If you look into the forums, the second post actually explains that Games Workshop was promoting the site back in 2006 and that they had come to an agreement between the site, Games Workshop and Mythic Entertainment by way of a disclaimer. Apparently, they now allege that they had just discovered the site.
Either there's incredibly bad miscommunication going on inside Games Workshop, or... Well, I can't really think of how anything else really sounds remotely sane about this. I'm not a fan of Warhammer Online or anything, but seriously?
Probably not quite as effective as you want it to be, but if you have Javascript off by default, the Address Bar will have an icon on any pages with JS; Click that, hit Allow, refresh, and that site's on the whitelist. It's fairly well-streamlined, and designed with a different paradigm in mind than NoScript in that you probably just want to set it and forget it. It would be nice to be able to access the lists with a few clicks (there might be an extension for that), but it isn't as though the menu is exactly convoluted. I think the approach is pretty user-friendly overall, minimalist in the same way the interface is.
One of the first things you learn in any driver's education class is to constantly scan the road ahead of you and pay attention to your surroundings while driving, which involves a lot of eye movement (generally in the direction of forward, but eye movement nonetheless). What happens to this system when your eyes are looking a few cars ahead? What happens to the system when you're trying to make a lane change? What happens when reversing?
It's an interesting concept, but... Well, tracking eye movement for vehicular control is probably one of the worst applications I can think of. Unless they know something I don't?
But thankfully, should anything go awry at 31~60MPH, you can always run up and hit the big emergency shut-off buttons on the rear exterior of the vehicle.
Actually, it's worth mentioning that the only core available up front is a single PowerPC core, with 256MB of RAM. It's possible to expand the RAM by adding the VRAM to swap space, and to unlock some SPE's (I can't recall how many, but you aren't given access to all of them), but it's also necessary to program specifically for them; They have their own architecture.
While for computational tasks, it's fairly moot, the GPU is also entirely locked down and inaccessible. Even available screen resolutions are, as I understand it and as I recall, restricted by the hypervisor. Having tried running Xubuntu on the PS3, I can safely say that its usability is very limited. However... It's there. And it works. While not everyone benefits from the use of OtherOS, those who do benefit for very specific reasons.
It's very likely that this firmware update, while not entirely mandatory, will be mandatory (or at least, its descendants will be) with later games and for PSN access, much like homebrewed PSP's using older custom firmware are SOL when trying to play newer games - The user is forced between parting with the CFW or not playing the newer games at all. Personally, I'll keep my CFW - My PSP gets a huge amount of usage in homebrew apps (and really, at this point, saying that I don't pirate games would be redundant seeing as it's more or less impossible or at least incredibly impractical). Hell, Opera Mini and eBuddy Mobile on my PSP? With some apps capable of multitasking? Holy crap. I look forward to a healthy homebrew scene on the PS3, even if it takes until the console is out of production. It's easily capable of becoming an incredibly robust media centre unit, or even more.
This is true, and really in order for things like this to really work, you need to have touch technology in mind when you're developing for it. However, this doesn't exclude Flash from the equation, as the same design principles could be applied to it with touch devices in mind, and in addition, as I've said before, Javascript/CSS are also able to interact on a mouseover/hover basis. What you're saying - and I agree - is that the way we interact with these things needs to change fundamentally in order for them to work optimally with touch devices; But the web in general isn't set up that way right now, and even if the iPad were to become the primary impetus for a shift, it would take some time before much of this design style fades away.
What I'm saying is, saying that it's impossible to deal with is a cop-out, and it is. There are ways around it, clunky or not, and I and the number of others above couldn't have been the only ones to posit so.
Granted, but the point in this particular case is that the very functionality of said javascript and other technologies in this application (mouseover/hover) fundamentally won't work on touch displays, either, if you believe what the author of the article says about it.
Then you combine it with a mode-switch and perhaps give an info-tip about it. Not everyone has use for hovering all the time (even in the realm of Flash), but if there is a case where it happens - and it can happen outside of Flash, such as with CSS/Javascript menus - then at the very least you'll be able to actually access/interact with what you're looking for, rather than being completely unable to do so altogether, which, really, brings usability into question to begin with.
