Star Wars Battlefront has sort of this type of gameplay. There's two teams of several hundred combatants, and you spawn as just another soldier. When you die, you spawn as a different one. You have to be careful because other than you, the wild card, the teams are essentially even, so you have to be sure you make a difference and don't die too much otherwise the balance will tip in the other team's favor.
Take the plunge and spend a one-time purchase on Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead (US$20 and US$50 respectively). Lots of fun, free DLC is still being released for 'em, and lots of people play them.
Doesn't fit your definition of "free" but AFAIK all the free FPSs have been exhausted in this thread already and all of them are pretty old. Experimenting in something a little more recent could be interesting and fun. They're not very "casual" but if it turns out you don't like TF2 you're only down $20.
I installed it on a VirtualBox VM before I did it on physical hardware. I'll check the VM now... I did almost nothing to it except pretty much the stuff you described.
4.9 there too (adjusting for presence of page file).
I'd run windirstat and figure out where the extra space is going, but I can't get access to my host computer from the vm. Stupid broken homegroup and troubleshooter.
I use my own benchmark: How fast my games run. I'm a gamer, so that's what matters to me.
Vista scored about a 3 on the "How many frames can XP draw to the screen in the time it takes THIS OS to draw one frame" benchmark (I used HL2EP1... lower is better). I turn off all the extra stuff in the OS I don't care about the turn off as many services and network filters/providers I can safely, while still keeping the functionality I want.
I ran the same benchmark in Windows 7 (with TF2 this time) and got about a 2. Better, but not good enough for this PC. To be fair it's an old PC and the CPU is the bottleneck in gaming, so a newer OS isn't helping things. Obviously with a newer PC results would be closer to 1 for both OSs.
Oh yeah, Ubuntu 8.10 with Wine scores somewhere from a 1.25 to a 1.5, not bad at all.:) Unfortunately my XP performance in the game is only borderline acceptable to start with so anything slower only gets more annoying.
I think it takes up more than that? I installed it yesterday on a dedicated partition and it's using 6.7gb. Haven't installed anything else substantial to the partition. Mostly just added a few junctions to program appdata stuff on my XP partition.
Windows folder itself is over 8.1 gb (yes I see the numbers don't match, but that's what it says, checked it twice... maybe it's counting symlinks twice).
If you include the default installed Program Files that's another 700mb.
Anyways, I'd wait for 7Lite (see: nLite, vLite) before seriously using this OS on my old PC here.
I just tried Windows 3.11 in a VM for some nostalgia recently. Dear God is it unstable. If you even install the wrong combination of apps you'll get regular "white boxes of doom".
I'm surprised noone else has mentioned BCC. BCC works like To and CC (AFAIK the only difference between THOSE is to indicate who the message is intended for) except recipients don't see the BCC list. So they only see themselves as the recipient, thus no reply all.
At least, that's my understanding of how it works. IANAEmailExpert.
Didn't Vista have an issue with drivers from XP not working, and thus lots of hardware not working, and thus consumers not wanting it?
Well, the first driver I tried to install? Worked in Vista, doesn't work in XP. This does not bode well.
It doesn't help that it's my ethernet adapter, or that it hasn't been supported by nVidia since BEFORE Vista came out. I'm still waiting on proper VISTA drivers for it.
Guess what nVidia's site says I should do? Use Windows Update to install the latest drivers for my hardware.
I hate you too, nVidia.
If I can't fix this I'll probably skip 7 like I did Vista, except I'll go for Jaunty instead. Ubuntu is the ONLY OS I've used where networking has worked OUT OF THE BOX on this computer. And those devs aren't being paid to do that kind of amazing stuff, what the hell is Microsoft doing wrong?
The only thing keeping me tied to Windows at this point is gaming performance, but Wine is quickly changing that...
I ran it in Wine, not only does it not work (it claims it can't write to its profile directory, I didn't try changing it) but it corrupts itself somehow, so it won't work if you run the same binary on Windows (you have to reinstall).
By default UAC is disabled for Microaoft applications (although a closer term to what they used would be "when you make changes to your own computer" as opposed other programs doing it). It will still be triggered by other apps, but this means you won't have to go through dialogs for common tasks like moving/copying files in Explorer or deleting shortcuts off your desktop or Start Menu. Just for stuff like installers and legacy apps when they first run.
