The best news about this is that it implies that if hardcore kit kills with it, then at least budget hardware (that many people have already!) can do it acceptably. That means finally seeing games that REQUIRE physics acceleration.
It'll be like 1996 all over again, only from a physics not graphics perspective. That, and there might be a new Duke Nukem game due out within the next 12 years.
the people at the top really do care about supporting users, to our own convenience it should be noted that i meant 'to our own inconvenience'. Damn typo.
As in, we make life worse for ourselves by making it better for the users, but in as much as it is a good idea, we still do it. It's our job, and it satisfies us to do it well, even if that's not a beach holiday.
If they're truly breaking things, this means your network is so poorly designed that they are even capable of it. I knew someone would come back with a smart comment like this, but I'm not yet jaded enough to include disclaimers in my posts. For your benefit: the wifi router in use was very poorly designed, using some horrific bridging tricks. Shutting down three buildings was actually an automatic fallback, to protect our larger network.
"Enterprise IT" policies are almost always to make IT's life easier at the expense of the end user. Now who was supposed to be supporting whom? Now this is exactly what those chimps with their cheeky tricks believe. But in any decent organisation, of which I'm fortunately part, the people at the top really do care about supporting users, to our own convenience. It's our job, so we get it done. And nothing gives us greater satisfaction that a system that runs for the benefit of its users.
The job is supporting users, and that's what we do.
And that just precisely means making decisions about what can and what cannot safely be allowed in certain circumstances, and the sheer size of the operation means not being able to turn on a dime if somebody wants a completely different config. That's the way it is. We're not being unhelpful, we're making sure you don't butcher things for every other person in the zone by being a smartass.
"Wow, look what you can do. We get it, you're smart. You want a pat on the head too?" Basically, guerillas belong in a zoo, where the above comment is satisfyingly appropriate.
Yes, they're end users. But they don't sound like customers. They sound like employees.
In which case they should toe the god damn line, because they're fucking shit up for other people.
Yes, enterprise IT can be frustrating. But your cheeky little wifi hack maybe just took down three buildings of network, resulting in thousands of dollars of lost productivity. Actually happened, in my org - 100% true story.
I don't like meaningless limitations any more than the next guy, but these know alls who think they're 'superusers' because they can set up a wifi network need to lay off - they don't have the big picture, they just think they're being clever. Guerilla? Arse-scratching chimp, more like.
I wish I could filter out Yahoo answers from my entire online experience. Just about any question I've ever had for a non technical issue (e.g. Can I feed a hamster strawberries), is answered on Yahoo as : 1. Yep 2. Nope 3. Feed it motor oil 4. lolz, luzer! Yahoo answers has been a real eye opener for me, and like wikipedia, I'm glad it exists, although not for the purpose for which it was intended.
See, I use Yahoo Answers as a barometer for ignorance. I check it once every so often to see if the human race is still, collectively, an arse-scratching bunch of chimps.
Unfortunately, we've yet to perfect the wiki-based model where the reader doesn't have to bring their brain to the party. Although Yahoo Answers comes fucking close.
Professor Lichtenstein says the reliance by students on Wikipedia for finding information, and acceptance of the practice by teachers and academics, was "crowding out" valuable knowledge and creating a generation unable to source "credible expert" views even if desired. Yes, that is one risk. But the current academic system is far from perfect. It creates an effectively useless intellectual caste system, and fosters an elitist culture.
Valuable knowledge should be shared, even at the risk of adding chinks to its armour. That attitude is the one and same which has fostered a literate world, in which the common man can have this discussion and it be meaningful.
Put a tax on spam emails, and popup advertising? Then use that tax to pay for the new Internet.
Also charge the spyware and adware companies fees for infecting a majority of the Internet and affecting bandwidth, and use those fees to pay for the new Internet. But since spamming is mostly illegal anyway, or in a backwards country that doesn't care, or both... Are you proposing a whole new tier of legitimised spam, on top of the swades of botnet-russian-mafia-illegal-cocksize spam I already get? I gotta get in on that whilst the irons hot.
