Why is everyone talking about trading games into gamestop or other big retailers.
Classifieds (ebay, craigslist, local company board, whatever) are THE WAY TO GO
I have never ever sold a second hand game for any less than 30% its original cost if its under 3 years old. Average is 50% for say a 1 year old decent current gen console game. Of course YMMV esp if it then becomes a PS3 platinum title for half price or whatever.
For a game under a year old you can EASILY get half to 2/3rds.
For a AAA title less than a month old (e.g. you beat it then list it on ebay right away) try 70-80% return. Heck if say currency exchange rates are in your favour and you buy from somewhere cheap like playasia.com, you can even make a dollar or two, esp if you sell the game BEFORE its released in your area.
And same goes for BUYING used games: why is everyone going to gamespot and complaining about 5 bucks off. You can easily get a used AAA title for say 20-30% discount on ebay used. Or trade via gumtree, craiglist, your company's notice board (esp large corporatiosn with thousands of employees and internal mail lol).
Yes if they gave us a sort of sandbox to play predator in, like FC1, then it would have been a brilliant game. They could have easily rehashed the first half and made it twice as long to boot (another tank level or two comes to mind).
No idea why they didn't leave it at that, it would have been easier to do as well (i.e. no need to create the alien models, AI, weapons and behaviour etc.).
C'mon crysis's gameplay is nowhere as bad as its detractors say it is. Its not a patch on FarCry (the original) but still its a good game. The second half shooting matrix sentinels bit was a boneheaded move though. I had tonnes of fun in the first half of crysis and most people would be of the same opinion: give us more time to play predator with hapless grunts lol.
Still, I prefer my FPSes on PC (heck insert 'demand' instead of prefers lol) and from a purely selfish perspective, boohoo, but obviously this will help their bottom line so as long as they keep making good games its all gravy. Yes I have owned many consoles, the right tool forthe right job and all that (I would much rather play action games, racing games, fighting etc.on consoles).
I wasn't angling for a plasma vs LCD discussion, my point was just in reply to the OP who said why not buy a computer monitor, and the fact is that an LCD OR Plasma HDTV w/ 1080p will be a heck of a lot cheaper than a monitor of the same size.
But anyway since we're talking about something for people to watch movies and video then the point remains the same.
Anyhow unless you're a videophile or are spending big bucks on your setup its a nonstarter, its still good enough to be a major improvement over DVD and SDTV. I'm happy enough with my crappy viewsonic 720p 37" which I know the blacks are nowhere as nice as say my mate's panasonic 1080p plasma. It still sh-ts all over SDTV and DVDs.
Interestingly enough, there is a major chinese financial stake in both major Aussie rare earths companies trying to develop Australian located deposits. ARU and LYC respectively. In LYC's case its a controlling interest. Haven't looked in depth into ARU as I don't hold.
The issue has seemed to be too far beneath the radar for the govt to get involved unlike say OzMinerals (where the federal govt moved to restrict how much stake the incoming Chinese companies were allowed to buy and specifically excluded their biggest resource, Prominent Hills, which is gold + copper).
disclaimer: I hold LYC, aussie citizen, ethnically chinese;)
Gigabit is a lot more fussy about a lot of things. All four pairs are used and the standard (twist spacing etc.) is designed so all the crosstalk etc. cancels out nicely.
The classic is a gigabit cable that someone cut into a small 1m cable which borks it (sometimes). This is because over that short length all 4 pairs happen to have the same twist or section of twist which means the interference cancellation is not working. You will notice Cat6 cables specify where you should cut them and the segment lengths are clearly defined. If you buy a premade short gigabit cable they're manufactured to make sure they work properly over that short length.
Basically its fussier with finer tolerances and you want to KISS for the non techie home consumers. That's how I would look at it.
er, because a 42 inch computer flat panel will cost far more than a 1080p LCD of the same size??
Here in Oz you will be paying 1000AUD for a 30inch monitor. That cash will get you a 42" 1080p plasma. Heck 1080p is fine for couch computing. Can you even get 42inch monitors? Also the TV will most likely have tuners built in. You and I run a media center. Most people do not.
