Except, know coders, some retard decided to make the app name the Primary Key in a database.

I'm an avid gamer... and my tastes are all over the place. The only issue I've had in ANY game in the following list was with World of Warcraft, and only during the loading of your character after the character selection screen. If in windowed mode, you go do something else then come back... it will crash wow. Otherwise, once it loads completely it's fine. (10-15second window).

World of Warcraft
Starcraft
Left 4 Dead
Half Life 2 (And all the mods: Zombie Panic, Team Fortress 2, Action Halflife 2... etc)
Quake 3
Doom 3
OpenArena
NeverWinter Nights (all expansions)
NeverWinter Nights 2
UT2003
UT3
Crysis
Battlefield 2
etc etc etc

Not a single error. Not a single problem with Windows 7. The only thing I can wonder about is the resources needed. I run a beef machine... GTX 275, quad core proc, 4gb ram... while not an elite gaming rig... it's pretty nice. I experience no lag, no latency... in any game, at least not due to what I would deem as a Windows 7 issue. The effects are not noticeable.

XP, while great, loads in less time, but seemed to crash more frequently with newer games. Most of the NVIDIA drivers I've used have been great.

The only complain I have about Windows 7 is how it buggers out my network when I do a fresh boot or a restart. I have to disable the network card and reenable it (5 second process) and everything is fine. Repeated motherboard driver updates and network card updates have had no change. Oddly enough... on a fresh install of Windows 7 Beta... it doesn't do this. Only after about a month. Could be hardware on my side but /shrug.

This will only encourage people to build add-ons for the game that allow LAN play. Its happened with dozens of games and frankly this is just plain stupid.

LANS are there for people to get together and have a good time. A LOT of people use wireless connections in their house and that shit is attrocious for LAN play. You can say what you want, but most home hardware that people buy just isn't designed for 6+ people gaming over the internet at the same time. Forget the connection... just the hardware.

A $20 hub lets 10 people play in a LAN where it costs a lot more to setup the same level of connection over the internet in one location. You can try to argue with me but the fact is you're wrong.

I love LANS. People in the same room, talking smack, eating pizza, it's so much better than being on a headset talking over ventrilo. You can see their expressions when you nail em or overwhelm their defenses... It's also being able to come to a physical location, and as we get older, there are no kids, no annoying significant others (we have women in our group so saying wives would be wrong) who keep interrupting. They are there and not being hit with interruptions.

I've lost all real desire to play SC2. I was so excited about it... but the whole point of SC2 is playing with friends and removing LAN play removes half of the reason I play games like that. Sure... we can play online... but it limits us, or requires us to move equipment to other parts of the house so we can all hook up to the router physically since wireless is terrible, and most of us don't have wireless cards for our Desktops. Any gamer who thinks they can beat me while using a laptop is in for one hell of a spanking.

That's the order of things. If you don't have content... your game is a pretty piece of trash. (Think most sports games from EA that are recycled). Sure... the first might be awesome... but we lack a tremendous amount of content these days. Content is what keeps a game interesting, it's what makes others want to buy it from friends recommending since most of us realize that the rating system on gamestop and most of the magazines is now manipulated completely. Look at the Final Fantasy series? A new story each time, each extremely enveloping... though most of us agree X-2 never happened.

Zelda, Metroid, Super Mario Brothers... each one has an amazing new amount of content and that's why they are classics and always a quick sell. How replay-able is the game?

Controls come in second to me. To be able to envelop myself in a game I need the controls to be configurable to how I want to play the game. I'm known to NOT buy games because of this. This is a joke to do.. and pure laziness by developers not to do it.

Graphics come in last of these three (not of all) because to me... there is a point where it's all candy and not needed but that also depends on the game. I wouldn't want to play Assassin's Creed in 8bit, but would settle for ps1 level if there was more content. The game kinda gets old after a while. In today's day an age with the engines available for development there just isn't any excuse for a fast paced game to look worse than the Quake 3 engine.

However, games played at a slower pace (Turn Based, etc) are complete different. They also range depending on the game itself and what it's trying to do. If all game manufactures would focus on that priority list we wouldn't have so many great looking paper weights on the market and their pockets would be much fuller.

What the hell is wrong with me?!? First... forget anything you know about this guy and look at the issue at hand.

1) We have a picture that's been photoshopped to have an underage persons on it.

The question at hand is if this should be illegal or not. Child pornography has become a major issue... and the definition of what child pornography is up in the air. My best friend was pulled on our way to canada and interogated for an hour about pictures and movies on his computer. It wasn't until after we left that we realized it was videos of his daughter doing the funky chicken dance.