It's also on Linux guests but I hear it's still very slow on Linux. Hopefully they will improve it, as well as get DirectX support working soon (AFAIK this should speed up Vista dramatically in a VM, maybe even enough to enable Aero Glass support... I'm not a DirectX expert though so I'm not 100% sure).
Oh yeah, here's a benchmark I ran for the OpenGL support. Not bad at all... it would probably be closer if I had a faster proc (and/or more then one core) and hardware virtualization support.
I never had a laptop in high school, nor a computer issued to me by the school, but I will try to guess what will happen here, especially if you put monitoring software or filters:
Students will format the hard drive and reinstall OSX. If they don't have an install disc they'll torrent one. Ex: TPB
If for some reason they can't do that (they'd get in too much trouble if the monitoring software goes missing from the hard drive) they'll download and burn Linux Live CDs (granted I'm not a Mac person or a big Linux person but the Linux community has got to have a full set of drivers for these things by now) and do everything from the Live CDs, mounting the laptop's drive for persistent storage purposes. Ex: Ubuntu
The students will find ways to disable the monitoring software or trick it into sending false data back to the school, and then set everything back to normal if they have to turn the computer back in. They will either hack the software themselves or will google for a solution online. Ex: tor, driver disabling/uninstalling, startup program/extension control
You are aware that with free virtualization software like Virtual PC, WMWare Player, WMWare Server, or VirtualBox, plus a free OS like Linux with Wine, you don't need to pirate a thing to get your sandbox.
I wonder if there's any people out there who intentionally corrupt an ISO image in a controlled way that is known to be recoverable by someone who knows what they are doing (but not perhaps by automated tools) and then sending out burns of the DVD to different companies to see what they can do.
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I think the whole idea is that it's a lot more difficult for someone to go on a killing spree with a hammer than it is with automatic weapons.
Star Wars Battlefront has sort of this type of gameplay. There's two teams of several hundred combatants, and you spawn as just another soldier. When you die, you spawn as a different one. You have to be careful because other than you, the wild card, the teams are essentially even, so you have to be sure you make a difference and don't die too much otherwise the balance will tip in the other team's favor.
Take the plunge and spend a one-time purchase on Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead (US$20 and US$50 respectively). Lots of fun, free DLC is still being released for 'em, and lots of people play them.
Doesn't fit your definition of "free" but AFAIK all the free FPSs have been exhausted in this thread already and all of them are pretty old. Experimenting in something a little more recent could be interesting and fun. They're not very "casual" but if it turns out you don't like TF2 you're only down $20.
I installed it on a VirtualBox VM before I did it on physical hardware. I'll check the VM now... I did almost nothing to it except pretty much the stuff you described.
4.9 there too (adjusting for presence of page file).
I'd run windirstat and figure out where the extra space is going, but I can't get access to my host computer from the vm. Stupid broken homegroup and troubleshooter.
I use my own benchmark: How fast my games run. I'm a gamer, so that's what matters to me.
Vista scored about a 3 on the "How many frames can XP draw to the screen in the time it takes THIS OS to draw one frame" benchmark (I used HL2EP1... lower is better). I turn off all the extra stuff in the OS I don't care about the turn off as many services and network filters/providers I can safely, while still keeping the functionality I want.
I ran the same benchmark in Windows 7 (with TF2 this time) and got about a 2. Better, but not good enough for this PC. To be fair it's an old PC and the CPU is the bottleneck in gaming, so a newer OS isn't helping things. Obviously with a newer PC results would be closer to 1 for both OSs.
Oh yeah, Ubuntu 8.10 with Wine scores somewhere from a 1.25 to a 1.5, not bad at all. :) Unfortunately my XP performance in the game is only borderline acceptable to start with so anything slower only gets more annoying.
I think it takes up more than that? I installed it yesterday on a dedicated partition and it's using 6.7gb. Haven't installed anything else substantial to the partition. Mostly just added a few junctions to program appdata stuff on my XP partition.