And for your final question: do you really want average consumers to wrestle with ethernet and a TCP/IP stack just to get a signal from their 'video player' to their telly. Simple example: what about networked players? Do you add a switch into the unit and have both the TV and the player on the same subnet/VLAN? Or does the player and TV have its own subnet and the unit acts as a router? Or should the TV? WHich address space should it pick? What if it clashes with the existing network? What if there are duplex negotiation bugs/issues? why the ---- would you want to deal with any of those potential issues than just cable goes in, select the channel, works out of the box.
Please don't start talking about myth and streaming same input into multiple outputs or muxing channels etc. for most people THAT'S COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT
Seriously its like waving a flag in front of a bull. Cue the epenis discussion, none of which will be news to any slashdot reading PC gamer. Why don't you just post a snapshot of today's discussion on rage3d or overclock.net or the like.
Better go break out my 3Dmark vantage benchies and waste hours and hours tuning my ram timings for a 0.5% gain. Then I post links to newegg for the benefit of international readers.
You've never run a good hackintosh before have you?
With a fixed hardware base to test any updates on before distributing etc. its a pretty slick experience, in fact slicker than some hit and giggle linux distros. As long as you wait for someone to work out how to do the next major update you're fine.
Dell mini 9, fully hackintoshed, everything working including BT, two finger scroll, sleep and built in WWAN (3G).
You actually implement the canned textbook nonsense in ITTL in your org?
I've only ever seen lip service and paper titles being thrown about like confetti. We have a process line manager on six figures who has accomplished nothing in the last calender year apart from a few flowcharts which have never been implemented. Then again this organisation sells the commercial equivalent of crack (hint: its black and it comes from the ground and its carbon based) so they couldn't go broke even if they were trying
THe 'official' builds of firefox for non MS OS-es tend to be molasses compared to the custom compiled ones. I'm not really sure why this is.
Swiftfox is a good example for linux. I used Bonecho which is something like your above example for my macbook and noticeably zippier as well. Heck just for laughs I compiled firefox for linux off source and it FLIED compared to the version you get off the official repos
How is this different from the general issue of data retention across any internet connected source?
e.g. say you did prank X in uni and it got reported by the normal paper. Said paper article can be found in google. What's the difference between that and the campus news? Why should the campus news be 'expunged' from the record just because its a campus news not 'normal' news?
You've obviously never seen any corporate build monkeys at work then. Or any crappy VB/.net enterprise 'custom' software that powers our mighty capitalist economy.
Its utterly plausible to me for the exact same scenario to happen in any large organisation, all it takes is one desktop tech to use a key that has been exposed at some point e.g. in a hurry, can't find the work keys, so pulls his personal one out of his pocket, the one that has seem zillions of warez pass through it
Some possibilities a.) they sell your info to marketers. Threat level: meh, unless it results in spam etc. which then rises to annoying but I can deal with it. b.) they profile you. Threat level: severe. e.g. they prove your IP scrobbled a song and can produce a BT log tying your IP to a swarm on the same song/album. Or just put you on a watchlist.
The info itself is not inherently risky but it does expose you to some other associated risks like example b.) above. And the argument 'mp3 tags does not equal owning the song' is going to be as effective as the 'ip is not identity' argument in that its not going to stop them coming after you with a daft but painful and potentially expensive lawsuit. Heck in this case its even more clearcut, what you intentionally mislabel the song? what songs were you listening then? do you own them etc. etc.
Its hard to prove whether you pirated X song you scrobbled or not but its how this info is combined with other info that has me worried specifically re: pirated music or accusations thereof.
On a wider note, the cynical geek in me finds it hard to believe that anybody is remotely surprised, esp. as last.fm users are going to be technically inclined, couldn't y'all see it coming?!?! Nothing on the internet is private if someone wants to look hard enough, and they (as in 'the man') don't need proof to make your life a living hell via these RIAA lawsuits or anything similar.
You've hit the nail on the head. - they have to WANT to quit themselves - you can only be open and honest with them, any attempt to be master armchair psychological manipulator will only backfire and is also a bit arrogant / condescending. Then again I'm one of those blunt people who sometimes puts their foot in their mouth doing nothing more than telling the truth lol. But there's not a lot wrong with just laying it all out for him, you don't have to be confrontational or judgemental, just point out the facts to him calmly and reasonably, and don't get drawn into an argument.