* Limit Pricing, where the price is set by a monopolist to discourage economic entry into a market.
If we argue that Apple is a monopoly in MP3 players, this would only be applicable if they set the price of iPods low enough to prevent competitors
OK, they're not 100% secure, which is probably what you want in enterprise. I think they're a fad, in a business environment.
But it's quicker than inputting a password, and it keeps all but determined people out. Obviously, it doesn't keep those people out at all, but I dunno. A fingerprint reader, that has an every day use, and does actually save time. That's on the verge of being useful, as well as all kinds of cool. I mean *a fingerprint reader in your pocket*.
And hell, if the fingerprint reader bit ever breaks, which it will, as sure as night follows day, well at least there's a failsafe way to get your data back now.
Given past history, he should think himself lucky the battery didn't explode whilst they were prodding the damn thing. That would have been a one way ticket to Cuba.
When my Dad was working in the early 90's and Amigas and Atari STs were the big thing at home, a bunch of guys broke into his offices and stole all the keyboards! (They left those huge dumb looking beige boxes behind.)
Best of all, free copying creates a worldwide decentralized backup system for these works. Many works will be saved which might have been otherwise lost because they were copyrighted for far longer than they were profitable.
Many works will be saved by pirates becuse even simple DRM systems with no thought to the future lead to lost work. Many works have already been saved. Since copyright is supposed to protect a work before it enters the public domain, shouldn't it be illegal to block something from ever entering the public domain?
Bioshock, I'm thinking of you. This is a game DVD in which the EXE doesn't even ship on the disc. It's downloaded as part of the 'activation' process. Severs go down, and bye bye. To say nothing of the severely limited number of times you're allowed to activate it, EVER - a program you PAID for!
People I know who work in the sector are worried about future prospects and already looking at getting out into a 'bricks and mortar' style trade where they know they will get paid and not ripped off. So let them. Really. Let 'em go. Nobody would blame them for getting out.
It's really about time we started to see some of the negative effects of piracy. The RIAA has been promising for years that music will simply stop getting made, but god damn it, it just seems to keep getting better.
Frankly, I'm calling bullshit on the whole damn crisis. As an artist, and an appreciator of art, I'm a richer man today than I've been for decades.
Steam is really the first digital RIGHTS management system instead of digital restrictions management. I really don't see how it's any better to call it that.
They manage your right to resell the games you've paid for, by not letting you.
They manage your rights to play the games you've paid for if you break any of their terms and conditions of service, by cutting you off.
They think you've tried to cheat in Counterstrike? Bang. Goodbye to every other online steam game you've bought and paid for. Refund? Don't make me laugh. That right is extremely managed.
If they're rights I honestly don't see why they need to be managed.
Work is that place you go to 5x9. Anything else isn't work, and work shouldn't have an expectation that you're available during that time. My contract stipulates that I will be available 'hours as required'. So that's not a universal truth.
Any separation between money and journalism is out of the norm, and should be a pleasant surprised. Well, getting fired may constitute a surprise...
Now we just need to work on the pleasant.
everyone seems to be out to sell a service and 'give away a device'. I like that model when the firmware of the device gets cracked and you end up being able to do whatever you like with a wicked (open!) device that was subsidised by a poor business model. See: Xbox media center.
But as I said, that's not the point. The point is, whether or not I sell it should be my decision, because I paid for it.
And in any case, you can usually get back more than half your money through ebay if you sell up within a month or so - long enough for most games.
That is a painfully ignorant comment. If I play Half Life 2: Episode 2 through in a single day, and want to sell it the day after release, it would still be worth a good deal of money. The important thing is that since I bought it, I should be able to sell it, even if I'm selling it for next to nothing. 'It's probably not worth much' is a bloody awful defense.
Yes, and then they have another copy of half life 2 and episode one to give away... It's almost like shareware came back.
