Everyone who is slagging off steam, try it before you complain. I have had ZERO problems with steam, before I was a sceptic and now I am a convert. The auto-patching auto-updating goodness is worth its weight in gold. Never had a problem playing offline or whatever. Rebuild a PC? no issue, unlimited re-downloads, much easier to kick off steam and walk away than dig out masses of discs, then go through hours or hunt and patch, etc. Games are CHEAP esp if you bag them on sale (GTA4 for 7 bucks USD, Op. Flashpoint Dragon Rising for 5 bucks etc.)
Put it this way: its so good and convenient that I buy games (on sale of course lol) that I can pirate in front of me. I see the pirate bay / rapidshare / usenet link in front of me at the same time as a steam sale. Guess who wins 10/10.
Steam: DRM done right - non intrusive, value added (auto patching, friends lists/voice/matchmaking etc., forget about juggling masses of CDs and cases), cheaper than boxed retail.
If you want to sell a used game then OK you are SOTL but thats the bargain you are making.
Point taken, I'll RTFA next time, totally missed the not save config and modem bit.
Though seriously WTF, esp not saving configs. How much PITA extra work 2AM callout BS is that. You couldn't pay me to run my network like that, I like my sleep and peace of mind, overtime or no overtime pay.
The guy was a moron, no question, but even more moronic were his management, he should never have gotten even 10% far with his mad scientist/gestapo approach. I'd like to see the look on my boss's face if I tried to pull even 5% of what he did in terms of single point of failure lockdown (ie him and his laptop).
a.) plug into router w/ console cable and reboot b.) send break sequence during rommon c.) change confreq to ignore starting config d.) boot with no config e.) "show start" f.) or even smarter: enter enable mode, hit "copy start run", then immediately change the PW
so yes outages involved but no wholesale rebuilding
and since this is an old case it obviously doesn't involve IOS15, dunno how password recovery works in that case but thats irrelevant
IANA CCIE but your assertion is just plain wrong
and if its other vendors, I am no juniper/nortel/etc. expert but I would scarely imagine they would not have similar procedures
*claps* I'm not much of a 'pro' user in that I don't run photoshop or aperture or logic pro etc. but as a techie I knew a great OS stack when I see one. Loved my macbooks even though at heart I am a CLI tweaker and gamer. (yes v unfortunate combination).
You can most def see the shift away from their traditional base (i.e. OSX users who love OSX!) towards mass consumer gadget / media consumption overlord. Don't forget removing firewire from baseline macbooks, thousands of music production / pro audio geeks went windows in an instant. Its been getting harder and harder to defend their practices.
Now that Win7 is no longer a POS it has actually become feasible in my mind to buy a non apple laptop... in the vista days before the latest half a dozen Jobsian 1984 stunts that would have been unthinkable to me.
Fortunately or unfortunately, my hatred of itunes and existence of viable alternatives (i.e. android) has kept me from the iphone / itunes lockin so far, but it would have been easier to roll over and submit had they not kept ignoring their core fanbase and pulling even more evil empire stunts.
Well put. I started to buy games after a long hiatus after seeing some of those insanely good steam sales deals. Heck sometimes I'm even tempted to pay full price, though thankfully that only happens once every two-three months lol.
The convenience of steam is worth paying for esp in this day and age of endless patching. Have you ever tried to reinstall a game then realised to play multiplayer you need to manually hunt down four or five patches? aargh.
also at the end of the day generic FPS shooter does not equal 90 bucks USD of value. What a joke. I'd be v interested in the stats for steam esp numbers during sales, and whether the price cuts + increased numbers of sales results in greater overall income.
Build value into your DRM, lower your prices, people start paying. Another guy at work who was one of the hardcore piracy crowd went over to steam a few years ago and now he buys EVERYTHING through steam.
He's not a journalist. People who write reviews on gadgets are not journalists. Sure they're writers but I wouldn't call them a journalist any more than the people who write articles for gossip mags.