To me this is EXTREMELY dangerous to say "yes... putting a kids head on a naked adult" is illegal.". That's a gray area to me as there are FAR too many possibilities for that happening. Jokes, funny images, etc.

What if he had Miley's face on some 90 year old dropping breast woman. Would it be the same to you? That's the problem... law has to be made so that anyone who reads it interprets it the same (or at least pretty damn close).

Tennessee law does NOT prevent what he did. It's not illegal according the law and whether it should be or not isn't the point. It's not.

People are screaming to burn this guy and they nothing about him nor care. There are thousands of creeps out there and this is like busting a pot head for wearing a shirt that shows a charicature of him smoking pot. SURE... I think this would be probable cause to search his house and home computer... but it's not illegal to do. And shouldn't be.

I love the right to be able to put Miley Cyrus's annoying face on midget porn. It's tasteless sick humor and we have hundreds of thousands of images that are similar. You may not like it and it's borderline crossing the law... but it's NOT. It disturbs me that so many people that are so conservative they can't accept peoples rights to do this. It's so stiffling.

Again... this guy is a creep and I think that HAVING pictures like this should be probable cause for investigating him further but it's stupid to try to put him in jail for this. Find something that is unquestionable.

People who argue how damaging things can be if they were made public completely forget that if certain things were known earlier... things like this wouldn't NEED to be kept hidden.

This huge cloud of people who just don't want to know and go on with their happy day lives is exactly what allows events to build up where releasing the information COULD be damaging.

But lets be honest. How worse off do you think the United States could be right now in the eyes of the world?

You will always have followers who don't want to know things and want the *smart* people to deal with it. The problem is, often enough those smart people aren't smart... or are greedy, power hungry... or otherwise influenced. Public eye on what they do is the ONLY thing stopping them. Watchdogs so to speak. Most of them in jobs just like you and me who happen to be there when something happens.

The fear is that people will overreact to the sheer amount of hidden crap and revolt, or some religious nutjob will start calling the end of days and 50,000 idiots will believe him. But if you start slowly... revealing the truth bit by bit people will gradually become adjusted to it.

The reason this will never happen is those in power will suddenly lose the ability to do things that might have been the "easy" way. It also will prevent us from doing things for "the good" that would be seen as "the bad". But that's a tradeoff I want to see simply because... the person making that decision does not have to answer to anyone if they were wrong. That should always be part of leadership.

You make the call... you take the fall.

Go to any doctors office and ask how much they like their software. There is so much crap out there it isn't even funny. I know for a fact, one software company that services more than 20 hospitals and 200 doctors office recently discovered that they had a rounding error in displaying pharmaceuticals. Obviously nothing extremely dangerous... but the fact is there just isn't that many affordable quality software companies out there.

Hell, http://www.physiciansehr.org/index.asp and companies like it make it their sole business to find software suitable for your office, and help in the transition. It's huge business.

I don't honestly believe most medical practitioners are worried about that being used as medical malpractice fodder when weighed against the benefits. The problem comes with the cost and quality. Most doctors don't understand nor care since they have little interaction with it.

I've evaluated over 20 small doctors office software apps that are rated high and let me tell you... 99% of them suck ass. I officially dub "suck ass" a technical term meaning, someone was smoking crack when designing the user interface and knew more about making an annoying, non-user friendly piece of trash than making ANYTHING remotely useable by the medical field.

The transition will happen eventually but some standards need to be in place and universally accepted accreditation certificates need to be available to say "Yes... this software meets these standards". We all know that this will be abused and the bare minimum met... but you have to understand... the standards are SO low... that companies release bugged software knowingly...

Just ask E-Cast. I can't wait for a federal investigation to happen to those guys.

Disclaimer: I do not work for E-Cast, nor have I ever worked, contracted for or through any group associated with E-Cast.

The problem with most scams is the people that do them usually aren't that smart and get caught. Scientology is an extremely well thought out scam operated and organized by the same people who run Amway and other scams. (Yes... I called AmWay a scam because it is). They keep control close to them and only let people *think* they have power. Only the super rich can make it to the top and by then those people are so greedy the truth doesn't bother them at all.

I truly believe in everyone's right to believe in what they want to. However... when your organization is blatant in it's manipulation of desperate people... then i have a problem. Hiding behind the wall of religion to promote an incredible pyramid scam is beyond cowardice. The only reason they haven't been busted is the lack of evidence... but that is because they are so secretive and protective of their "secrets".

Sigh... it's so sad that there are so many people in the world like this.