It's actually very clever, and I would probably be strongly in favour of it, if I weren't so utterly offended by the idea that I'm not allowed to sell games that I paid for.
Slashdot Mirror
It'll be like 1996 all over again, only from a physics not graphics perspective. That, and there might be a new Duke Nukem game due out within the next 12 years.
As in, we make life worse for ourselves by making it better for the users, but in as much as it is a good idea, we still do it. It's our job, and it satisfies us to do it well, even if that's not a beach holiday.
The job is supporting users, and that's what we do.
And that just precisely means making decisions about what can and what cannot safely be allowed in certain circumstances, and the sheer size of the operation means not being able to turn on a dime if somebody wants a completely different config. That's the way it is. We're not being unhelpful, we're making sure you don't butcher things for every other person in the zone by being a smartass.
In which case they should toe the god damn line, because they're fucking shit up for other people.
Yes, enterprise IT can be frustrating. But your cheeky little wifi hack maybe just took down three buildings of network, resulting in thousands of dollars of lost productivity. Actually happened, in my org - 100% true story.
I don't like meaningless limitations any more than the next guy, but these know alls who think they're 'superusers' because they can set up a wifi network need to lay off - they don't have the big picture, they just think they're being clever. Guerilla? Arse-scratching chimp, more like.
See, I use Yahoo Answers as a barometer for ignorance. I check it once every so often to see if the human race is still, collectively, an arse-scratching bunch of chimps.
So far, Yes.
Last week on yahoo answers:
Cud I B prgnent?
Did u do it standing up???
Interesting side note: that doesn't work long term.
But it's quicker than inputting a password, and it keeps all but determined people out. Obviously, it doesn't keep those people out at all, but I dunno. A fingerprint reader, that has an every day use, and does actually save time. That's on the verge of being useful, as well as all kinds of cool. I mean *a fingerprint reader in your pocket*.
And hell, if the fingerprint reader bit ever breaks, which it will, as sure as night follows day, well at least there's a failsafe way to get your data back now.
Given past history, he should think himself lucky the battery didn't explode whilst they were prodding the damn thing. That would have been a one way ticket to Cuba.
When my Dad was working in the early 90's and Amigas and Atari STs were the big thing at home, a bunch of guys broke into his offices and stole all the keyboards! (They left those huge dumb looking beige boxes behind.)
Many works will be saved by pirates becuse even simple DRM systems with no thought to the future lead to lost work. Many works have already been saved. Since copyright is supposed to protect a work before it enters the public domain, shouldn't it be illegal to block something from ever entering the public domain?
Bioshock, I'm thinking of you. This is a game DVD in which the EXE doesn't even ship on the disc. It's downloaded as part of the 'activation' process. Severs go down, and bye bye. To say nothing of the severely limited number of times you're allowed to activate it, EVER - a program you PAID for!
Is this really a problem for most people? NAT really.
It's really about time we started to see some of the negative effects of piracy. The RIAA has been promising for years that music will simply stop getting made, but god damn it, it just seems to keep getting better.
Frankly, I'm calling bullshit on the whole damn crisis. As an artist, and an appreciator of art, I'm a richer man today than I've been for decades.
But as I said, that's not the point. The point is, whether or not I sell it should be my decision, because I paid for it. And in any case, you can usually get back more than half your money through ebay if you sell up within a month or so - long enough for most games.
That is a painfully ignorant comment. If I play Half Life 2: Episode 2 through in a single day, and want to sell it the day after release, it would still be worth a good deal of money. The important thing is that since I bought it, I should be able to sell it, even if I'm selling it for next to nothing. 'It's probably not worth much' is a bloody awful defense.
Yes, and then they have another copy of half life 2 and episode one to give away... It's almost like shareware came back. It's actually very clever, and I would probably be strongly in favour of it, if I weren't so utterly offended by the idea that I'm not allowed to sell games that I paid for.