As a friend you want to help them, but really they have to want to help themselves. If they don't then there's not a lot you can do. At some point, cutting and running IS the right thing to do for you. God knows I've wasted large chunks of my life standing by, and tolerating insane amounts of BS (not just talking, actual BS events and things they'd do which I had to clean up afterwards, also copping flak from other people due to guilt by association etc.) from people who were fundamentally wallowing in their own problems/misery/self inflicted issues. If they don't want to help themselves then you're wasting your time.
I've only tried with Nokia models but it works great (N82, 5800). The free version only allows port 80 and gives you a nagware screen the first website you go to but thats it. The paid version allows all ports/protocols with no nag screen.
Beats this device hands down - you always have your phone with you . Of course your carrier charges may be another story...
Discarded laptops are perfect for all in one home server. Most real servers are overpowered for home use including silly electricity bill, heck most recent spec desktops are overpowered. Laptop esp. no screen = low power, quiet, small.
I have a full LAMP stack running ampache (streaming mp3s from my home archive to any web browser), torrentflux-b4rt (headless torrents and usenet), DLNA media server (like itunes) and steam left4dead game server running 24/7 no issues on an IBM T41 (Pentium M 1.6, 512M RAM) so your recent spec laptop should blaze.
Heck stick an external USB drive onto it and you also have a NAS solution. I have NAS so thats redundant (and incidentally the linux solution works well with the NAS, point everything at the mounted share, esp. if the NAS supports NFS though samba works fine for the above applications).
I have colleagues who go down the windows home server route and they swear by it as well.
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Why is everyone talking about trading games into gamestop or other big retailers.
Classifieds (ebay, craigslist, local company board, whatever) are THE WAY TO GO
I have never ever sold a second hand game for any less than 30% its original cost if its under 3 years old. Average is 50% for say a 1 year old decent current gen console game. Of course YMMV esp if it then becomes a PS3 platinum title for half price or whatever.
For a game under a year old you can EASILY get half to 2/3rds.
For a AAA title less than a month old (e.g. you beat it then list it on ebay right away) try 70-80% return. Heck if say currency exchange rates are in your favour and you buy from somewhere cheap like playasia.com, you can even make a dollar or two, esp if you sell the game BEFORE its released in your area.
And same goes for BUYING used games: why is everyone going to gamespot and complaining about 5 bucks off. You can easily get a used AAA title for say 20-30% discount on ebay used. Or trade via gumtree, craiglist, your company's notice board (esp large corporatiosn with thousands of employees and internal mail lol).
Maybe its a bug w/ your card / catalyst drivers or the like.
Seriously that card is what 5 years old? time to upgrade my friend. I remember selling that card on ebay 2-3 years ago on my way up to a Nvidia 7900 ;)
Yes if they gave us a sort of sandbox to play predator in, like FC1, then it would have been a brilliant game. They could have easily rehashed the first half and made it twice as long to boot (another tank level or two comes to mind).
No idea why they didn't leave it at that, it would have been easier to do as well (i.e. no need to create the alien models, AI, weapons and behaviour etc.).
problem solved
C'mon crysis's gameplay is nowhere as bad as its detractors say it is. Its not a patch on FarCry (the original) but still its a good game. The second half shooting matrix sentinels bit was a boneheaded move though. I had tonnes of fun in the first half of crysis and most people would be of the same opinion: give us more time to play predator with hapless grunts lol.
Still, I prefer my FPSes on PC (heck insert 'demand' instead of prefers lol) and from a purely selfish perspective, boohoo, but obviously this will help their bottom line so as long as they keep making good games its all gravy. Yes I have owned many consoles, the right tool forthe right job and all that (I would much rather play action games, racing games, fighting etc.on consoles).
I wasn't angling for a plasma vs LCD discussion, my point was just in reply to the OP who said why not buy a computer monitor, and the fact is that an LCD OR Plasma HDTV w/ 1080p will be a heck of a lot cheaper than a monitor of the same size.
But anyway since we're talking about something for people to watch movies and video then the point remains the same.
Anyhow unless you're a videophile or are spending big bucks on your setup its a nonstarter, its still good enough to be a major improvement over DVD and SDTV. I'm happy enough with my crappy viewsonic 720p 37" which I know the blacks are nowhere as nice as say my mate's panasonic 1080p plasma. It still sh-ts all over SDTV and DVDs.