Then in that case, implement a mode switch like another commenter suggested. As I'm reading above, the Nokia N900 has a gesture to enable "cursor mode", which would certainly also work on an iPad or any other touch device. Another commenter suggested that the iPad's capacitive multi-touch could enable light touches of the touchpad to be identified as hovering/cursor movement. Either of those could work, really (or better yet, in tandem), while maintaining the same consistency in design.
If there's anything I've taken from all the Apple talk on its multitouch technology, it's that gestures are everything. What if when Flash is in use, dragging your finger across the display results in "moving the cursor", while a single touch results in a click? Or why not make it function much the same as how laptop touchpads work, where a double-tap+hold equals a click and drag? I can't see that being terribly difficult for Apple or anyone making a touch-based device to implement, really.
I mean, perhaps there's more to it than that, but I can't see the concept of mouseover/hover being a huge showstopper for Flash support on touch-based devices. There are definitely ways around it, and for that matter, there's also CSS/JS mouseover/hover that works the same way. How is this handled on devices like the iPad? Is this also unusable?
As I understand it, it doesn't cache data, it caches applications (and I think also fonts and other often-used things). So startup time for your web browser, e-mail client, IM client, and any other applications you use often will be much faster. For example, Google Chrome loads almost instantaneously on my system, from a cold start. It won't keep a memory cache of things that applications do, and hence it won't speed up compilation, rendering, etc.
For that matter, 2GB of RAM isn't a whole lot to cache with when you think about it. The sweet spot for Vista/Win7 is really around 4GB or higher for SuperFetch to really shine.
You and I would be coming from two very different perspectives in the tech world in this case. As a developer, it's totally understandable on their end (and on yours) that you shouldn't have to be subjected to something like this, and it's quite likely to be their utmost priority to please you in whatever way possible.
I'm not actually advocating lying - I haven't actually flat-out lied in any case with regard to MSFT activation, and when prompted during a license transfer during a rebuild/upgrade or what have you will always respond that it has in fact been activated before and that significant hardware changes had occurred. Most often, that's enough for the automated IVR to proceed. Again, about the only time it actually came down to fishy business is with those sketchy CoA's my former employer kept bringing in.
In my case, as a repair tech, it's far less personal and it's not about the user's pain - It's standard procedure for us (we bear what the user otherwise would in this scenario). Still a pain in the ass, but during the course of a day, the relatively small shop I worked at (with three 4-port KVM benches for service) would probably call in over a dozen or so activations. I guess at this point, having to phone in an activation probably wouldn't bug me so much since I'm so used to it.
That sounds like a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of issue, to be honest. Of the years I've been activating (and transferring) licenses of all sorts in the local PC repair business, I've never once had Microsoft refuse to activate a legit license, regardless of the OEM (I also once screwed up and used a known illegit license just to get Windows installed for the sake of time and forgot to change it afterwards; The guy at the other end actually ended up giving me an activation code for it, too).
Hell, the shop I worked at bought CoA's on the side from a vendor in Ontario. They were usually pulled from VLK systems and so on, and a few of them even had OEM branding. They basically always worked if you told the IVR that you had made an upgrade.:P
Usually, I don't end up having to even talk to a rep over it. If I do, it's mostly "I'm a tech at a PC repair shop, I'm activating this for a customer after a reinstall due to [your choice of: severe malware infection, motherboard failure, hard drive failure, hardware upgrade, etc]. This is the key on the side of the system." - They usually comply.
