I had a similar problem with my nvidia 7600gt, where I would get lock ups every 10 minutes or whatever in most games, which was apparently caused by a hardware bug. There were also green dots and lines that would appear on the screen. Like they would start as dots and turn into lines if i scrolled down a web page for example.. So this type of shit isn't limited to ati/amd.
"but what if the ban leaks over to product photography (I'm looking at you, Burger King), video gameplay demos"
That would be great actually.
Just in case you don't know, switching to "mask as Firefox" in site prefs usually fixes these things. Something here http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons#webdev may be useful to you; dunno if the neptune plugin still works. One thing I'll miss about Opera is being able to put buttons on the start bar.
The likes of Google seem to deliberately break stuff for Opera users so it's not always the company's fault. On the other hand, they haven't bothered integrating hardware acceleration yet despite having a working version in 2008, so if you want to play Angry Birds you need to use something else, which is another reason I'm jumping ship.
It happens with clean installs, on different computers with XP and Win7. Even in the latest beta which I'm using now. The frozen page thing happens on pages with no flash that I know of, and usually ctrl+a or switching tabs a couple of times fixes it. It has happened lately on youtube though, along with other bs like the video freezing when you change volume.. I think it's rarer than it used to be.
That's the tip of the iceberg though. It's just full of bugs and issues that come and go with each version which have become increasingly annoying, mostly since version 10.
Opera has become so buggy it is barely worth using any more. It still has at least two really fucking annoying bugs which I reported in 2007 (usually can't select text in text boxes such as this one without right click/select all first, and pages randomly becoming uninteractable). I actually have a huge list of bugs, but no point in posting it anywhere. The devs don't seem to give a shit, which is a shame. I need to figure out which other browser I can customize close to Opera then make the switch.
Can the first one register anywhere?
Spotify doesn't really help artists http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/
I don't have this problem. It's probably Opera's fault though. For some months I've been wanting to try Firefox/IE9/Chromium because Opera has many unfixed bugs that go back even to version 9. For example, I can't select any text in this text box without doing a right click>select all first. I reported this to them 4 years ago.
If steam can't connect it will ask if you want to start in offline mode.
They should have standards for what they sell or allow to be sold through them though. At least I would hope the most reputable company in the US did.
Selling those books depends on naive people not realising what they are buying. There are about 300000 of them so far and not that many have reviews. Cons usually depend on someone's greed or naivete but that doesn't mean they deserve to get conned or that scammers should be allowed to get away with it.
I never got burned by any of this, but others did. The stuff that costs 1p is never eligible for prime or free shipping, although often there are alternative sellers who can provide free or cheaper shipping.
To be fair, Amazon's customer service has been excellent any time I've needed it.
I've seen all sorts of scams running on Amazon and they don't give a fuck. A few examples that I've seen so far:
Counterfeit items.
Products advertised as £0.01 with the actual cost in a fake shipping charge.
There are hundreds of thousands of "books" which are actually auto generated pamphlets consisting of a main Wikipedia article and some linked articles, selling for £30+ and almost all rated 1 star by anyone who bought one. (Search for Betascript on amazon)
Crap watches selling for £10, supposedly reduced from £50 or whatever. I know someone who bought one of these thinking she was getting a bargain but the watch was barely worth £5 let alone £50.
I'd also include Amazon themselves automatically charging £50 for prime after the free trial. It was stated in the terms but they must have made millions from people who didn't notice.
1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1.