Interestingly enough, there is a major chinese financial stake in both major Aussie rare earths companies trying to develop Australian located deposits. ARU and LYC respectively. In LYC's case its a controlling interest. Haven't looked in depth into ARU as I don't hold.
The issue has seemed to be too far beneath the radar for the govt to get involved unlike say OzMinerals (where the federal govt moved to restrict how much stake the incoming Chinese companies were allowed to buy and specifically excluded their biggest resource, Prominent Hills, which is gold + copper).
disclaimer: I hold LYC, aussie citizen, ethnically chinese ;)
Gigabit is a lot more fussy about a lot of things. All four pairs are used and the standard (twist spacing etc.) is designed so all the crosstalk etc. cancels out nicely.
The classic is a gigabit cable that someone cut into a small 1m cable which borks it (sometimes). This is because over that short length all 4 pairs happen to have the same twist or section of twist which means the interference cancellation is not working. You will notice Cat6 cables specify where you should cut them and the segment lengths are clearly defined. If you buy a premade short gigabit cable they're manufactured to make sure they work properly over that short length.
Basically its fussier with finer tolerances and you want to KISS for the non techie home consumers. That's how I would look at it.
Of course I also agree that is stupid
er, because a 42 inch computer flat panel will cost far more than a 1080p LCD of the same size??
Here in Oz you will be paying 1000AUD for a 30inch monitor. That cash will get you a 42" 1080p plasma. Heck 1080p is fine for couch computing. Can you even get 42inch monitors?
Also the TV will most likely have tuners built in. You and I run a media center. Most people do not.
And for your final question: do you really want average consumers to wrestle with ethernet and a TCP/IP stack just to get a signal from their 'video player' to their telly.
Simple example: what about networked players? Do you add a switch into the unit and have both the TV and the player on the same subnet/VLAN? Or does the player and TV have its own subnet and the unit acts as a router? Or should the TV? WHich address space should it pick? What if it clashes with the existing network? What if there are duplex negotiation bugs/issues? why the ---- would you want to deal with any of those potential issues than just cable goes in, select the channel, works out of the box.
Please don't start talking about myth and streaming same input into multiple outputs or muxing channels etc. for most people THAT'S COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT
Sorry its a bit of a silly question IMHO
And wait for the $$$ to roll in.
I jest, of course (but it would work a treat).
Tell us (geek crowd) more pls.
Seriously its like waving a flag in front of a bull. Cue the epenis discussion, none of which will be news to any slashdot reading PC gamer. Why don't you just post a snapshot of today's discussion on rage3d or overclock.net or the like.
Better go break out my 3Dmark vantage benchies and waste hours and hours tuning my ram timings for a 0.5% gain. Then I post links to newegg for the benefit of international readers.
oh wait, I wasted them already on slashdot
You've never run a good hackintosh before have you?
With a fixed hardware base to test any updates on before distributing etc. its a pretty slick experience, in fact slicker than some hit and giggle linux distros. As long as you wait for someone to work out how to do the next major update you're fine.
Dell mini 9, fully hackintoshed, everything working including BT, two finger scroll, sleep and built in WWAN (3G).
You actually implement the canned textbook nonsense in ITTL in your org?
I've only ever seen lip service and paper titles being thrown about like confetti. We have a process line manager on six figures who has accomplished nothing in the last calender year apart from a few flowcharts which have never been implemented. Then again this organisation sells the commercial equivalent of crack (hint: its black and it comes from the ground and its carbon based) so they couldn't go broke even if they were trying
"2. The should perform root cause analysis to determine the underlying problem and remove it permanently."
You have a very strange idea of the concept of a service desk. Please tell me more about your utopian company.
THe 'official' builds of firefox for non MS OS-es tend to be molasses compared to the custom compiled ones. I'm not really sure why this is.
Swiftfox is a good example for linux.
I used Bonecho which is something like your above example for my macbook and noticeably zippier as well.
Heck just for laughs I compiled firefox for linux off source and it FLIED compared to the version you get off the official repos
How is this different from the general issue of data retention across any internet connected source?
e.g. say you did prank X in uni and it got reported by the normal paper. Said paper article can be found in google. What's the difference between that and the campus news? Why should the campus news be 'expunged' from the record just because its a campus news not 'normal' news?
It only takes one occasion to do damage potentially.
I have a colleague who's only gotten a virus once in 20+ years of working in IT.