Faster than crackberry physical keyboard if you can spell LOL
After getting used to it, its become a must have feature on touch keyboards IMO. Hunt and peck on touchscreen kb (capacitive or not) seems so primitive and slow now....
Only drawback is that its tricky to use when you're drunk:) but theres nothing stopping you from using it like a normal KB.
You won't want to HAVE to use modded ROMs just to keep up with the mainstream Android release.
The homescreens et al are neat but along the lines of the Android sw update issue, when these services change/update their APIs etc. how long before (if?) HTC responds.
To be honest N1's contact sync w/ google and running gmail/meebo in background is good enough for me, I have the brain power spare to differentiate between IM, email and phone details and don't mind using a different app/interface for each one. At least you can still have centralised notifications which is good enough IMO.
Now for someone to get a decent SIP client w/ g729 support running... If anyone can get a fully featured, fully integrated SIP stack into a smartphone platform its Google. I'm waiting for full seamless integration w/ base OS calling/contacts etc. and smart roaming (i.e. ability to seamlessly switch to wifi if available). The current android apps - fring, sipagent and sipdroid (well those are the ones I tried lol) all have their own issues, funnily enough if you borged them then it would be almost perfect.
Yes I found out to my cost whilst tweaking my media center for couch computing efficiency. Changing font DPI makes some menus/dialogs/apps totally broken looking
The complexity and ongoing maintenance (nevermind teaching how to actually use these things) of setting up a full group policy domain.... for 3 PCs.... to be administered by a non tech savvy, time-limited single parent...
Seriously you're so much better off teaching them a few PC basics and installing a few filters etc. on their PCs. And meatspace solutions (e.g. physically locking away PCs or kb/mice). I'm not going to get into the censorship/freedom thing, its not my (or your) kids....
Worked fine for me growing up, parents would say 'no more nintendo' and enforce it with a stick lol.
yeah i'll have to check it out. when I finally cave and get an iphone lol. the itunes to iphone seamless library interface is the main plus, if iampache can come close its a winner since my linux server is far too pitiful for a VM for itunes (its an old thinkpad).
sounds horribly complicated have you tried ampache? works great as a drop in solution if you have a working LAMP stack (sounds like you do). Though not sure how well it would work on a phone given its a full web-ui.
to be honest you'll prob get nicer interface/functionality running itunes in a VM and then pointing itunes on your touch/iphone to it, I know people who swear by this functionality (but they also live in unlimited 3G data places lol). Not sure about the NAT/firewall port specifics but I'm sure the info is easily available.
Personally I just carry my ipod 80g in my pocket!!!!!! Since I rebuilt my server I didn't bother with ampache. (didn't help that at work my domain - which has my name in it lol - came up in the top 20 count for bandwidth due to my 8 hours a day of mp3 streaming lol (this in a 2000+ end user point network), thankfully guess who does the reports like that).
Maybe behind that whining he knows he's stuck in a catch 22 (i.e. that google drives a huge proportion of his traffic, if he blocks them there goes half his visitors).
Prob because you are migrating. Also I've found IMHO that its worse for geeks because we're kinda set in our ways and assumptions. Finally of course YMMV I don't know whether you have specific requirements, maybe you got the one in a thousand dud unit, etc. etc. etc.
Personally my macbook has required less troubleshooting than any PC I've ever owned or used, once I got used to the apple conventions. If I didn't play video games I would go all OSX at home
As much as I enjoy tinkering w/ open source and recognise its massive contribution, why is it so hard for freetards to grasp the key issue:
For normal users (or even geeks who don't have the time/energy to care), walled garden that "just works" beats open solution that "sorta works" (even 'mostly') 10 times out of 10
Apple's formula is not a secret and their products sell themselves. Should they wish to implement a walled garden that's their perogative (and in their defence it is a major factor for the smooth integration of all their components / relative lack of issues compared to other platforms and OSes.) The market has shown that people are willing to sacrifice open-ness and pure performance for buck for a superior end user experience (note its not value for buck: my time fixing stupid linux bugs is a COST).