At least, not in any way, shape or form for people who don't live in close proximity to the servers. For me, I can usually get an average ping of about ~80ms to any given person or site on the internet; Even if the video feed had no additional overhead (and it invariably does), that still takes at least 80ms from when I send input and get to see a response on-screen, at the best of times. People already have issues with some LCD displays and input lag, and that's only on the measure of up to 10-40ms. Add in minimal extra latency for things like wireless controllers, some added latency in-game by console developers trying to squeeze in some extra FPS (sometimes upwards to another 150ms for console games), and you've got some pretty decent lag going on - even more if you've decided to play multiplayer with someone not also on the cloud. In addition, compression artifacts will be present, and requiring a constant 1-2 mbps at minimum for the duration of the session (for "SD"; 5mbps for "HD") is going to make it difficult for most people to play anything with a resolution higher than what consoles were using half a decade ago, or what PC's were using nearly two decades ago.
If the service actually does ship, I have a hard time believing it's going to "revolutionize" anything. I'm all for letting people in on the gaming experience without having to go out and buy consoles or killer PC's, but this certainly isn't the way of the future.
I realize this is a bit of a troll, but I'd like to point out that field hospitals, medics, and battlefield treatment have existed in some form or another at least as far back as the time of the Roman Empire over two millennia ago, and indeed the Romans in particular had extensive knowledge of herbs and medicine in general. I'm fairly sure that this isn't exactly a new concept, here, but if you'd rather people died on the field of honour rather than keeping casualties to a minimum where possible, then hey, you're welcome to go fight in Iraq or Afghanistan and deny receiving medical attention when an unseen IED or RPG ambush blows apart your convoy because "in war people die".
It's true that people die in war, but that doesn't mean the number of people who do die can't be reduced. Should development of UAV's and bomb disposal robots be halted as a waste of money and instead use bomb squads and fighter/recon sorties because people are supposed to be dying?
In World War II, Japan learned a harsh lesson with regard to the preservation of the lives of its combatants. One major example, when the bulk of their carrier force was lost at Midway, so, too, was the bulk of their most experienced fighter pilots. That fact alone is likely to have cost them the war. Their disregard for pilot safety in aircraft design, in ship design (the carrier decks were thinly-armoured, the hangars were filled with explosives and fuel, and much of the people below deck at the time of their sinking were vaporized), and in philosophy, cost them the lives of their finest pilots and warriors. Would you ask of the people serving in the armed forces to place valour and honour before life like the Japanese did? To waste their training, their skill, their experience, for glory, in the name of "strengthening the ability to fight a war"?
Saving the lives of wounded soldiers is a must. It might be true that things like getting an arm or a leg blown off limits the quality of life you can expect after you recover, but it's also true that getting shot in the shoulder or the neck might not cause permanent damage, but might also cause heavy blood loss. Something like what's being talked about in the article would help save lives in these situations by reducing the soldier's heart rate and other vitals enough to prolong his or her ability to survive, particularly during an engagement where immediate medical attention might not be possible. So instead of having someone shot in the neck and bleeding out in a few minutes, you inject them with this and exponentially increase the window of opportunity to save their life. That's not being weak - That's being smart.
Besides, if war was only about killing as many of the enemy as possible, it'd come down to nuclear exchange as a first option. That sort of mindset is only applicable during a state of total war - When do you think was the last time that happened? And besides, even then, in order to kill more of the other guy, you need to make sure that less of your guys are killed, too.
I still can't figure out exactly what this does. I've even looked up SLOrk and PLOrk, and I don't have any idea what they do, either. Is it a sort of MIDI-esque endeavour? Some kind of networking for digital instruments? Something entirely different?
Yeah, I've heard of those, but I can't say how well they work (especially given the amount of optimization done for the joystick inputs (this emulates a gamepad)) and, well, $100 price tag.
Yes, but there aren't any provisions in-game to make use of a keyboard+mouse control scheme - The PS3 does, however, allow for use of the keyboard/mouse to navigate its browser/XMB, but still nothing for in-game. Developers could likely fairly easily set it up to work that way, but unfortunately, the vast majority of PS3 users probably don't have keyboards/mice hanging off, so why bother?
While it outsold MW1, MW2's PC port sold a paltry 3% of total MW2 sales - I believe that says quite a lot about it.