Of course that particular virus/trojan whatever turned out to keylog his internet banking pw and he had his account drained.
he is ultra security paranoid now and even forbids his kids to install anything before he runs it through three different scanners
You've obviously never seen any corporate build monkeys at work then. Or any crappy VB/.net enterprise 'custom' software that powers our mighty capitalist economy.
Its utterly plausible to me for the exact same scenario to happen in any large organisation, all it takes is one desktop tech to use a key that has been exposed at some point e.g. in a hurry, can't find the work keys, so pulls his personal one out of his pocket, the one that has seem zillions of warez pass through it
You're PPP????
network (read:cisco) tech (ducks head).
of course I jest
Some possibilities
a.) they sell your info to marketers. Threat level: meh, unless it results in spam etc. which then rises to annoying but I can deal with it.
b.) they profile you. Threat level: severe. e.g. they prove your IP scrobbled a song and can produce a BT log tying your IP to a swarm on the same song/album. Or just put you on a watchlist.
The info itself is not inherently risky but it does expose you to some other associated risks like example b.) above. And the argument 'mp3 tags does not equal owning the song' is going to be as effective as the 'ip is not identity' argument in that its not going to stop them coming after you with a daft but painful and potentially expensive lawsuit. Heck in this case its even more clearcut, what you intentionally mislabel the song? what songs were you listening then? do you own them etc. etc.
Its hard to prove whether you pirated X song you scrobbled or not but its how this info is combined with other info that has me worried specifically re: pirated music or accusations thereof.
On a wider note, the cynical geek in me finds it hard to believe that anybody is remotely surprised, esp. as last.fm users are going to be technically inclined, couldn't y'all see it coming?!?! Nothing on the internet is private if someone wants to look hard enough, and they (as in 'the man') don't need proof to make your life a living hell via these RIAA lawsuits or anything similar.
You've hit the nail on the head.
- they have to WANT to quit themselves
- you can only be open and honest with them, any attempt to be master armchair psychological manipulator will only backfire and is also a bit arrogant / condescending. Then again I'm one of those blunt people who sometimes puts their foot in their mouth doing nothing more than telling the truth lol. But there's not a lot wrong with just laying it all out for him, you don't have to be confrontational or judgemental, just point out the facts to him calmly and reasonably, and don't get drawn into an argument.
As a friend you want to help them, but really they have to want to help themselves. If they don't then there's not a lot you can do. At some point, cutting and running IS the right thing to do for you. God knows I've wasted large chunks of my life standing by, and tolerating insane amounts of BS (not just talking, actual BS events and things they'd do which I had to clean up afterwards, also copping flak from other people due to guilt by association etc.) from people who were fundamentally wallowing in their own problems/misery/self inflicted issues. If they don't want to help themselves then you're wasting your time.
One word: Joikuspot
Turns your mobile into a wifi hotspot.
I've only tried with Nokia models but it works great (N82, 5800). The free version only allows port 80 and gives you a nagware screen the first website you go to but thats it. The paid version allows all ports/protocols with no nag screen.
Beats this device hands down - you always have your phone with you . Of course your carrier charges may be another story...
Discarded laptops are perfect for all in one home server. Most real servers are overpowered for home use including silly electricity bill, heck most recent spec desktops are overpowered. Laptop esp. no screen = low power, quiet, small.
I have a full LAMP stack running ampache (streaming mp3s from my home archive to any web browser), torrentflux-b4rt (headless torrents and usenet), DLNA media server (like itunes) and steam left4dead game server running 24/7 no issues on an IBM T41 (Pentium M 1.6, 512M RAM) so your recent spec laptop should blaze.
Heck stick an external USB drive onto it and you also have a NAS solution. I have NAS so thats redundant (and incidentally the linux solution works well with the NAS, point everything at the mounted share, esp. if the NAS supports NFS though samba works fine for the above applications).
I have colleagues who go down the windows home server route and they swear by it as well.
YES EXACTLY
Issue = nuke the vm image and copy the stock one across + install a few apps.
local config files could still be an issue though though if you had roaming profiles that could be largely allieviated
Me too
I used an old thinkpad T20 (P3 700Mhz, 512 RAM) and now rocking a T41 (P1.6M with 512RAM).
Runs a full LAMP stack, squid + privoxy caching for my LAN + a left4dead server 24/7 no worries