Makes AI and pathfinding much easier. check out Empire total war's hex/grid less engine before it got patched, the devs blamed the totally freeform movement for the massive performance hit. I personally don't see much of a problem with hexes, but I abhor grids (too simplistic).
For the square RPG, don't forget flashbacks. The more emo the better. Also you're not allowed to carry a weapon that's smaller than a small cow, if it looks like you could feasibly lift it within the laws of Newtonian physics, then its too small. Remember to spike your hair. And finally, if you're male, remember to look androgenyous.
- auto updating - no need to back them up, redownload ad-infinitum to your heart's content, multiple PCs, no worries - configs get carried across / saves too for some games e.g. L4D configs - usually cheaper than retail esp. during sales, occasionally insane prices e.g. GTA4 for 8 bucks
almost all my legit purchases are through steam these days, in fact I will rather wait a bit and get it on steam than boxed, 95% of the time its cheaper too. Who wants more piles of jewel cases gathering dust on their cupboards (I'm not one of those insane 'collectors')
I'm still a bit iffy on how video card hardware support for HD decoding is so dependent on driver/codec issues. For example, you can't do a lot of it on linux (osx?). Windows codecs are a bit of a nightmare mishmash the way they (don't?) fit together, there's little clear documentation on the net as to how it all hooks in and into what player. e.g. for ages DXDA worked in media centre classic but bad luck if you preferred anything else.
Also the codec you use might not be usable in the program/context you want it for.
For example, in my Vista media center, I have an ATI 5770. - However I can't use DXDA because I need software ffdshow. - And the reason I need software ffdshow is to enable mediacontrol plugin, which allows me to use my remote to change / toggle audio channels and subtitles.
If windows media center's built in player wasn't so sh1tty and allowed me to change subtitles etc. I wouldn't have that issue. But it doesn't. And no I can't use say XBMC for example because I need the TV functionality as well. And no I don't want a media playing appliance because w/ a good card in it it doubles nicely as a virtual xbox. And soforth.....
if your CPU can do at HD natively then that's optimal. Which is any C2D, though I guess that means at least a mATX case, not a dinky little ion box. (I'll that my ATI 5770 packing mATX case anyday... heck it sits under the telly, who cares about size - its not a laptop!)
You can get a decent balance though. Have you seen the new alienware? C2D 1.3 CULV, GT335M, say 3 hours with a midrange card. Or more with switchable, like macbook pro.
The Asus U30Jc looks particularly tasty for the lighter option + with the new optimus switchable feature from Nvidia (supposed to be seamless, no need to manually toggle). Hopefully more models with powerful GPUs are on the way http://zedomax.com/blog/2010/01/08/asus-u30jc-hands-on-review-at-ces-2010/
"Today's decision is a setback for the 50,000 Australians employed in the film industry,"
Seeing as our film industry is pretty small + vast majority of piracy is for overseas content (the local content is mostly live TV stuff - sports, news, fluff reality and cooking shows etc. that nobody pirates, you just watch it if its on etc. and if you pirate neighbours then god bless your simple mind) that statement is kinda like sweatshop workers protesting that fake designer gear is depriving them of their 2 bucks a day.
As for iinet, good on them, they're a good isp, shame about the inevitable appeal.
You do realise its the business that has pushed the faceless ticketing system onto IT since that enables them to slash the helpdesk budget.
Its also the budget constraints and business decisions that mean that the remaining helpdesk staff are paid so poorly and are invariably temp contractors with no career path so are you surprised htey are braindead and have zero technical nous.
But hey said automated system can provide XYZ reams of inaccurate stats, but the stats look good which justifies the lower budget. Nevermind garbage in garbage out.
I've been in this field too long and I've just hit 30.....
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously
Everyone who is slagging off steam, try it before you complain.
I have had ZERO problems with steam, before I was a sceptic and now I am a convert.
The auto-patching auto-updating goodness is worth its weight in gold.
Never had a problem playing offline or whatever.
Rebuild a PC? no issue, unlimited re-downloads, much easier to kick off steam and walk away than dig out masses of discs, then go through hours or hunt and patch, etc.