Frankly, I'm fairly sure that's what they're going for - Cripple the experience on the platform that's easiest to pirate for, and encourage people to move to the locked-down platforms (360, PS3). At least, that's what it looks like to me. There's more money in the console versions, and the numbers pretty much scream as much. I can hear it now - "Why bother with the PC this time around? It only sold 3% last time and look at the piracy! Just focus on the 360/PS3". I wouldn't really even give a damn if not for the fact that controllers are absolutely worthless to me as far as first-person shooters go.
You got it. That's the single easiest way to do it on Windows platforms. Single executable, no install, just run it and let it connect. Works with a dyndns if you don't have a static IP, and it penetrates most firewalls. Only two caveats: It doesn't work well with Aero, so disabling the Themes service beforehand or ASAP is a must to maintain the connection's speed and stability. Second, it doesn't work with UAC - A UAC prompt will immediately disconnect the session and prevent any new ones from interacting with the desktop until the privileged app is terminated. Thus, unless messing with UAC isn't necessary, turning it off, too, is also a must.
I'm not about to wade through 450 comments to find out. I wonder if this has any correlation with the finding that some people actually ended up preferring the sound of MP3-compressed, artefacted music than the original, lossless copy? Something about compression artefacts, for whatever reason, seems to be defining music as we know it today.
That's not to say that 48kbps AACplusv2 doesn't sound damned good for the bitrate (depending on the music type), mind you. It's absolutely awesome for low-bandwidth connections for streaming audio. But I do find it incredibly interesting that this is the case - It means that in essence, it's not a question of accurate reproduction of the source material in these cases, but rather what people seem to be finding more "natural", as far as what they're used to hearing. Or maybe there's just something about lossy compression artefacts that sound good to some people. Certainly, it bugs me to no end, but I'm not most people.
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If you look into the forums, the second post actually explains that Games Workshop was promoting the site back in 2006 and that they had come to an agreement between the site, Games Workshop and Mythic Entertainment by way of a disclaimer. Apparently, they now allege that they had just discovered the site.
Either there's incredibly bad miscommunication going on inside Games Workshop, or... Well, I can't really think of how anything else really sounds remotely sane about this. I'm not a fan of Warhammer Online or anything, but seriously?
Probably not quite as effective as you want it to be, but if you have Javascript off by default, the Address Bar will have an icon on any pages with JS; Click that, hit Allow, refresh, and that site's on the whitelist. It's fairly well-streamlined, and designed with a different paradigm in mind than NoScript in that you probably just want to set it and forget it. It would be nice to be able to access the lists with a few clicks (there might be an extension for that), but it isn't as though the menu is exactly convoluted. I think the approach is pretty user-friendly overall, minimalist in the same way the interface is.
One of the first things you learn in any driver's education class is to constantly scan the road ahead of you and pay attention to your surroundings while driving, which involves a lot of eye movement (generally in the direction of forward, but eye movement nonetheless). What happens to this system when your eyes are looking a few cars ahead? What happens to the system when you're trying to make a lane change? What happens when reversing?
It's an interesting concept, but... Well, tracking eye movement for vehicular control is probably one of the worst applications I can think of. Unless they know something I don't?
But thankfully, should anything go awry at 31~60MPH, you can always run up and hit the big emergency shut-off buttons on the rear exterior of the vehicle.
Actually, it's worth mentioning that the only core available up front is a single PowerPC core, with 256MB of RAM. It's possible to expand the RAM by adding the VRAM to swap space, and to unlock some SPE's (I can't recall how many, but you aren't given access to all of them), but it's also necessary to program specifically for them; They have their own architecture.
While for computational tasks, it's fairly moot, the GPU is also entirely locked down and inaccessible. Even available screen resolutions are, as I understand it and as I recall, restricted by the hypervisor. Having tried running Xubuntu on the PS3, I can safely say that its usability is very limited. However... It's there. And it works. While not everyone benefits from the use of OtherOS, those who do benefit for very specific reasons.
