I have a hard time believing that Valve or Vivendi put out identical CD-keys that just magically didn't work on STEAM but worked on WON. If that happened to you it was probably a keygen that got you. Nowadays I think you can reset a serial key if you can show them the physical game. Or in the case of STEAM a credit card invoice.
I always get my mod points whenever I'm away from the computer for a while or busy enough to not browse slashdot. Always. That usually results in me not using all of them or just modding randomly so I get rid of them all in time.
If you never take a break from slashdot try taking one and see if you get any.
I've gotten mod points 4-8 times since I've joined. It could also be that your mods get metamodded down so you get points less often.
On the topic of things that are perplexing. My current box has been flaky during bootup for a year or so. It started with random bluescreens when stressed so I messed around with the ram and found that leaving only one 512 stick would fix the problem. I ran memtest overnight on all the RAM and didn't find anything so I assumed it was the motherboard and sent it back to the supplier. I then moved the RAM and GPU to another computer where they worked flawlessly for quite some time.
After a long while I got the same motherboard back with a note that said it was working perfectly when running 3dmark overnight. So I assembled the computer and it worked flawlessly for a while. Then the trouble started again when I removed a DVD-drive. Please note that I wasn't anywhere near the motherboard, I just pulled out the IDE cable and molex and removed the drive. Then the computer wouldn't boot correctly. It usually posted OK but locked up or rebooted by itself before getting to the bootloader. If you actually got as far as to see the BIOS settings it locked up after about four seconds. After 20 or so hard reboots I gave up and powered it off.
It was completely powered off for about 24 hours when I decided to try again. And it booted flawlessly. I had it running for 20 or so days before booting after a windows update and it wouldn't boot again. So I did the same thing: I switched off the PSU and waited for several hours. Once again it booted without a problem and ran for a month. After that I've been able to reboot without a problem but powercycles require several hours of a diconnected PSU (I'm not sure if the PSU needs to be disconnected or if it would work with line power plugged in). Recently I swapped out the power supply because the old one let out the magic smoke. This led me to believe it might have been a flaky PSU (Antec) all along. With another CPU it still runs flawlessly but now I can't reboot but can apparently powercycle without waiting.
What could mess up the motherboard (or the CPU but the motherboard is more likely) in such a way that it will boot and run perfectly some of the time?
Most Germans and French suck at English. They're about as proficient as I am in German with a couple of years of formal study without any immersion. As long as they dub their movies and games they will never learn good English. If you're only talking about the IT segment of the job market you're probably right.
In Europe the grid voltage is 240 volts. I'm not sure what the amp rating on normal wall sockets are in other countries but here it's 6 amps or 10 amps. Please note that I'm not implying that there is a use for 1.6KW PSU's just that our grid could power them without rewiring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy/
In the 1800's there lived a man called Frédéric Bastiat. He tried to refute the old fallacy about a broken window being good for the economy. You need to read about it and so does just about everyone else.
As far as I know even the later Soviet tanks were resistant to fire bottles. The German tanks should've been fairly protected as well. I always thought the German problem was poor logistics, low production numbers, mechanical failure and running out of fuel. If anyone knew how to protect tanks from infantry it was the Germans. They even painted their tanks in a special anti-magnetic paint even though the Soviets didn't field any magnetic shaped charges (the Germans did though.)
You're misreading me. The only reason I included the part about intellectual monopoly was so it wouldn't be brought up as an invalid counter argument to my original post.
I've been irritated lately by persons calling Microsoft a monopoly while at the same time running some non-MS OS legally. That was my only reason for posting in the first place.
I'm not trying to redefine words I'm trying to keep them from being redefined.
Of course you cannot know my knowledge level or opinions from what I've posted in this thread. So let me tell you where I come from. I'm a bat shit insane libertarian that thinks that there is no such thing as intellectual property. This is on a principal level. I would be pretty happy with IP laws that are milder than today, somewhere along the lines of the original patent and copyright times in the US. I've not gotten these views willy nilly so I'm fairly familiar with the subject.
