Pretty nuts. But at 6 miles, wouldn't it be faster to just walk to work until this crap gets sorted out? Getting some exercise sure beats the red faced swearing behind a steering wheel I'd likely be engaging in if I were in your position.
And thats why I think this is an absolutely retarded idea. Lets assume for a moment that they have a wizard on staff that has allowed them to workaround the United States' horrible broadband infrastructure and cause transmission latency times to exceed the speed of light over Joe Sixpacks 12mb/s comcrap connection. They claim the reason people are going to want this is because "they won't need to buy a multi-thousand dollar PC". What? I'm not even sure I could spend several thousand dollars on a gaming PC if I wanted too these days, even loading it up with bullshit like gaming NICs and quad video cards. This isn't 1992. For anyone that has been paying attention a perfectly suitable gaming PC today means buying a dell with a decent midrange processor, plopping a $75-200 video card and maybe some cheap ram in it. Hardware has never been cheaper or faster. Trying to save a few nickles on hardware in exchange for paying a monthly fee to rent my games of off expensive, capped, shotty internet connection is quite idiotic.
The ONLY advantage this might have is removing compatibility/installation headaches (which have improved over the years but are still the bane of PC gaming). But the answer to that question was to buy a game console that you don't need to run that over your crappy net connection to play single player games and it'll probably still work 5 years down the road* after this company has gone bankrupt.
Honestly, for my applications latency is a larger concern. I could get by with a low latency 128kbps link, but a high latency one like Hughesnet would be useless. But that isn't something thats really talked about in marketing materials much.
Man, that's some heavy shit to think about. After reading that I could really go for the relaxing comfort that can only be provided by a Big Mac value meal washed down with a ice cold budweiser or twelve.
I have a couple utility bills that I still pay with checks because the company wants to charge me $5 so that I pay my bill online. Costs less than half a dollar to mail a check. I've noticed the practice of charging you to pay a bill is more common when paying by phone then it is paying over the internet however.
I swear at least that much just during my morning commute. And while my fellow motorists may drive like they're from another planet I'm pretty sure they are not actually aliens.
Oblivion of course had its bugs (its a pretty complex game...not to big of a surprise) but it was really a step up from previous titles by Bethseda. Even after all the patches, Morrowind still would frequently hang up for nearly a minute when changing cells for no apparent reason. Plus, tons of quest bugs (some of which were fixed with unofficial patches). Oblivion has no such problems in my experience, cell transitions are clean and generally fairly quick. This may not seem like a horrible bug but it was pretty mind numbing to me while playing since cell changes were a frequent part of the game.
Morrowind was also a vast improvement over daggerfall, which had amazing scope but did feature awesome bugs.
They're also working to develop a process that allows the transformation of gold into lead.
Re:Media player classic + codec packs VLC
on
VLC 1.0.0 Released
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· Score: 1
Isn't that just it though? I *can't* use just any player or just any codec pack. I'm with the grandparent. I got tired of downloading some warezy looking codec pack to get 80% of my files to work then fighting to find some obscure codec anyway for the next 10% and then the next 5% and so on. VLC has tracking issues for me (haven't tried 1.0.0 yet) but I've yet to run into a file that it wouldn't play. And frankly, that's my number one priority. Other stuff is nice, but I can and do live without it. Before I had a handful of different players and a number of codec packs that may have been loaded with malware and I STILL couldn't play every file.
Precisely. This idea is so horrendous that I'm forced to assume malice is the root of it even being suggested...a smokescreen to implement a vast surveillance program. As stupid as politicians are, I'm not really sure I can chalk this one up to incompetence. Do you think that after the creation of GPS systems to monitor this, agencies to test and build software, enforcement, etc...that there would actually be a net plus in tax revenue? Ha! And of course, I find the suggestion that the gas tax would be eliminated in favor this absolutely hilarious. Oh no, if this ever gets implemented I'm sure you'll find that the original gas tax also remains quite intact.