Games are CHEAP esp if you bag them on sale (GTA4 for 7 bucks USD, Op. Flashpoint Dragon Rising for 5 bucks etc.)
Put it this way: its so good and convenient that I buy games (on sale of course lol) that I can pirate in front of me. I see the pirate bay / rapidshare / usenet link in front of me at the same time as a steam sale. Guess who wins 10/10.
Steam: DRM done right - non intrusive, value added (auto patching, friends lists/voice/matchmaking etc., forget about juggling masses of CDs and cases), cheaper than boxed retail.
If you want to sell a used game then OK you are SOTL but thats the bargain you are making.
Point taken, I'll RTFA next time, totally missed the not save config and modem bit.
Though seriously WTF, esp not saving configs. How much PITA extra work 2AM callout BS is that. You couldn't pay me to run my network like that, I like my sleep and peace of mind, overtime or no overtime pay.
The guy was a moron, no question, but even more moronic were his management, he should never have gotten even 10% far with his mad scientist/gestapo approach. I'd like to see the look on my boss's face if I tried to pull even 5% of what he did in terms of single point of failure lockdown (ie him and his laptop).
assuming cisco gear, bzzzzzt wrong
a.) plug into router w/ console cable and reboot
b.) send break sequence during rommon
c.) change confreq to ignore starting config
d.) boot with no config
e.) "show start"
f.) or even smarter: enter enable mode, hit "copy start run", then immediately change the PW
so yes outages involved but no wholesale rebuilding
and since this is an old case it obviously doesn't involve IOS15, dunno how password recovery works in that case but thats irrelevant
IANA CCIE but your assertion is just plain wrong
and if its other vendors, I am no juniper/nortel/etc. expert but I would scarely imagine they would not have similar procedures
*claps*
I'm not much of a 'pro' user in that I don't run photoshop or aperture or logic pro etc. but as a techie I knew a great OS stack when I see one. Loved my macbooks even though at heart I am a CLI tweaker and gamer. (yes v unfortunate combination).
You can most def see the shift away from their traditional base (i.e. OSX users who love OSX!) towards mass consumer gadget / media consumption overlord. Don't forget removing firewire from baseline macbooks, thousands of music production / pro audio geeks went windows in an instant. Its been getting harder and harder to defend their practices.
Now that Win7 is no longer a POS it has actually become feasible in my mind to buy a non apple laptop... in the vista days before the latest half a dozen Jobsian 1984 stunts that would have been unthinkable to me.
Fortunately or unfortunately, my hatred of itunes and existence of viable alternatives (i.e. android) has kept me from the iphone / itunes lockin so far, but it would have been easier to roll over and submit had they not kept ignoring their core fanbase and pulling even more evil empire stunts.
Well put. I started to buy games after a long hiatus after seeing some of those insanely good steam sales deals. Heck sometimes I'm even tempted to pay full price, though thankfully that only happens once every two-three months lol.
The convenience of steam is worth paying for esp in this day and age of endless patching. Have you ever tried to reinstall a game then realised to play multiplayer you need to manually hunt down four or five patches? aargh.
also at the end of the day generic FPS shooter does not equal 90 bucks USD of value. What a joke.
I'd be v interested in the stats for steam esp numbers during sales, and whether the price cuts + increased numbers of sales results in greater overall income.
Build value into your DRM, lower your prices, people start paying. Another guy at work who was one of the hardcore piracy crowd went over to steam a few years ago and now he buys EVERYTHING through steam.
He's not a journalist. People who write reviews on gadgets are not journalists. Sure they're writers but I wouldn't call them a journalist any more than the people who write articles for gossip mags.
Android phones can install swype keyboard...
Faster than crackberry physical keyboard if you can spell LOL
After getting used to it, its become a must have feature on touch keyboards IMO. Hunt and peck on touchscreen kb (capacitive or not) seems so primitive and slow now....
Only drawback is that its tricky to use when you're drunk :) but theres nothing stopping you from using it like a normal KB.