I know that the GPL requires copyright to work and if there were no such thing it would basically be a BSD license. I'm not saying that something with the GPL license is a monopoly I'm saying that any copyrighted item can be and most likely is a monopoly. Microsoft has a monopoly on selling Windows of different flavours. They do _not_ have a monopoly on the OS market. Which was my entire point. The part about intellectual monopolies was a way to guard against any nitpicking. I.e. You might be able to get another OS but Microsoft is the only one who can sell Windows.
I'm not talking about having a different meaning for different words in different contexts. I'm talking about using a word in the wrong way. Saying that MS has been convicted of breaking anti-trust laws or anti-monopoly laws is one thing, saying that MS is a monopoly is another thing.
However, any company that uses any kind of copyright or patents are by definition monopoly's. I'm guessing you're not talking about that aspect and in that case if you can legally or practically get another operating system then MS is not a monopoly and it can not be. The word you are looking for is oligopoly.
Could you people please stop abusing the word monopoly? When you buy a computer can you choose a different operating system? If you can it's probably not a monopoly you're talking about.
In case you don't know this: in WiC there is no resource gathering or base building at all. You start with an ammount of resource points that you'll keep the entire game. When the round starts you choose a drop zone and the units that you want to bring in. Whenever a unit dies the points are transferred back to your resource pool. The resource pool is divided into two parts, one that you can use and one that trickles points to the one you can use. That way you get a time penalty when you lose a unit.
The Star Craft type games never interested me in multiplayer. I can handle single player but multi is completely out of the question.
Get a new computer right now. You're missing out on some fun games:)
I've played dawn of war but I can't remember if there was any resource management. Didn't you get reinforcement points by taking points on the map?
I'm mostly an FPS player and can't handle the the parallel load of normal RTS games. I don't mind the fast clicking as long as I don't have to spaz around all over the map.
This being Slashdot I don't know what you mean by sad old computer. It could be an old P-II or an AMD64 3500+ with an 6600 GPU. If it's more of the latter you won't have any problems running it. If it's the former you're fucked. It runs suprisingly well on my semi top of the line (ATI X800 1GB RAM AMD64 3500+) 2.5 year old computer.
I don't know why you'd hear that WiC is anything like most RTS games. It's commpletely different from all of them (besides Ground Control). There is no resource management at all. You could maybe call it shallow but to say that it's just like any RTS is flat out wrong.
There is a demo out so there is no reason not to try.
Try this download site, its capped at 500KB/s if you're not logged in.
http://www.fz.se/filer/?id=4015
I would like to see a source for that number if you don't mind.
It wasn't my intention to downplay the dangers of tasers but to put emphasis on injuries that may occur if you don't use the taser. If I was in bezerk mode I would rather have the police tase me than risking my joints and ligaments.
Seriously, everyone complaining about the tasing while understanding that he wasn't cuffed needs to try to make someone submit. Get two of your friends, preferably stronger than you and have them try to cuff you. You will find that you can resist them for quite a while and you might also find that you yield only because you don't want your shoulder dislocated or your muscles torn. It is very easy to severely damage someone when using joint locks, pain compliance or whatever if they struggle.
I urge you to try it. It is not easy and it is not safe particularly for the subject.
Without any particular knowledge about CDBaby I would guess that it's their way of not having to deal with total crap. If you don't even care enough to mail in a CD your music is unlikely to be of much value and would only take up space on the server.
Either that or they're too cheap to implement a good system.
I'm using the word blame pretty loosely here. I initially didn't agree with you but now with more data I do so I don't see any reason to continue the debate.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a hard time believing that Valve or Vivendi put out identical CD-keys that just magically didn't work on STEAM but worked on WON. If that happened to you it was probably a keygen that got you. Nowadays I think you can reset a serial key if you can show them the physical game. Or in the case of STEAM a credit card invoice.
It's the European central banks fault that the American banks printed more money than they could cover with gold?
I'm not sure what you mean by large? But Valve jumps to mind as a big independent developer. As does ID software unless I've missed something.