And what are they going to do? Force every piece of shit vehicle in existence to retrofit one of these things onto them? Or are they just going to phase it in? Both solutions of course introduce more expensive problems to solve.
This idea introduces an absolutely retarded amount of problems for no reason whatsoever, and it keeps coming up during states magical game of raising taxes but trying to convince you its all about reaming the other guy. Its like using a jackhammer to try to drill an 1/16" hole in a board when you've got a power drill and a hand drill right in your toolbox. If they need more tax revenue, they need to grab hold of their shriveled ball sack and just raise the gas tax, cut spending or even that tire tax isn't terrible compared to this.
Here's what really pisses me off: Half the games I buy used I don't buy used by choice. I buy them used because the publisher has flat out abandoned them. If I want to buy an old PC game that isn't starcraft then I'm not going to find it on store shelves or at gogamer.com. They are DONE with that game and can't be bothered to sell it to me even when I want to buy it. So I have to go hunting for a scratched up CD with perhaps no manual.
So now they're bitching and moaning that some guy (or gamestop) is "stealing" their sales of new media (in actuality he is simply selling it at a pricepoint they are unwilling too) but they leave money on the table by refusing to keep their old titles available for sale. And now they want to cripple non-new games or flat out remove the ability for me to even buy them? Well, to that I say: Fuck you, sir.
Yes, I'm aware of GOG but their list of titles his hardly exhaustive and I have a gutteral feeling there isn't a lot of overlap between publishers making their stuff available DRM free on GOG and the publishers that are complaining about Joe Xbox gamer being able to resell Halo clone of the week after beating it in 10 hours.
Really? The only thing that has ever tripped me up is a few 90s games that for some reason used a 16-bit installer executable. And I can usually work around that without to much trouble.
I suppose there are a few schools of thought on it...but IMO, if some guy could spend $500 and then run me over with with his adamantium plated hover tank with auto targeting laser systems while I flunk pebbles at him from a free slingshot...I wouldn't even download the client for free. Playing a game of "Who's got the most money?" isn't exactly something I would consider an enjoyable hobby activity, even if many hobbies somewhat boil down to that already.
Its one of the reasons (I had others) that I wanted nothing to do with EA's "booster pack" infected titles. I do think selling fancy clothes so the rich kids can continue wearing their designer jeans in the video game is an alright compromise.
Now, not only can the cat block the television causing your in game avatar to die...but he can trip you while playing causing you to bash your skull open on the coffee table.
Perhaps the solution is to capture the motion of the cat as a second party and represent him onscreen alongside you.
PC Gamers always loved to rag on console guys, bragging up our fancy graphics, user maps, multiplayer, etc while spending countless hours fucking with patches, drivers or tweaking hardware to get things to just work. It was sort of a labor of love I guess. Consoles always were a "it just works" option. Aside from blowing into a nintendo cartridge the most difficult technical thing you had to do was figure out which hole to screw the coax into on the back of the TV.
But we've seen a convergence as the console has tried to become more like the PC. And along with that has come all of the PCs bad habits. Frankly, I'm not sure its progress. I think when most people sit in front of a console, they don't want to deal with downloading patches or overheating GPUs, etc.
I remember when people started talking about network connectivity for the xbox 360 and how games could be patched now. That isn't really a good thing. Enter games that don't even work when released because "Hey, we'll just patch it later...or not, maybe we ran out of money. Its not like we'll have to recall it anymore." Hell, Microsoft seemed to basically release the whole 360 console under this plan and it more of less paid off.
I think the next step is consoles with upgrade ports for video cards and ram...introducing the horrors of multiple system configurations and compatibility issues. Hell, they already update the OS system all the time.
More or less. Computer processing power and hard drive space has never been cheaper. Bandwidth has lagged behind and broadband connection penetration is still piss poor. Recent moves by the larger ISPs have indicated an interest in moving backwards or raising the price of said bandwidth.
