Posts by Mark

re:EA Will Be Loving This

MS won't.

What's the one mom & pop reason for why Linux isn't ready for the home? Games.

When there are no games, what reason to have that broken piece of shite installed? None.

This is not good for microsoft.

It may be why they bought a few companies: not to ensure the XBox gets "must have" titles (Halo. Bungie Bastards) but to ensure there are games that will only run on the Blessed OS.

re: CD-checking is annoying but permissable, DRM is not.

But if I have to dig out the game CD to play it, I won't bother. I mostly play either the "game of the moment" that I'm running in the CD (one out of MANY games) or play one of the ones I've got the no-CD crack for.

Why?

Because the 500GB hard drive is plenty for a LOT of games to remain installed. However, I only have two DVD drives. So the CD/DVD is left on a shelf and I have to look for the game to pop it in (and maybe remove one of the other ones). So it's not worth it. But just play without the CD? I can change and play a game for a day or an hour. Just clicking the icon will play it.

re: Cost? Rather get a AeeeeeeePC?

Well, two OLPC machines ARE going to be more expensive than one EEEPC.

However, the EEEPC doesn't last as long on a charge and cannot take being left on the grass, accidentally kicked, etc anywhere near as well as the EEEPC.

@ian

Don't worry. Unless we lose all our duct tape stores, we've played enough Doom III to see these demonic hordes back to the pit of hell they sprung from.

We may need Karl Urbgen's help, though. If we do, keep The Rock away, OK?

re: What if there is no Hawking Radiation?

What if there are no strangelets? No micro black holes? Then the lack of Hawking radiation is moot.

I've come to the conclusion that the reason why there's so much chicken little on the LHC is because some dipstick in marketing thought of the name "God Particle" for the Higgs Boson and the God Squad are scared it'll be literally true...

re: Hang on...

"why was the LHC built in favour of a collection of spacecraft each containing one of the LHC's detector types?"

Because you wouldn't like having to put up with scientists with geiger counters and so on walking around in your bedroom to catch the ones that are passing through there. And all the other bedrooms. Because the particles are more numerous but some silly cunt up there is not shooting them all in a convenient place for putting detectors.

BAD GOD!

re: No problems "expected"?

Well, we expect the sun to come up tomorrow based purely on the science of orbital mechanics and stellar physics.

We expect to live through the night and not die of heart attack.

We expect lots of things that do come true.

@M. Burns

But when they take you to court over it, the government steps in and FORCES you to accede to the demands. Or face criminal charges.

So how come this doesn't count as the government abridging free speech?

re: Sounds about right

It's "wrong" to go behind enemy lines and act as a spy in a foreign sovereign country.

It is still done and even expected.

re: Is this guy still around?

Awww. Is ickle widdle ooo cying boo boos because oo is inconwenienced?

Diddums.

re: Plea bargaining

Ach, we've had the example of the worst of this regarding the sex offenders register.

People (almost all male) are found peeing in doorways or something like that and arrested. They are charged with indecent exposure and told that if they just cop a plea saying they are guilty, they'll not be charged.

They forget to mention that they will still go on the sex offenders register (even if it is only the low-risk one).

They do mention that if they go to court, they will have NO chance to win and will likely have jail time and a sexual offence rap on their record.

Scared into saying yes so that the police can increase their rates.

@Richard Bennett

But you're drinking their whiskey and screwing US!

Re: Bandwidth is free, right?

It doesn't cost $40 per Mbit/s though.

At a contention of 5:1 you can still make a profit out of an OC48 at wholesale rates. They are using contention ratios of 50:1.

And it IS free because the pipe is paid for whether it is full or not, so the first bit is EXPENSIVE but after that one, free.

In the end, if we can't USE broadband for "movies, music, and fast internet" then what the fuck do we need it for? If we're going to be capped at a rate that is less than dial-up, we will get dial-up. And then all this "content" possibility that DROVE the dot-com boom (build fast lines and get it to the customers and you'll rake in SHITLOADS of cash) will be worthless. All those websites that use flash will be abandoned.

Then when this is done, all the ISP's have is a bunch of expensive glass threads.

re: are we really eating all the bandwidth?

Comcast Canada (IIRC) had to produce internal documents to show why they needed throttling.

less than 5% of the time were comcast's networks loaded to capacity.

I think that answers your question.

@Raymond Wilson

For which, the UK prosecution decided wasn't worth persuing.

The US wanted to make an example of him so that only PROPER terrorists will want to enter "password" into the password entry form for root access, not harmless people that they can't put up as *exactly* why they need the death penalty for hacking computers.

@Sarah Bee

Yeah, like

a) Don't hide priests from persecution

b) Don't kill the King

c) Don't revolt against your government

d) Don't stand in a white only section of a bus

e) Don't chain yourself to a railing outside parliament

they were all criminal acts.

But we made our world with them.

Not that this is in anything like the same league, but it shows how ASSININE "if you can't do the time" meme is.

@jonathan keith

What if valve go into receivership before they can get around to making a DRM removal patch? What if they are bought (especially on a hostile takeover)?

They cannot then release such a patch.

Bioware have done it for DiabloII, but I don't want D3 because they kept nerfing the single player of D2 so that you eventually HAD to play online as the only way to avoid either

a) MASSIVELY reduced damage potential by ensuring you have no weak spots

b) a quit-and-reload when a MSLE FE Fire/lightning/physical immune boss turns up with his MSLE exploding pals

c) getting Level 2 character magic stuff only dropped from monsters a L20 character can kill, making the drop USELESS

So I don't want to play D2 online. Especially when they nuked the battle net clone that WORKED BETTER by complaining that it didn't have the copy protection and missing out (or not having to explain) that they refused to tell them how to put the copy protection in their servers. And they kept patching it and changing the gameplay until it is worthless playing SP.

I'm not going to spend money on them to make me pissed off. I can do that just by burning my cash in front of me.

LAN games

Given that LAN games either mean "your immediate family and friends" or having to lug a computer over to a neutral territory and set up, it should be possible to run a LAN game without an internet connection AT ALL. Even if it requires one CD installation (only one key for all installs).

After all, what's the likelihood that you'll go to the trouble of lugging a computer to a LAN party and NOT have the game?

But dropping the requirement means that I can install the game on my machine at home and if I have my brother in law over, we can have a lan game there and then with my two computers in a small home network and have a laugh. No revenue loss, since I wouldn't buy two CD's just so I can play a LAN game once in a blue moon and LAN parties can be done safer (one install on a central system means your machine won't get hosed by someone else's virused machine because you can netboot and not have to use your own HDD).

And a game with more use is more valuable and therefore more likely to sell.