I saw that in one of their videos and couldn't figure out if the wall of unconnected bricks was just storage for them to be used properly later on, or if they were really intending that to be a structural wall. It was so wrong on so many levels. It was unreinforced, it had no running bond or tie pattern in it, there was little to no "mortar" between the bricks, it didn't even look like they had been dried properly. Even with a proper tie pattern and bricks, from what I've read unreinforced masonry is a lousy construction method anywhere that might have an earthquake risk.

If only Netcraft had confirmed it instead...

Well at least we can all agree BSD is dead.

Seriously, this is another example of GUI design based on the average idiot user. Misguided and idiotic GUI redesigns serve no purpose but to annoy the userbase (ex. KDE4 and GNOME3). I find that I use the Start menu far less often because I've moved the apps I use to the PA menu. It's my way of doing what MS should have done a long time ago - separation and modularization of the apps from the OS (no install, no registry crap, etc). Seriously all this GUI rework and MS has yet to implement truly useful and fundamental changes to the OS. They still by default cram all the OS, apps, and data into a single place on a single drive (seriously 'My Documents', 'My Music', etc.. argh, does anyone actually use this idiotic and stupidly placed directory structure for managing their data?) Tying all that together insures when an OS gets corrupted/infected/whatever a reinstall will become a painful and long process.

But no, instead of something useful like eliminating the registry, they spend their time unnecessarily reinventing the GUI. Perhaps at least they will finally discover multiple desktops. Of course just looking at the tile-based monstrosity I can just imagine how they will play the hide-the-system-settings game. Instead of something useful I'm guessing they will play the usual game of shuffling the settings and burying them several layers deep (you know as far as possible from the user).

Then the robot lawyers will move in and enact laws to protect the robot jobs. And just wait until the robot unions get involved, those parasites - but of course where there are unions, soon there is the mafia - thats right, the robot mafia. Where does it all end - let me tell you, it's not pretty. Soon we will be paying our tax dollars to support the robot welfare state, while those deadbeats leech off government at our expense. The epi-center of this disastrous robot future world - Detroit naturally. But there is hope, a man who can save us from the robot tyranny, I think his name is Neo...

I heard a phrase a long time ago along these lines - If you are working 80hr/wk for a certain wage, it is the same as working two 40hr/wk jobs for half as much each. How many people would trade their 80hr/wk job for two 40hr/wk jobs at half pay? Perhaps some, who are highly motivated by the money or who really like their job, but for many when it is put in that context the drudgery of two jobs versus one becomes more apparent, and they would not make such a trade (of course, not all people have the flexibility for that in these times though, it could be 80hr/wk versus 0hr/wk).

It's not just pure drudgery of work though - people should not be motivated to do such levels of work unless reward is clearly tied to, and scales with, effort. I could relate many stories of management flushing everyone's hard work down the tubes by canceling projects on the verge of production, but perhaps one has to live it to believe it, so I'll refrain. On the flip side I have been in situations where such work has paid off and quite well. Overall though if there is no clear connection between extra work and extra reward then there is no such connection, and people are just burning their life away for a corporation which will never recognize or acknowledge their effort.

For basic content viewing, and simple web browsing small touchscreens work ok. However for anything requiring more precision than the finger sized blob a touchscreen sees, they absolutely blow. I can barely stand editing a couple sentences on a smartphone, and I can't imagine using it to do the things you would do on a regular computer. Try writing a thesis on a smartphone, or here's one - does anyone code android apps using only an android touchscreen device? That would be agony. At minimum I think one would want some kind of dock with an actual keyboard/mouse to do any kind of real work on such a device. Even then you would also want to plug into additional storage. Perhaps someone will make a killing with a low cost docking station.

I was hoping someone would expand on this. When the second game came out with "universal ammo", crap level design, and overall short game length, they managed to kill many of the things that made the PC original great. All done presumably to make it more accessible on consoles. My main concern on this one is what kind of tradeoffs, if any, were made in that context.

Well, I've been using Unix-like OSs since the late 80's, including Solaris, HPUX, and even Linux when it first entered the scene, so apparently I was right after all. Your "experience" doesn't count for shit apparently, obvious by the immensely stupid comments that keep coming out your mouth. Despite your assertions otherwise you don't have "extensive" knowledge about anything discussed in this thread, although the fact that you haven't used any of this "once over the last 20 years" is probably true, since you know nothing about it.

And yet you have accomplished none of this, the virtualization works fine, it's efficiency is higher, and it works quite well. Everything I've said is based on actual tried and tested setups. Your assertions are based on nothing but your raging stupidity and have no basis in fact. Why the rage, who knows, perhaps Microsoft backed the car over your cat, I don't care or give a shit. All you have accomplished in this thread is to demonstrate your complete ignorance on the subject, you've discredited yourself, you made yourself look like a complete raving fool, you imagined a bunch of bullshit regarding an imaginary XP install, you've established how biased and worthless your comments are, and you've proven that over 20 years you learned absolutely nothing. Congratulations, you are truly an idiot.