So why are we particularly interested in moving more of our tasks to the most expensive part of the equation?
This is still a good bit less retarded then that vaporware game service that is supposely going to try and use your cable connection where a monitor cable belongs and expect people to endure 120ms of latency in twitch FPS games to avoid buying a $70 video card.
Yeah, the consensus here seems to be that the show got better...but I only watched the pilot. I thought the idea of teenage John Conner living with his mom sounded like Edward Furlong's screeching portrayal times 1000 plus teen emo angst. Still, if they showed me the robots I probably would have kept watching it. But the acting seemed weak, John Conner was portrayed about as pathetic as I thought the setup would allow and the special effects seemed really low budget.
I guess my real beef is...how many times are they going to tell the exact same story with the same characters for this franchise? The 3 movies are the same story, and the series just looked like the same story told again stretched over a longer time period...and of course it make no sense at all. (If they can keep sending terminators back...why not send them all back to 1980? Or at least put a better password on your time travel equipment so the humans can't use it too?) I'm seeing the new movie because they finally decided to stop telling the same story and actually ADVANCE the series.
I agree that $150 is not "budget" and I own a card in that price range. (or, was in the price range) However, there are not cards in the $50-70 range that are actually pretty great. In the past, anything under $100 was more or less a complete waste of time. $50 was the bottom rung of graphics card and usually got you some kind of over neutered piece of crap that was barely better then onboard video expect for more frequent driver releases. As mentioned by another here, ATI and Nvidia both offer pretty good parts in that price range that will actually play actual games with actual framerates above 12!
I'm not sure I would use the CEO pay thing as an example of why paying more attracts better talent. I mean, have you seen some of these companies with the expensive CEOs? You'd probably be better off hiring a hobo to spin decision wheel.
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Pretty nuts. But at 6 miles, wouldn't it be faster to just walk to work until this crap gets sorted out? Getting some exercise sure beats the red faced swearing behind a steering wheel I'd likely be engaging in if I were in your position.
You still had to build all of the drones first. You'd think they would have stocked that thing up before teleporting it in from Auir.
And thats why I think this is an absolutely retarded idea. Lets assume for a moment that they have a wizard on staff that has allowed them to workaround the United States' horrible broadband infrastructure and cause transmission latency times to exceed the speed of light over Joe Sixpacks 12mb/s comcrap connection. They claim the reason people are going to want this is because "they won't need to buy a multi-thousand dollar PC". What? I'm not even sure I could spend several thousand dollars on a gaming PC if I wanted too these days, even loading it up with bullshit like gaming NICs and quad video cards. This isn't 1992. For anyone that has been paying attention a perfectly suitable gaming PC today means buying a dell with a decent midrange processor, plopping a $75-200 video card and maybe some cheap ram in it. Hardware has never been cheaper or faster. Trying to save a few nickles on hardware in exchange for paying a monthly fee to rent my games of off expensive, capped, shotty internet connection is quite idiotic.
The ONLY advantage this might have is removing compatibility/installation headaches (which have improved over the years but are still the bane of PC gaming). But the answer to that question was to buy a game console that you don't need to run that over your crappy net connection to play single player games and it'll probably still work 5 years down the road* after this company has gone bankrupt.
*May not apply to all Xbox 360s consoles
How long was it before you went back to CompUSA? From the sounds of it, hiring incompetent salesmen actually is better for repeat business!
He's just practicing what he preaches!
Honestly, for my applications latency is a larger concern. I could get by with a low latency 128kbps link, but a high latency one like Hughesnet would be useless. But that isn't something thats really talked about in marketing materials much.
Man, that's some heavy shit to think about. After reading that I could really go for the relaxing comfort that can only be provided by a Big Mac value meal washed down with a ice cold budweiser or twelve.
I have a couple utility bills that I still pay with checks because the company wants to charge me $5 so that I pay my bill online. Costs less than half a dollar to mail a check. I've noticed the practice of charging you to pay a bill is more common when paying by phone then it is paying over the internet however.