Exactly why I went with N1.
You won't want to HAVE to use modded ROMs just to keep up with the mainstream Android release.
The homescreens et al are neat but along the lines of the Android sw update issue, when these services change/update their APIs etc. how long before (if?) HTC responds.
To be honest N1's contact sync w/ google and running gmail/meebo in background is good enough for me, I have the brain power spare to differentiate between IM, email and phone details and don't mind using a different app/interface for each one.
At least you can still have centralised notifications which is good enough IMO.
Now for someone to get a decent SIP client w/ g729 support running...
If anyone can get a fully featured, fully integrated SIP stack into a smartphone platform its Google. I'm waiting for full seamless integration w/ base OS calling/contacts etc. and smart roaming (i.e. ability to seamlessly switch to wifi if available). The current android apps - fring, sipagent and sipdroid (well those are the ones I tried lol) all have their own issues, funnily enough if you borged them then it would be almost perfect.
Yes I found out to my cost whilst tweaking my media center for couch computing efficiency. Changing font DPI makes some menus/dialogs/apps totally broken looking
problem solved without upsetting legit users?
everything looks like a nail.
The complexity and ongoing maintenance (nevermind teaching how to actually use these things) of setting up a full group policy domain.... for 3 PCs.... to be administered by a non tech savvy, time-limited single parent...
Seriously you're so much better off teaching them a few PC basics and installing a few filters etc. on their PCs. And meatspace solutions (e.g. physically locking away PCs or kb/mice). I'm not going to get into the censorship/freedom thing, its not my (or your) kids....
Worked fine for me growing up, parents would say 'no more nintendo' and enforce it with a stick lol.
yeah i'll have to check it out. when I finally cave and get an iphone lol.
the itunes to iphone seamless library interface is the main plus, if iampache can come close its a winner since my linux server is far too pitiful for a VM for itunes (its an old thinkpad).
>
God, the uninformed, reactionary Apple-haters are out in full force today.
you must be new around here...
sounds horribly complicated
have you tried ampache? works great as a drop in solution if you have a working LAMP stack (sounds like you do).
Though not sure how well it would work on a phone given its a full web-ui.
to be honest you'll prob get nicer interface/functionality running itunes in a VM and then pointing itunes on your touch/iphone to it, I know people who swear by this functionality (but they also live in unlimited 3G data places lol). Not sure about the NAT/firewall port specifics but I'm sure the info is easily available.
Personally I just carry my ipod 80g in my pocket!!!!!! Since I rebuilt my server I didn't bother with ampache. (didn't help that at work my domain - which has my name in it lol - came up in the top 20 count for bandwidth due to my 8 hours a day of mp3 streaming lol (this in a 2000+ end user point network), thankfully guess who does the reports like that).
This is true until/unless all big content bands together.
Is he advocating unionism? lol
Maybe behind that whining he knows he's stuck in a catch 22 (i.e. that google drives a huge proportion of his traffic, if he blocks them there goes half his visitors).
Prob because you are migrating. Also I've found IMHO that its worse for geeks because we're kinda set in our ways and assumptions. Finally of course YMMV I don't know whether you have specific requirements, maybe you got the one in a thousand dud unit, etc. etc. etc.
Personally my macbook has required less troubleshooting than any PC I've ever owned or used, once I got used to the apple conventions. If I didn't play video games I would go all OSX at home
As much as I enjoy tinkering w/ open source and recognise its massive contribution, why is it so hard for freetards to grasp the key issue:
For normal users (or even geeks who don't have the time/energy to care), walled garden that "just works" beats open solution that "sorta works" (even 'mostly') 10 times out of 10
Apple's formula is not a secret and their products sell themselves. Should they wish to implement a walled garden that's their perogative (and in their defence it is a major factor for the smooth integration of all their components / relative lack of issues compared to other platforms and OSes.) The market has shown that people are willing to sacrifice open-ness and pure performance for buck for a superior end user experience (note its not value for buck: my time fixing stupid linux bugs is a COST).