It's very likely that this firmware update, while not entirely mandatory, will be mandatory (or at least, its descendants will be) with later games and for PSN access, much like homebrewed PSP's using older custom firmware are SOL when trying to play newer games - The user is forced between parting with the CFW or not playing the newer games at all. Personally, I'll keep my CFW - My PSP gets a huge amount of usage in homebrew apps (and really, at this point, saying that I don't pirate games would be redundant seeing as it's more or less impossible or at least incredibly impractical). Hell, Opera Mini and eBuddy Mobile on my PSP? With some apps capable of multitasking? Holy crap. I look forward to a healthy homebrew scene on the PS3, even if it takes until the console is out of production. It's easily capable of becoming an incredibly robust media centre unit, or even more.
Hey, thanks for that link, I'd just been thinking about that guy but I couldn't for the life of me remember his name. =D
This is true, and really in order for things like this to really work, you need to have touch technology in mind when you're developing for it. However, this doesn't exclude Flash from the equation, as the same design principles could be applied to it with touch devices in mind, and in addition, as I've said before, Javascript/CSS are also able to interact on a mouseover/hover basis. What you're saying - and I agree - is that the way we interact with these things needs to change fundamentally in order for them to work optimally with touch devices; But the web in general isn't set up that way right now, and even if the iPad were to become the primary impetus for a shift, it would take some time before much of this design style fades away.
What I'm saying is, saying that it's impossible to deal with is a cop-out, and it is. There are ways around it, clunky or not, and I and the number of others above couldn't have been the only ones to posit so.
Granted, but the point in this particular case is that the very functionality of said javascript and other technologies in this application (mouseover/hover) fundamentally won't work on touch displays, either, if you believe what the author of the article says about it.
Then you combine it with a mode-switch and perhaps give an info-tip about it. Not everyone has use for hovering all the time (even in the realm of Flash), but if there is a case where it happens - and it can happen outside of Flash, such as with CSS/Javascript menus - then at the very least you'll be able to actually access/interact with what you're looking for, rather than being completely unable to do so altogether, which, really, brings usability into question to begin with.
Then in that case, implement a mode switch like another commenter suggested. As I'm reading above, the Nokia N900 has a gesture to enable "cursor mode", which would certainly also work on an iPad or any other touch device. Another commenter suggested that the iPad's capacitive multi-touch could enable light touches of the touchpad to be identified as hovering/cursor movement. Either of those could work, really (or better yet, in tandem), while maintaining the same consistency in design.
Well, you can actually use a trackpad without buttons, too. A quick tap is a single click, a double-tap+hold is a click and drag.
If there's anything I've taken from all the Apple talk on its multitouch technology, it's that gestures are everything. What if when Flash is in use, dragging your finger across the display results in "moving the cursor", while a single touch results in a click? Or why not make it function much the same as how laptop touchpads work, where a double-tap+hold equals a click and drag? I can't see that being terribly difficult for Apple or anyone making a touch-based device to implement, really.
I mean, perhaps there's more to it than that, but I can't see the concept of mouseover/hover being a huge showstopper for Flash support on touch-based devices. There are definitely ways around it, and for that matter, there's also CSS/JS mouseover/hover that works the same way. How is this handled on devices like the iPad? Is this also unusable?
As I understand it, it doesn't cache data, it caches applications (and I think also fonts and other often-used things). So startup time for your web browser, e-mail client, IM client, and any other applications you use often will be much faster. For example, Google Chrome loads almost instantaneously on my system, from a cold start. It won't keep a memory cache of things that applications do, and hence it won't speed up compilation, rendering, etc.
For that matter, 2GB of RAM isn't a whole lot to cache with when you think about it. The sweet spot for Vista/Win7 is really around 4GB or higher for SuperFetch to really shine.
You and I would be coming from two very different perspectives in the tech world in this case. As a developer, it's totally understandable on their end (and on yours) that you shouldn't have to be subjected to something like this, and it's quite likely to be their utmost priority to please you in whatever way possible.
