the stats were wrong in the past so i dont know whether or not you could assume they are correct. there were a few months when the pc stats up there where frozen

in the types of games many of us are playing it's also very difficult to see with split screen. in my game room I have two televisions and two ps3 and 360. in the past the only games we would end up playing in the same room would be the games with same screen gameplay like fighting games, side scroller, or overhead shooters. no one wanted to play left 4 dead or motorstorm when it was split screen

could also use both index fingers to swipe while using the left analog. there are possibilities there like

i) using one or the other (player would prefer swiping one or other finger depending on the direction they are turning)
ii) tracking both simultaneously for additional acceleration
ii) tracking both for error correcting fine movements without requiring an aim mode to reduce sensitivity too much

this isn't equivalent to a laptop touch pad btw. the ergonomics of this is better and the player could travel more (less repeated swiping). the question is if it's accurate enough to track small movements for fine aim

if it's done right sliding across a touchpad will be better than using a right analog for camera/aiming

quite a few of the 40+ hours games are open world games that aren't organized linearly. the story missions are sometimes only one part of the game, the others being free form action, mini games, side missions, upgrading/customizing, etc. One could typically "finish" the game in a shorter span by following story missions only, however that's not what many find fun about that type of game.

The values from Skidrow are already dumped and it's proven they used the data from that forum

The protection for AC2 is tacked on. Settlers 7 received somewhat better protection and there is no working server emulator for it yet. In the future it will be more dynamic and most likely include server side game logic. The significance of it not being truly cracked even with a basic protection as in AC2 is this: every time Ubisoft releases a new game then the pirates must play through the entire game collecting the values which can take a few weeks to get 100% unless the process can somehow be automated. This is over and above any changes to the protocol used to communicate between the client and server between games which the cracker must code for to capture those values.

Skidrow put their own copy protection on the crack because they simply placed the values from the emulator into a dll. It's nice and convenient to have a dll return the values instead of a server however if they had actually cracked then they would have also cracked the other games for which the emulator doesn't currently exist.

So yes, Assassin's Creed 2 is playable but their copy protection is only broken in the sense that AC2 designers decided to make the server-client for this game return static responses that can be collected and eventually make the game playable for pirates.

First, even loud movies have quiet moments and the ideal for those users is to not hear the hum of a computer at any point. Second, the fact that there is a movie making sound doesn't necessarily prevent one from also hearing the sound of a computer.

The idle fan speed (idle or load) and coil whine reported on some units is maybe not up to the standard of quiet enthusiasts but relative to other systems it's good. If it doesn't bother you and there's no coil whine then there's nothing to worry about.

this is oversimplifying considering all the fans that have comparable cfm/rpm yet have characteristics which makes them loud/annoying

An aside: the dB ratings from manufacturers are often false (ie outright lies)

That said, the GPU acceleration is at the moment only for video and requires a GPU that supports DXVA. Eventually GPU acceleration will apply to more software. For example, firefox and Internet Explorer will soon have GPU acceleration of their rendering.

Some HTPC cases are compact. With all the components in a limited space the temperature of the components can rise more than systems built into larger cases. The ambient temperature in your environment may also be lower than what other people are using their system in.