First off, I live here. Time Warner isn't bad service... it's 99% uptime for me in multiple addresses. Sure it suffers from hiring some really stupid people to work in it's national tech support office but hey... they really do stand behind their work.

However, time warner pricing has gotten WAY out of control. I have StandardDigital Cable and Internet on a DEAL for $85. That's WITH A DEAL... usually it's $119 and that's without the phone service.

These guys did all of this for $99 a month. The fees and taxes BULLSHIT is a stupid arguement. Look on your bill... it's just not that much. We're talking $10. Time Warner would charge $149 for the same thing. Where is the $40 difference?

What happened to the BILLIONS OF DOLLARS given to them by the US Government for their infrastructure?
Why can satellite offer the SAME channels and MORE of them for less? They pay the EXACT same fees to the providers.

The people in Wilson got tired of waiting for "good, cheap service". Time warner said "2-3 years" before they would provide what they wanted. So they took it into their own hands. They didn't want to "wait" for them to get around to it. That's the biggest problem lately.

Time warner things they are entitled to this huge HUGE profit margin when most of their infrastructure was PAID for by US. It's greed... pure and simple. This just proves it.

The problem is some people LIVE for challenges like this and it's an ecryption method based off of other encryption methods. That means there is only 1 piece of the puzzle to figure out.

My concern is that they (the government) suddenly say that all ID's must be tied to this and like several posts above... now someone who knows how to crack this and tag a specific person now has access to everything about them. Banking, health records etc...

A lot of people are getting confused between the two. Open formats mean you can move them easily and they don't have DRM on them. People want open formats... they don't care if it's proprietary or not unless they don't know wtf they are talking about... or are fanboys.

Me... I just want open formats on anything I buy and if I can't get it... I turn it into it. I rarely touch my original physical media. I rip the DVD without regional coding, or DRM, or unnecessary stuff like federal warnings and ads.

Then I take that file and put it on my media server and reburn another. I don't have a 50 terobyte media server so it stays there until I get tired of it and move it.

I've gotten this down to a fine art where I just put the DVD in the drive hit go and it does everything for me, even placing a copy on my media server.

When companies get it through their thick heads that NOONE... not them, not the government... not anyone can stop people like me using the media we purchase the way we want... then they'll make a buttload more money not paying lawyers and trying to enforce a system that equivalent to the US/Mexico border fence.

I don't bittorrent, I don't share my stuff... I'm just a normal joe.

Look... I'm sorry but 15 years ago games were $10-$15. Most developers use other engines to produce their games so don't give me the BS about how much a game costs to make.

So now we have very few games with good storylines or replay ability... but "really flashy". Just go to your local store and peer in the window for Xbox, Wii, etc. How many games in there would you give more than a 5/10. But they all cost the same.

This retarded arguement about indie games should cost more?!? Hell no. Indie games should cost less... in fact ALL games should cost a LOT less.

The last few games I've bought were all PC games off of steam because they were reasonably priced. If it's more than $30... you're over charging. Period. You can try to argue this with me... but everything past that mark is greed pure and simple.

I'm an IT guy, and application developer and a user who supports their "mother". Trust me... the last thing in the world I want to do is upgrade my mothers PC and start that whole "Where is..." process again.

What do I look for in an OS?

1) Innate Driver support (finding some of these drivers is a pain in the ass)
2) Speed (opening programs, loading by default)
3) Stability (how often does it experience problems, lag, programs crashing or stalling out)
4) Finding crap (how easy is it to find what you need?)
5) Security (How easy is it to lock down with virus protection etc)
6) Intuitive design (This is huge to me and why linux still fails to be a great desktop OS)

Fact is most people don't care what runs under the hood as long as it runs well. They don't WANT to know. Me, I'm a little more focused on performance since I'm a gamer and write software for a living.

I hated Vista... I still do. It just felt clunky and overly feature laiden. Still does and it's why most IT guys I know refuse to install it (not even including the security issues, driver support, software compability etc...).

Windows 7 on the other hand... surprised me. Lets go by my list above.
1) Innate Driver support (finding some of these drivers is a pain in the ass)

Well... I had some old hardware and new hardware in my box, separate sound card, you get the idea. Typically you have to install motherboard drivers, sound card drivers, ethernet drivers, blah blah blah. After installing Windows 7 FRESH... I only had to install my NVIDIA driver. Additionally, I was able to search (through find new driver in windows) for my sound card driver even though a default one was installed and let me tell you... the driver that was found (for lack of better words) PWNED the one that came with it. the XP install when searching windows databases never could find the sound card driver... not sure why. But... the fact is ALL of the drivers I had to have to do things were there.