I always get my mod points whenever I'm away from the computer for a while or busy enough to not browse slashdot. Always. That usually results in me not using all of them or just modding randomly so I get rid of them all in time.
If you never take a break from slashdot try taking one and see if you get any.
I've gotten mod points 4-8 times since I've joined. It could also be that your mods get metamodded down so you get points less often.
On the topic of things that are perplexing. My current box has been flaky during bootup for a year or so. It started with random bluescreens when stressed so I messed around with the ram and found that leaving only one 512 stick would fix the problem. I ran memtest overnight on all the RAM and didn't find anything so I assumed it was the motherboard and sent it back to the supplier. I then moved the RAM and GPU to another computer where they worked flawlessly for quite some time.
After a long while I got the same motherboard back with a note that said it was working perfectly when running 3dmark overnight. So I assembled the computer and it worked flawlessly for a while. Then the trouble started again when I removed a DVD-drive. Please note that I wasn't anywhere near the motherboard, I just pulled out the IDE cable and molex and removed the drive. Then the computer wouldn't boot correctly. It usually posted OK but locked up or rebooted by itself before getting to the bootloader. If you actually got as far as to see the BIOS settings it locked up after about four seconds. After 20 or so hard reboots I gave up and powered it off.
It was completely powered off for about 24 hours when I decided to try again. And it booted flawlessly. I had it running for 20 or so days before booting after a windows update and it wouldn't boot again. So I did the same thing: I switched off the PSU and waited for several hours. Once again it booted without a problem and ran for a month. After that I've been able to reboot without a problem but powercycles require several hours of a diconnected PSU (I'm not sure if the PSU needs to be disconnected or if it would work with line power plugged in). Recently I swapped out the power supply because the old one let out the magic smoke. This led me to believe it might have been a flaky PSU (Antec) all along. With another CPU it still runs flawlessly but now I can't reboot but can apparently powercycle without waiting.
What could mess up the motherboard (or the CPU but the motherboard is more likely) in such a way that it will boot and run perfectly some of the time?
What world do you live in?
Most Germans and French suck at English. They're about as proficient as I am in German with a couple of years of formal study without any immersion. As long as they dub their movies and games they will never learn good English. If you're only talking about the IT segment of the job market you're probably right.
In Europe the grid voltage is 240 volts. I'm not sure what the amp rating on normal wall sockets are in other countries but here it's 6 amps or 10 amps. Please note that I'm not implying that there is a use for 1.6KW PSU's just that our grid could power them without rewiring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy/ In the 1800's there lived a man called Frédéric Bastiat. He tried to refute the old fallacy about a broken window being good for the economy. You need to read about it and so does just about everyone else.
Can you source that?
As far as I know even the later Soviet tanks were resistant to fire bottles. The German tanks should've been fairly protected as well. I always thought the German problem was poor logistics, low production numbers, mechanical failure and running out of fuel. If anyone knew how to protect tanks from infantry it was the Germans. They even painted their tanks in a special anti-magnetic paint even though the Soviets didn't field any magnetic shaped charges (the Germans did though.)
You're misreading me. The only reason I included the part about intellectual monopoly was so it wouldn't be brought up as an invalid counter argument to my original post.
I've been irritated lately by persons calling Microsoft a monopoly while at the same time running some non-MS OS legally. That was my only reason for posting in the first place.
I'm not trying to redefine words I'm trying to keep them from being redefined.
Of course you cannot know my knowledge level or opinions from what I've posted in this thread. So let me tell you where I come from. I'm a bat shit insane libertarian that thinks that there is no such thing as intellectual property. This is on a principal level. I would be pretty happy with IP laws that are milder than today, somewhere along the lines of the original patent and copyright times in the US. I've not gotten these views willy nilly so I'm fairly familiar with the subject.