I swear at least that much just during my morning commute. And while my fellow motorists may drive like they're from another planet I'm pretty sure they are not actually aliens.
Oblivion of course had its bugs (its a pretty complex game...not to big of a surprise) but it was really a step up from previous titles by Bethseda. Even after all the patches, Morrowind still would frequently hang up for nearly a minute when changing cells for no apparent reason. Plus, tons of quest bugs (some of which were fixed with unofficial patches). Oblivion has no such problems in my experience, cell transitions are clean and generally fairly quick. This may not seem like a horrible bug but it was pretty mind numbing to me while playing since cell changes were a frequent part of the game.
Morrowind was also a vast improvement over daggerfall, which had amazing scope but did feature awesome bugs.
They're also working to develop a process that allows the transformation of gold into lead.
Isn't that just it though? I *can't* use just any player or just any codec pack. I'm with the grandparent. I got tired of downloading some warezy looking codec pack to get 80% of my files to work then fighting to find some obscure codec anyway for the next 10% and then the next 5% and so on. VLC has tracking issues for me (haven't tried 1.0.0 yet) but I've yet to run into a file that it wouldn't play. And frankly, that's my number one priority. Other stuff is nice, but I can and do live without it. Before I had a handful of different players and a number of codec packs that may have been loaded with malware and I STILL couldn't play every file.
Precisely. This idea is so horrendous that I'm forced to assume malice is the root of it even being suggested...a smokescreen to implement a vast surveillance program. As stupid as politicians are, I'm not really sure I can chalk this one up to incompetence. Do you think that after the creation of GPS systems to monitor this, agencies to test and build software, enforcement, etc...that there would actually be a net plus in tax revenue? Ha! And of course, I find the suggestion that the gas tax would be eliminated in favor this absolutely hilarious. Oh no, if this ever gets implemented I'm sure you'll find that the original gas tax also remains quite intact.
And what are they going to do? Force every piece of shit vehicle in existence to retrofit one of these things onto them? Or are they just going to phase it in? Both solutions of course introduce more expensive problems to solve.
This idea introduces an absolutely retarded amount of problems for no reason whatsoever, and it keeps coming up during states magical game of raising taxes but trying to convince you its all about reaming the other guy. Its like using a jackhammer to try to drill an 1/16" hole in a board when you've got a power drill and a hand drill right in your toolbox. If they need more tax revenue, they need to grab hold of their shriveled ball sack and just raise the gas tax, cut spending or even that tire tax isn't terrible compared to this.
Here's what really pisses me off: Half the games I buy used I don't buy used by choice. I buy them used because the publisher has flat out abandoned them. If I want to buy an old PC game that isn't starcraft then I'm not going to find it on store shelves or at gogamer.com. They are DONE with that game and can't be bothered to sell it to me even when I want to buy it. So I have to go hunting for a scratched up CD with perhaps no manual.
So now they're bitching and moaning that some guy (or gamestop) is "stealing" their sales of new media (in actuality he is simply selling it at a pricepoint they are unwilling too) but they leave money on the table by refusing to keep their old titles available for sale. And now they want to cripple non-new games or flat out remove the ability for me to even buy them? Well, to that I say: Fuck you, sir.
Yes, I'm aware of GOG but their list of titles his hardly exhaustive and I have a gutteral feeling there isn't a lot of overlap between publishers making their stuff available DRM free on GOG and the publishers that are complaining about Joe Xbox gamer being able to resell Halo clone of the week after beating it in 10 hours.
Really? The only thing that has ever tripped me up is a few 90s games that for some reason used a 16-bit installer executable. And I can usually work around that without to much trouble.
I suppose there are a few schools of thought on it...but IMO, if some guy could spend $500 and then run me over with with his adamantium plated hover tank with auto targeting laser systems while I flunk pebbles at him from a free slingshot...I wouldn't even download the client for free. Playing a game of "Who's got the most money?" isn't exactly something I would consider an enjoyable hobby activity, even if many hobbies somewhat boil down to that already.