Makes AI and pathfinding much easier.
check out Empire total war's hex/grid less engine before it got patched, the devs blamed the totally freeform movement for the massive performance hit. I personally don't see much of a problem with hexes, but I abhor grids (too simplistic).
For the square RPG, don't forget flashbacks. The more emo the better.
Also you're not allowed to carry a weapon that's smaller than a small cow, if it looks like you could feasibly lift it within the laws of Newtonian physics, then its too small.
Remember to spike your hair.
And finally, if you're male, remember to look androgenyous.
In case of steam at least there's value added.
- auto updating
- no need to back them up, redownload ad-infinitum to your heart's content, multiple PCs, no worries
- configs get carried across / saves too for some games e.g. L4D configs
- usually cheaper than retail esp. during sales, occasionally insane prices e.g. GTA4 for 8 bucks
almost all my legit purchases are through steam these days, in fact I will rather wait a bit and get it on steam than boxed, 95% of the time its cheaper too. Who wants more piles of jewel cases gathering dust on their cupboards (I'm not one of those insane 'collectors')
I'm still a bit iffy on how video card hardware support for HD decoding is so dependent on driver/codec issues.
For example, you can't do a lot of it on linux (osx?). Windows codecs are a bit of a nightmare mishmash the way they (don't?) fit together, there's little clear documentation on the net as to how it all hooks in and into what player. e.g. for ages DXDA worked in media centre classic but bad luck if you preferred anything else.
Also the codec you use might not be usable in the program/context you want it for.
For example, in my Vista media center, I have an ATI 5770.
- However I can't use DXDA because I need software ffdshow.
- And the reason I need software ffdshow is to enable mediacontrol plugin, which allows me to use my remote to change / toggle audio channels and subtitles.
If windows media center's built in player wasn't so sh1tty and allowed me to change subtitles etc. I wouldn't have that issue. But it doesn't. And no I can't use say XBMC for example because I need the TV functionality as well. And no I don't want a media playing appliance because w/ a good card in it it doubles nicely as a virtual xbox. And soforth.....
if your CPU can do at HD natively then that's optimal. Which is any C2D, though I guess that means at least a mATX case, not a dinky little ion box. (I'll that my ATI 5770 packing mATX case anyday... heck it sits under the telly, who cares about size - its not a laptop!)
You can get a decent balance though. Have you seen the new alienware? C2D 1.3 CULV, GT335M,
say 3 hours with a midrange card. Or more with switchable, like macbook pro.
The Asus U30Jc looks particularly tasty for the lighter option + with the new optimus switchable feature from Nvidia (supposed to be seamless, no need to manually toggle). Hopefully more models with powerful GPUs are on the way
http://zedomax.com/blog/2010/01/08/asus-u30jc-hands-on-review-at-ces-2010/
If cash is no issue and you want small/light the new Alienware looks wicked. 11" but proper midrange card! They claim over 6 hours battery life when not running games.
http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/notebooks/alienware-m11x/pd.aspx?refid=alienware-m11x&cs=19&s=dhs
"Today's decision is a setback for the 50,000 Australians employed in the film industry,"
Seeing as our film industry is pretty small + vast majority of piracy is for overseas content (the local content is mostly live TV stuff - sports, news, fluff reality and cooking shows etc. that nobody pirates, you just watch it if its on etc. and if you pirate neighbours then god bless your simple mind) that statement is kinda like sweatshop workers protesting that fake designer gear is depriving them of their 2 bucks a day.
As for iinet, good on them, they're a good isp, shame about the inevitable appeal.
You do realise its the business that has pushed the faceless ticketing system onto IT since that enables them to slash the helpdesk budget.
Its also the budget constraints and business decisions that mean that the remaining helpdesk staff are paid so poorly and are invariably temp contractors with no career path so are you surprised htey are braindead and have zero technical nous.
But hey said automated system can provide XYZ reams of inaccurate stats, but the stats look good which justifies the lower budget. Nevermind garbage in garbage out.
I've been in this field too long and I've just hit 30.....