I know that the GPL requires copyright to work and if there were no such thing it would basically be a BSD license. I'm not saying that something with the GPL license is a monopoly I'm saying that any copyrighted item can be and most likely is a monopoly. Microsoft has a monopoly on selling Windows of different flavours. They do _not_ have a monopoly on the OS market. Which was my entire point. The part about intellectual monopolies was a way to guard against any nitpicking. I.e. You might be able to get another OS but Microsoft is the only one who can sell Windows.
I'm not talking about having a different meaning for different words in different contexts. I'm talking about using a word in the wrong way. Saying that MS has been convicted of breaking anti-trust laws or anti-monopoly laws is one thing, saying that MS is a monopoly is another thing.
Are you saying copyright and patents aren't a time limited monopoly? If not, what are they?
By use I meant apply for them and enforce them. Licensing something as GPL is something different.
Since when does the law define words?
However, any company that uses any kind of copyright or patents are by definition monopoly's. I'm guessing you're not talking about that aspect and in that case if you can legally or practically get another operating system then MS is not a monopoly and it can not be. The word you are looking for is oligopoly.
Could you people please stop abusing the word monopoly? When you buy a computer can you choose a different operating system? If you can it's probably not a monopoly you're talking about.
In case you don't know this: in WiC there is no resource gathering or base building at all. You start with an ammount of resource points that you'll keep the entire game. When the round starts you choose a drop zone and the units that you want to bring in. Whenever a unit dies the points are transferred back to your resource pool. The resource pool is divided into two parts, one that you can use and one that trickles points to the one you can use. That way you get a time penalty when you lose a unit.
:)
The Star Craft type games never interested me in multiplayer. I can handle single player but multi is completely out of the question.
Get a new computer right now. You're missing out on some fun games
I've played dawn of war but I can't remember if there was any resource management. Didn't you get reinforcement points by taking points on the map?
I'm mostly an FPS player and can't handle the the parallel load of normal RTS games. I don't mind the fast clicking as long as I don't have to spaz around all over the map.
This being Slashdot I don't know what you mean by sad old computer. It could be an old P-II or an AMD64 3500+ with an 6600 GPU. If it's more of the latter you won't have any problems running it. If it's the former you're fucked. It runs suprisingly well on my semi top of the line (ATI X800 1GB RAM AMD64 3500+) 2.5 year old computer.
I don't know why you'd hear that WiC is anything like most RTS games. It's commpletely different from all of them (besides Ground Control). There is no resource management at all. You could maybe call it shallow but to say that it's just like any RTS is flat out wrong.
There is a demo out so there is no reason not to try.
Try this download site, its capped at 500KB/s if you're not logged in.
http://www.fz.se/filer/?id=4015
I don't think you can draw any conclusion from the Amnesty data. The data merits further study though.
I would like to see a source for that number if you don't mind.
It wasn't my intention to downplay the dangers of tasers but to put emphasis on injuries that may occur if you don't use the taser. If I was in bezerk mode I would rather have the police tase me than risking my joints and ligaments.
When people are talking about snorting cocaine off a mirror they don't mean that kind of mirror.
Can someone please mod the parent up?
Seriously, everyone complaining about the tasing while understanding that he wasn't cuffed needs to try to make someone submit. Get two of your friends, preferably stronger than you and have them try to cuff you. You will find that you can resist them for quite a while and you might also find that you yield only because you don't want your shoulder dislocated or your muscles torn. It is very easy to severely damage someone when using joint locks, pain compliance or whatever if they struggle.
I urge you to try it. It is not easy and it is not safe particularly for the subject.
Without any particular knowledge about CDBaby I would guess that it's their way of not having to deal with total crap. If you don't even care enough to mail in a CD your music is unlikely to be of much value and would only take up space on the server.
Either that or they're too cheap to implement a good system.
Because it was only in the late sixties the taxes started rising to greater heights.
The total taxation of a normal worker in Sweden is about 60%.
"Employer Fee": ~30%
Income tax: ~30%
VAT on normal goods: 25%
VAT on food: 12%
And so on.
I'm using the word blame pretty loosely here. I initially didn't agree with you but now with more data I do so I don't see any reason to continue the debate.