Windows folder itself is over 8.1 gb (yes I see the numbers don't match, but that's what it says, checked it twice... maybe it's counting symlinks twice).
If you include the default installed Program Files that's another 700mb.
Anyways, I'd wait for 7Lite (see: nLite, vLite) before seriously using this OS on my old PC here.
I just tried Windows 3.11 in a VM for some nostalgia recently. Dear God is it unstable. If you even install the wrong combination of apps you'll get regular "white boxes of doom".
I'm surprised noone else has mentioned BCC. BCC works like To and CC (AFAIK the only difference between THOSE is to indicate who the message is intended for) except recipients don't see the BCC list. So they only see themselves as the recipient, thus no reply all.
At least, that's my understanding of how it works. IANAEmailExpert.
(I'm the one who added the bcc tag fyi)
Addendum: By the Vista drivers thing at the beginning, I meant where vendors didn't release Vista drivers for their hardware in a timely manner.
Also I meant to say "Worked in Vista, doesn't work in 7.". Works quite well in XP.
All this stupid hype followed by familiar Windows fail has got me frustrated.
Didn't Vista have an issue with drivers from XP not working, and thus lots of hardware not working, and thus consumers not wanting it?
Well, the first driver I tried to install? Worked in Vista, doesn't work in XP. This does not bode well.
It doesn't help that it's my ethernet adapter, or that it hasn't been supported by nVidia since BEFORE Vista came out. I'm still waiting on proper VISTA drivers for it.
Guess what nVidia's site says I should do? Use Windows Update to install the latest drivers for my hardware.
I hate you too, nVidia.
If I can't fix this I'll probably skip 7 like I did Vista, except I'll go for Jaunty instead. Ubuntu is the ONLY OS I've used where networking has worked OUT OF THE BOX on this computer. And those devs aren't being paid to do that kind of amazing stuff, what the hell is Microsoft doing wrong?
The only thing keeping me tied to Windows at this point is gaming performance, but Wine is quickly changing that...
I ran it in Wine, not only does it not work (it claims it can't write to its profile directory, I didn't try changing it) but it corrupts itself somehow, so it won't work if you run the same binary on Windows (you have to reinstall).
Install cygwin and try again.
Of course he could have a Discover card. :)
(Disclaimer: I agree with your post.)
Funnily enough, I just found out Google Chrome uses Microsoft's list of root certificates.
Umm... apt-get install flash? You'd only need to do it once and then the normal update mechanics should keep it up to date.
(The package name is different but I forget it)
By default UAC is disabled for Microaoft applications (although a closer term to what they used would be "when you make changes to your own computer" as opposed other programs doing it). It will still be triggered by other apps, but this means you won't have to go through dialogs for common tasks like moving/copying files in Explorer or deleting shortcuts off your desktop or Start Menu. Just for stuff like installers and legacy apps when they first run.
It's also on Linux guests but I hear it's still very slow on Linux. Hopefully they will improve it, as well as get DirectX support working soon (AFAIK this should speed up Vista dramatically in a VM, maybe even enough to enable Aero Glass support... I'm not a DirectX expert though so I'm not 100% sure).
Oh yeah, here's a benchmark I ran for the OpenGL support. Not bad at all... it would probably be closer if I had a faster proc (and/or more then one core) and hardware virtualization support.
If you're the RIAA that's all you need to sue.
Funny, every time MY Ubuntu boots up it shows an update icon in the tray telling me security updates are available.
I never had a laptop in high school, nor a computer issued to me by the school, but I will try to guess what will happen here, especially if you put monitoring software or filters:
Nope... bends is caused by nitrogen bubbles forming in your bloodstream, due to diving or rising too quickly.
You are aware that with free virtualization software like Virtual PC, WMWare Player, WMWare Server, or VirtualBox, plus a free OS like Linux with Wine, you don't need to pirate a thing to get your sandbox.
You'd be surprised how resourceful fan communities can be.
I wonder if there's any people out there who intentionally corrupt an ISO image in a controlled way that is known to be recoverable by someone who knows what they are doing (but not perhaps by automated tools) and then sending out burns of the DVD to different companies to see what they can do.
Might be expensive though.
I see it too. Looks like a templating problem (it's where the article-posted times should be going).