I'm not actually advocating lying - I haven't actually flat-out lied in any case with regard to MSFT activation, and when prompted during a license transfer during a rebuild/upgrade or what have you will always respond that it has in fact been activated before and that significant hardware changes had occurred. Most often, that's enough for the automated IVR to proceed. Again, about the only time it actually came down to fishy business is with those sketchy CoA's my former employer kept bringing in.
In my case, as a repair tech, it's far less personal and it's not about the user's pain - It's standard procedure for us (we bear what the user otherwise would in this scenario). Still a pain in the ass, but during the course of a day, the relatively small shop I worked at (with three 4-port KVM benches for service) would probably call in over a dozen or so activations. I guess at this point, having to phone in an activation probably wouldn't bug me so much since I'm so used to it.
That sounds like a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of issue, to be honest. Of the years I've been activating (and transferring) licenses of all sorts in the local PC repair business, I've never once had Microsoft refuse to activate a legit license, regardless of the OEM (I also once screwed up and used a known illegit license just to get Windows installed for the sake of time and forgot to change it afterwards; The guy at the other end actually ended up giving me an activation code for it, too).
Hell, the shop I worked at bought CoA's on the side from a vendor in Ontario. They were usually pulled from VLK systems and so on, and a few of them even had OEM branding. They basically always worked if you told the IVR that you had made an upgrade. :P
Usually, I don't end up having to even talk to a rep over it. If I do, it's mostly "I'm a tech at a PC repair shop, I'm activating this for a customer after a reinstall due to [your choice of: severe malware infection, motherboard failure, hard drive failure, hardware upgrade, etc]. This is the key on the side of the system." - They usually comply.
At least, not in any way, shape or form for people who don't live in close proximity to the servers. For me, I can usually get an average ping of about ~80ms to any given person or site on the internet; Even if the video feed had no additional overhead (and it invariably does), that still takes at least 80ms from when I send input and get to see a response on-screen, at the best of times. People already have issues with some LCD displays and input lag, and that's only on the measure of up to 10-40ms. Add in minimal extra latency for things like wireless controllers, some added latency in-game by console developers trying to squeeze in some extra FPS (sometimes upwards to another 150ms for console games), and you've got some pretty decent lag going on - even more if you've decided to play multiplayer with someone not also on the cloud. In addition, compression artifacts will be present, and requiring a constant 1-2 mbps at minimum for the duration of the session (for "SD"; 5mbps for "HD") is going to make it difficult for most people to play anything with a resolution higher than what consoles were using half a decade ago, or what PC's were using nearly two decades ago.
If the service actually does ship, I have a hard time believing it's going to "revolutionize" anything. I'm all for letting people in on the gaming experience without having to go out and buy consoles or killer PC's, but this certainly isn't the way of the future.
I realize this is a bit of a troll, but I'd like to point out that field hospitals, medics, and battlefield treatment have existed in some form or another at least as far back as the time of the Roman Empire over two millennia ago, and indeed the Romans in particular had extensive knowledge of herbs and medicine in general. I'm fairly sure that this isn't exactly a new concept, here, but if you'd rather people died on the field of honour rather than keeping casualties to a minimum where possible, then hey, you're welcome to go fight in Iraq or Afghanistan and deny receiving medical attention when an unseen IED or RPG ambush blows apart your convoy because "in war people die".
It's true that people die in war, but that doesn't mean the number of people who do die can't be reduced. Should development of UAV's and bomb disposal robots be halted as a waste of money and instead use bomb squads and fighter/recon sorties because people are supposed to be dying?
In World War II, Japan learned a harsh lesson with regard to the preservation of the lives of its combatants. One major example, when the bulk of their carrier force was lost at Midway, so, too, was the bulk of their most experienced fighter pilots. That fact alone is likely to have cost them the war. Their disregard for pilot safety in aircraft design, in ship design (the carrier decks were thinly-armoured, the hangars were filled with explosives and fuel, and much of the people below deck at the time of their sinking were vaporized), and in philosophy, cost them the lives of their finest pilots and warriors. Would you ask of the people serving in the armed forces to place valour and honour before life like the Japanese did? To waste their training, their skill, their experience, for glory, in the name of "strengthening the ability to fight a war"?
