But that's just where the usefulness ends. Sure, you now appreciate rock music, but can you play it in real life on real instruments?

Umm, yeah, and how many video game skills do you apply to daily life?

Are you an awesome assassin? A race car driver? A pilot? A marine? Are you actually Batman?

It's a frickin game. It is play. Nobody gives a crap in this context about playing an actual instrument. It's frickin air guitar. It's intended to be fun.

Millions of kids bought Guitar Hero and Rock Band to realize their dreams of actually becoming ROCK MUSICIANS.

Horseshit. Millions of kids bought GTA and Saints Row to realize their dreams of become thugs, mac daddies, and pimps.

Do you think any of them actually expect to have that happen? (Well, I guess in some cases the just might.)

Sadly, all the games do is to train you to press colored buttons in sequence with colored lights. Those skills are not transferable to real instruments, and in fact, won't even get you an audition.

Dude, in the 80s there used to be this game called Simon. It had four colored lights to press. You can still buy it.

This is shared fun, with "press colored buttons in sequence with colored lights" but with music and animations. It's not sophisticated or real. It's not for hardcore gamers.

Most 'skills' you practice in video games will never translate into real world skills or get you an interview. So why is this any different?

You don't need to like it or understand it, but it's not completely without entertainment value to some people ... even if they don't actually become Rock Bands. Which, none of them actually expect to.

No more than any other game with a "make pretend" aspect to it.

Cheers

Microsoft is not likely to bother with another Windows 7 service pack. They are getting ready to bring out a whole other operating system, and give it away for free to the customers who would have downloaded such a thing.

I've seen WL222, but I haven't heard of IR5.

You'd like to think so, but it seems to me like most video games are pretty bad on every platform.

Other people are not having that problem. That's what makes me think the problem is due to some weird interaction with the video driver. Maybe, instead of storing the video in memory, it is writing it to the paging file.

I just tried an 82 megabyte MP4 file with VLC 2.1.5 and had no problems selecting a time in the video well past the middle.

Then I tried a 3-hour VIDEO_TS on a dual layer DVD. I was able to select any time in the video instantly.

Ivy Bridge, i7-3770, 16 GB of memory, Win 7 Ultimate.

Uninstalling and re-installing VLC may help.

CEO: This Superfish incident has put our credibility in the toilet. Even corporate customers are looking askance at us now, and we didn't put it on their computers. Suggestions?

Executive 1: Lay low until it blows over.

Executive 2: Hire a new PR firm.

Executive 3: Start a social media campaign.

Genius executive: Maybe we should promise not to do stuff like that anymore.

LOL ... I do now. Prior to rock band, absolutely not. Now based on drum rate I can tell old v new Metallica -- or at least know it's either Metallica or Anthrax (based on what else is in my collection that is).

And, obviously, I do not think real drumming is easy, not by a bloody long shot ... but she's hella good at it in the game. Way way better than I ever got. She was rocking it on expert and I was in awe.

But prior to that, it was all a blur of screeching noise that I couldn't stand.

Now? Metallica and a bunch of hard core punk are likely to be on my iPod.

As I said, my wife is eternally grateful for the game, as my musical horizons have blown past what they had been.

LOL ... well then, carry on by all means.

Try the Intel Driver Update Utility. Possibly a newer version of the driver for the on-board video would help.

A next step would be to visit the web site of the manufacturer of the motherboard and install any newer versions of the BIOS or chipset drivers.

Sometimes motherboard manufacturers modify the Intel software, so it is necessary to deal with that. For example, the RAID drivers may have been modified.

You know, my wife will be eternally grateful for Rock Band, et al.

I led a very, er ... musically sheltered life prior to Rockband and Guitar Hero. Wasn't a fan of most forms of rock, couldn't stand metal or punk. Like, at all.

The Rockbank type games taught me a LOT about the melody, structure, and musicality of them; sort of acted as a crash course in understanding why they didn't suck.

Since then I've bought well over a hundred punk albums (literally) and other stuff I previously didn't like since playing the game.

Say what you will about these games ... but in my direct experience, nothing teaches the structure and musicality of a broad range of music as well as these things.

For me and my wife? We'd buy this again in a heartbeat ... because it's a fun game to play in parties, and a friend's wife makes drumming on expert look easy.

So when I'm rocking out to Rise Against in the car, my wife is laughing and saying "Thank god for Rockband". Because without those games, I most certainly wouldn't have been.

It kind of tastes like gasoline but that's part of the appeal, along with pretending it was smuggled across the neutral zone after you've consumed too much of it.... ;)

LOL ... is this a thing? Like, an actual thing people do?