Its one of the reasons (I had others) that I wanted nothing to do with EA's "booster pack" infected titles. I do think selling fancy clothes so the rich kids can continue wearing their designer jeans in the video game is an alright compromise.
Now, not only can the cat block the television causing your in game avatar to die...but he can trip you while playing causing you to bash your skull open on the coffee table.
Perhaps the solution is to capture the motion of the cat as a second party and represent him onscreen alongside you.
They are metaphor for real life then?
Sadly, I have to concur. Things have gotten pretty bad in both camps these days. Particularly when it comes to older title support.
PC Gamers always loved to rag on console guys, bragging up our fancy graphics, user maps, multiplayer, etc while spending countless hours fucking with patches, drivers or tweaking hardware to get things to just work. It was sort of a labor of love I guess. Consoles always were a "it just works" option. Aside from blowing into a nintendo cartridge the most difficult technical thing you had to do was figure out which hole to screw the coax into on the back of the TV.
But we've seen a convergence as the console has tried to become more like the PC. And along with that has come all of the PCs bad habits. Frankly, I'm not sure its progress. I think when most people sit in front of a console, they don't want to deal with downloading patches or overheating GPUs, etc.
I remember when people started talking about network connectivity for the xbox 360 and how games could be patched now. That isn't really a good thing. Enter games that don't even work when released because "Hey, we'll just patch it later...or not, maybe we ran out of money. Its not like we'll have to recall it anymore." Hell, Microsoft seemed to basically release the whole 360 console under this plan and it more of less paid off.
I think the next step is consoles with upgrade ports for video cards and ram...introducing the horrors of multiple system configurations and compatibility issues. Hell, they already update the OS system all the time.
More or less. Computer processing power and hard drive space has never been cheaper. Bandwidth has lagged behind and broadband connection penetration is still piss poor. Recent moves by the larger ISPs have indicated an interest in moving backwards or raising the price of said bandwidth.
So why are we particularly interested in moving more of our tasks to the most expensive part of the equation?
This is still a good bit less retarded then that vaporware game service that is supposely going to try and use your cable connection where a monitor cable belongs and expect people to endure 120ms of latency in twitch FPS games to avoid buying a $70 video card.
Even season 4? You'd think most people would want to sell that off to help them forget it ever happened.
Yeah, the consensus here seems to be that the show got better...but I only watched the pilot. I thought the idea of teenage John Conner living with his mom sounded like Edward Furlong's screeching portrayal times 1000 plus teen emo angst. Still, if they showed me the robots I probably would have kept watching it. But the acting seemed weak, John Conner was portrayed about as pathetic as I thought the setup would allow and the special effects seemed really low budget.
I guess my real beef is...how many times are they going to tell the exact same story with the same characters for this franchise? The 3 movies are the same story, and the series just looked like the same story told again stretched over a longer time period...and of course it make no sense at all. (If they can keep sending terminators back...why not send them all back to 1980? Or at least put a better password on your time travel equipment so the humans can't use it too?) I'm seeing the new movie because they finally decided to stop telling the same story and actually ADVANCE the series.
I agree that $150 is not "budget" and I own a card in that price range. (or, was in the price range) However, there are not cards in the $50-70 range that are actually pretty great. In the past, anything under $100 was more or less a complete waste of time. $50 was the bottom rung of graphics card and usually got you some kind of over neutered piece of crap that was barely better then onboard video expect for more frequent driver releases. As mentioned by another here, ATI and Nvidia both offer pretty good parts in that price range that will actually play actual games with actual framerates above 12!
I'm not sure I would use the CEO pay thing as an example of why paying more attracts better talent. I mean, have you seen some of these companies with the expensive CEOs? You'd probably be better off hiring a hobo to spin decision wheel.