like in the Linux world, but I imagine things are much better.
YouTube made lots of sense when the iPhone first came out. Back then, youtube.com didn't work properly in Safari--the app was necessary to even watch YouTube videos. Since then, support was added and the .app never received much in the way of updates. This move is actually a good thing. Just go to youtube.com/mobile and tap "add it to the homescreen".
I'm all for hating on the telcos, but sometimes "just build more towers" is much, much easier said than done. For instance, it takes three years to get one built in San Francisco. Granted, not every place is as downright insane as San Francisco is, but it's worth mentioning.
Weird. I'd think that for him, it would be someone going from the past to the past. The 80s, the 50s -- it's all long before he was born. I'm not sure I'd be hooked on a movie of someone going from the 50s to the 20s.
Why? The world isn't that different from 1985--not in the ways that matter. Sure, the cars are dated, and Marty uses a Walkman, but he spends so little time in 1985 that it doesn't make much of a difference. (For the record, the movie is 3 years older than me, and it's always been one of my favorites.)
Is that the one where Spock has a beard?
As a customer, I absolutely hate phone chat and sort of like live (text) chat. This is for a few reasons:
1. So long as the rep has decent grammar, I can always understand what they are saying and don't have to work through whatever accent the person may or may not have. This also means I don't have to ask them to repeat something they said--it's all there to re-read if I need to.
2. I can clearly explain my problem without them trying to interrupt me by asking me to do silly things like rebooting my computer in order to fix the problem that my DSL modem's lights are blinking.
3. I don't have to hear god-awful hold music. Actually, you have to wait less when you do the live chat.
YMMV.
I think the real proof Metro was more than a codename is that they've kept calling it that long after products (Windows Phone 7) that use the UI were released. If it were a codename, that never would have happened. Once Microsoft decided on the name "Vista", we never heard the name "Longhorn" again (outside of articles that talked about the history of the OS, at least).
The performance difference matters in games with more complex graphics/physics/etc. How would Battlefield 3 perform in OpenGL, or Crysis 2?
More interesting would be comparing DX11 to the current OpenGL offering, rather than DX9.