However there is a solution for this for me. I can mark you a foe, and all your utterly worthless comments will be modded to -5, an appropriate level for the inane comments you spew out, and I won't have to be bothered reading your vile worthless vitriol ever again.

Yes, and it works quite well. And if you think that's amazing you'll be quite shocked when you find out how a great many websites work - here's a hint: they aren't all running individually on their own separate machines. I'm guessing if you ever find out how cloud computing works your head would explode.

I said no such thing, all my virtual guests are running Linux. I don't run XP at all. This is just more imaginary crap made up in your tiny idiot mind.

I can assure you, I have.

Right from the mind of a 4yr old. Don't worry, you've fully demonstrated your complete ignorance of both virtualization as it's used all around these days and the specific Virtualbox software described in the thread. Go back to your anti-Microsoft raging bullshit, I'm done arguing with your idiocy.

Exactly. Hide the status bar, hide the full URL, hide the version number. Obscuring things is apparently their new development model.

Wow, it's like a Microsoft powered troll - you mention the word and you go off for hours on end. You should invent some kind of powerplant powered by your idiocy and anti-Microsoft fanaticism, you could probably do something useful with it. Seriously, you make Apple fanbois look good in comparison.

Pretty simple really, a Linux file server, a Linux work machine, and a Windows home machine. Oh that's right, like a dumbass you assumed there were multiple Win boxes. I've probably been using Linux longer than you have, certainly long enough to know that each of the OS's have their place. Maybe one day if you get over yourself you will learn that.

Yeah, here is another clue - Virtualbox is from Sun not VMWare, but again you demonstrate your lack of intelligence. Perhaps you should do some research into virtualization, you don't seem to know much about it. And for the record, from a cold start the Virtualbox machine will boot faster than the physical hardware due primarily to a lack of BIOS wait screens and such. Since you are unaware of this it's quite apparent you haven't tried running it before.

Now go ahead and spew some more anti-Mircosoft BS, you know you can't help yourself.

Hah, what a troll. Here is a clue retard - get over your zealot fanaticism, your giving Linux users a bad name.

My method has consolidated three physical machines into one, yielding an actual power savings. It makes management easier, and has multiple nice side effects, including standardized hardware from the viewpoint of the Linux installs. If the setup could have worked in a reversed configuration (Win on Linux) I would have run it that way, but graphics performance goes to shit that way, so it didn't happen. So no, you are both wrong and a fucking retard because it is not "the only possible purpose of such setup".

Not exactly the parent's point, but in a similar way I've virtualized all my Linux machines on virtualbox running on Win7. Win7 can handle the games, and virtualbox supports graphic acceleration so even compiz and such work on the Linux machines. No more screwing around with VNC or NX or whatnot. It also yields somewhat faster boot times - no BIOS or peripheral card wait screens at startup.

There are side benefits - encryption is easier, just Truecrypt the Win7 system and data drives. No need to maintain dmcrypt setups or such on the Linux installs as the host is already encrypted. Further, partitioning the Linux setups into separate system/data virtual drives and maintaining decent backups makes a botched upgrade trivial to recover from. This has saved me a couple times recently when the ext4 system drive blew out on one of the Linux installs - just dropped a backup vdi in its place and was back and running in a few minutes. Similar thing just the other day, did an upgrade on one which swapped in a 3.0 kernel and killed the graphics, dropped in the system vdi from the previous days backup and was back and working. So much easier than having to swap in/out actual hard drives.

Overall backups are easier too - backup the encrypted Win7 data drive and in the process you end up backing up all the Linux machines. Can't complain about that. Only real penalty is you need a more powerful box (particularly as much memory as you can pack in the thing), but if it doubles as the game machine it's sort of a one stone, two birds thing.

I'm kind of curious why everyone is so up-in-arms wanting HL2:e3. HL2 was brilliant. HL2:e1 was a solid extension of that. HL2:e2 was a good game that started to feel a bit redundant. But neither of them reached the brilliance that was HL2.

People want EP3 because they want to know the rest of the story. These games are essentially interactive stories. You don't go to the movies and get up and walk out 2/3rds into it do you? It's not about how "brilliant" the game is, in the same way you don't generally judge a movie about how brilliant the middle of it is relative to the beginning and end.

The thing that irks me is the way they seem to delay working on the actual storyline and instead spend time upgrading the engine. Frankly I don't really care if the water or fog looks a little more realistic, I'm more interested in the content of the game (this is similar to the original Deus Ex, which had a lame graphic engine but fantastic storyline). I would have been fine with it had they developed the entire HL2 series using the original engine. Other titles seem to have no problem generating DLC material (Fallout3), so I really don't get why it takes Valve so long.

Unlikely, the gov't there is so corrupt and moves so slow it could never effectively shut all these operations. The real takeaway here is that Apple now gets to realize the true benefits of outsourcing all its manufacturing to China. Namely that they have little power to really control their inventory and supply chain.

Seriously, only in an environment where the gov't was complicit or completely corrupt and lazy could you have enough grey and black market goods to supply not only a single store, but an entire chain of retail stores.