Saving the lives of wounded soldiers is a must. It might be true that things like getting an arm or a leg blown off limits the quality of life you can expect after you recover, but it's also true that getting shot in the shoulder or the neck might not cause permanent damage, but might also cause heavy blood loss. Something like what's being talked about in the article would help save lives in these situations by reducing the soldier's heart rate and other vitals enough to prolong his or her ability to survive, particularly during an engagement where immediate medical attention might not be possible. So instead of having someone shot in the neck and bleeding out in a few minutes, you inject them with this and exponentially increase the window of opportunity to save their life. That's not being weak - That's being smart.
Besides, if war was only about killing as many of the enemy as possible, it'd come down to nuclear exchange as a first option. That sort of mindset is only applicable during a state of total war - When do you think was the last time that happened? And besides, even then, in order to kill more of the other guy, you need to make sure that less of your guys are killed, too.
Hard-working phishers? What? Did we cross over into the Twilight Zone, here?
I still can't figure out exactly what this does. I've even looked up SLOrk and PLOrk, and I don't have any idea what they do, either. Is it a sort of MIDI-esque endeavour? Some kind of networking for digital instruments? Something entirely different?
Yeah, I've heard of those, but I can't say how well they work (especially given the amount of optimization done for the joystick inputs (this emulates a gamepad)) and, well, $100 price tag.
Yes, but there aren't any provisions in-game to make use of a keyboard+mouse control scheme - The PS3 does, however, allow for use of the keyboard/mouse to navigate its browser/XMB, but still nothing for in-game. Developers could likely fairly easily set it up to work that way, but unfortunately, the vast majority of PS3 users probably don't have keyboards/mice hanging off, so why bother?
While it outsold MW1, MW2's PC port sold a paltry 3% of total MW2 sales - I believe that says quite a lot about it.
Frankly, I'm fairly sure that's what they're going for - Cripple the experience on the platform that's easiest to pirate for, and encourage people to move to the locked-down platforms (360, PS3). At least, that's what it looks like to me. There's more money in the console versions, and the numbers pretty much scream as much. I can hear it now - "Why bother with the PC this time around? It only sold 3% last time and look at the piracy! Just focus on the 360/PS3". I wouldn't really even give a damn if not for the fact that controllers are absolutely worthless to me as far as first-person shooters go.
Of course, I should add that this makes no difference when connecting to 2k/XP machines.
You got it. That's the single easiest way to do it on Windows platforms. Single executable, no install, just run it and let it connect. Works with a dyndns if you don't have a static IP, and it penetrates most firewalls. Only two caveats: It doesn't work well with Aero, so disabling the Themes service beforehand or ASAP is a must to maintain the connection's speed and stability. Second, it doesn't work with UAC - A UAC prompt will immediately disconnect the session and prevent any new ones from interacting with the desktop until the privileged app is terminated. Thus, unless messing with UAC isn't necessary, turning it off, too, is also a must.
But only for so long as we can keep shooting down those pesky UFO's! Nothing a few Firestorms and an Avenger can't fix, though. =D
I'm not about to wade through 450 comments to find out. I wonder if this has any correlation with the finding that some people actually ended up preferring the sound of MP3-compressed, artefacted music than the original, lossless copy? Something about compression artefacts, for whatever reason, seems to be defining music as we know it today.
That's not to say that 48kbps AACplusv2 doesn't sound damned good for the bitrate (depending on the music type), mind you. It's absolutely awesome for low-bandwidth connections for streaming audio. But I do find it incredibly interesting that this is the case - It means that in essence, it's not a question of accurate reproduction of the source material in these cases, but rather what people seem to be finding more "natural", as far as what they're used to hearing. Or maybe there's just something about lossy compression artefacts that sound good to some people. Certainly, it bugs me to no end, but I'm not most people.