2) Speed (opening programs, loading by default)
From default settings... Windows 7 loaded faster than my default of XP. I'm thinking this is because of how they order things when loading, or the fact that there was a lot less that starts. However, Windows 7 does take up a buttload more ram. Idle was using 500mb. I have 8gb so I don't care. With all my software installed (Winamp, CS3, Eclipse, blah blah blah) Windows 7 STILL loaded faster than XP. This caught me off guard and frankly didn't make much since until I looked at the startup. The adobe reader wasn't starting, acrobat was starting etc etc... by default a lot of those processes that add themselves to the startup... weren't. On average (yes im sad... I timed it), out of 5 start ups it took 20 seconds from pushing power to being at the login screen.

3) Stability (how often does it experience problems, lag, programs crashing or stalling out)
I have had NO blue screens of death. Not one. I haven't even had a program crash on me where XP used to die all the time. Every single game I've tried to play installed fine and works. Some had to be run in compatibility mode (Neverwinter nights, Quake 2) but they all run. Newer games haven't had a single issue for me. I was very pleased with this.

4) Finding crap (how easy is it to find what you need?)
Okay... windows 7 requires some adjustment... It's kind of difficult to find "My documents" folder... and if you download something good luck. Your downloads folder really isn't... it's your username THEN downloads. But other than that I REALLY liked the options for viewing contents of folders and how it automatically figures stuff out and saves your settings. It started to realize I wanted to see documents in a list view, pictures in small thumbs and html, php, cfm, js files as details. I never saved the folders it just remembered AND applied it to other folders.

The taskbar grouping and configuration was done EXTREMELY well. It allows you to set it up however you want it to. Not limiting you to two or three options. It can be a bit confusing if you aren't sure what's open and what's not. I really like the themes though.

5) Security (How easy is it to lock down with virus protection etc)

No issues at all. But I've only had it for a month.

6) Intuitive design (This is huge to me and why linux still fails to be a great desktop OS)
This is worlds better than Vista. Simple organization is different and I'm thinking they actually went for the lowest common denominator to see what people needed. Then they looked at the power users and found a harmony. New users, especially low tech ones, will need to use the windows introduction tool. Period. Power users... will probably want to use it to but skip past a lot of the sections.

It's much better than XP in that respect... but it will take adjustment.

Overall, I think XP will go away slowly to Windows 7. This is coming from someone who refused to move from windows 98 until SP2 of XP.

My wife is a associate of research at Duke... a nobody in the grand scheme of academia but even she has had trouble accessing her OWN research because of how certain magazines publish their material.

Now... imagine that Google provides this in a cost matrix. Not only does it make it FAR easier to find research you need, but a whole new science appears that was all but impossible because of the fragmented way things are done.

Some of you might be "welcome our new overlords" but when you really look at it from a technical standpoint this far outweighs anything else I've seen. Additionally most projects involving federal grants are now required to use publishers who allow free access to the research for those involved. This is exactly this.

Of course publishers are scared to death. I mean... here are just a few reasons...

1) Able to quickly find research, books, magazine articles etc
2) You do not have to follow retardedly complexe guidelines to get your paper published (All of you researchers and faculty know what I mean).
3) You can begin to evaluate trends in research data... imagine being able to correlate hundreds of published works about a specific subject and generating data... on the fly. Yeah that's going to become possible
4) Imagine being able to type in an author and see a full list of their works without having to figure out which publishers they've published at and purchase accounts to view it.

This concept removes a system of control... not a working copyright system. It removes the profiteering publishers who are much like the RIAA of today than an actual helpful organization.

Profits begin to return to those who do the work but more importantly information that should be free returns to it.

happen.

Fact is no matter how well intentioned an idea, if it can be abused someone will inevitably abuse it. The internet is like the world. There are certain areas you stay away from, or teach your kids to stay away from. This wouldn't be a problem if parents would stop pointing fingers and started taking responsibility.

To me it's the same as some trespasser injuring themselves on my property. In the US I can be liable which is RETARDED. This is all part of taking responsibility away from those should bear it and treating us like children. Luckily I live in the United States where revolts happen daily and slowly and eventually good wins out. Albeit... it takes a long time sometimes...

Americans got fat and happy and now that the bubble has burst reality is starting to set in. People are focusing on the world again as shown by the recent election.

However, I digress... as far as that filter is concerned... uh... it's not going to do shit to those who ACTUALLY want to get to it. They use proxy's in other countries...

Guess what your filter just got bypassed and it did about as much good as the USA's border fence down south. It only moved where people cross. How many tunnels have they found now?