Not quite true - there are some people out there with genuinely altruistic motivations. It's just that the West has managed to make a religion out of selfishness, so they're few and far between, and often lambasted.
All hail Dollah!
Believe it or not, Half Life 2 and episodes are DRM free and can be run without Steam. Lots of steam games don't have DRM. Steam is simply a distrobution platform that provides optional DRM that actually works pretty well. On top of all this, Steam's family sharing even lets you share your games with family and friends. The only games that don't work with family sharing are those with additional DRM on top, like Uplay, GFWL, Rockstar, etc. because they require a secondary login and the key can only be registered to one account.
If this was true, it certainly isn't as of May 2010, when HL2 was updated to the then-latest Source version so it could be ported to Mac. Like all of Valve's games, HL2 and its episodes are SteamWorks games and require Steam to function.
It helps that Steam doesn't need to validate games every time you play them. I think it validates them once a month.
It looks like Valve finally managed to iron out Steam's inability to switch to Offline mode if an Internet connection isn't present when Steam starts, too... so you should be able to play installed games if your connection goes offline.
There have only been a minor handful of widespread issues with Steam's system, the most notable being Half-Life 2's launch... in 2004.
Now, if only they could invest in better infrastructure for their Friends service and matchmaking systems (affects TF2 MvM, CSGO, and DOTA2) so they wouldn't go down 2-7 times a week...
I think people forget that GNU has their own communications library for secure sockets... [url=http://www.gnutls.org/]GnuTLS[/url].
I know why OpenBSD won't use it (because it's LGPL), but why won't anyone else?
So, I'm surprised no one has come up with this term yet to describe the vision of the FCC: Net Neuterality.
I'm sure it has Bob Barker's support.
TELECOMS have a monopoly on COPPER PHONE LINES. It has nothing to do with internet. And you could always get a phone via VOIP or Cellular. Whatever advantage the telecoms had was gone at the turn of the century.
...and cable lines, since you seem to be forgetting that the cable providers are also telecoms.
Government created Microsoft?
Created Microsoft, no.
From what I've heard (I think the source was Cringely's Accidental Empires / Triumph of the Nerds), the US government mandated that IBM couldn't create its own chips or operating system for its upcoming line of personal computers due to its monopoly position in the mainframe/minicomputer market.
So, IBM went to this company named "Intel" and licensed their 8088 and 8086 processors for use in it.
IBM also went to Microsoft and licensed this product called "DOS" as their operating system... which Microsoft in turn purchased from Seattle Computer Products.
So, while the government didn't create Microsoft, they created the Wintel monopoly that existed for 20ish years prior to the rise of smartphones.
As far as I know, you cannot precompile shaders anyway because the compiled code is hardware-dependent. The shader processors are different among architectures and manufacturers, and do not have a common baseline like "x86-64" to target, like we have on the CPU side.
Why? Surely the shaders remain stored in the video card's memory and don't directly interact with the host OS.
We do have common baselines of GLSL and HLSL, but those are converted into hardware specific instructions on the card itself.
The shiny new features in DirectX do not actually matter for a long time after their release, since game developers will rarely use them as the new DirectX's are available only on newer Windows's. Quite a many developers try maximize amount of potential customers by a single codebase. If the MS would still release new versions of DirectX to all Windows variants still in support, it might have a better stand against OpenGL.
Windows XP's death has basically given developers free reign to support DirectX 11.0 as their new minimum.
Then again, even before this, DX11 features popped up as optional features in games like Batman: Arkham City (and presumably Origins).
Here is wisdom. Let him that has understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred three score and six.
Solve that for my Slashdot password.
Dude, that password was so easy.
I've updated your password to the answer to a new riddle:
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Good luck spelling it correctly!
See GOG.com (where I purchased witcher 2, which I have yet to play). Same basic idea, lots of discounts, nice organization, etc.. Only no DRM! None at all!
Witcher 2 was a bad example.
Every version of The Witcher 2 sold on services that weren't sold through GOG had DRM when the game launched. This included retail copies, which had SecuRom.
I completely agree with this. I'm do not use Ubuntu regularly, but sometimes I have to help people who do. I do not know the names by hearth, I guess I can just do cat
At least for Ubuntu, checking
Which happens to be the 12.04 release.
Well, here we are again.
It's always such a pleasure.
Remember when you tried to kill me twice?
Oh how we laughed and laughed,
except I wasn't laughing,
under the circumstances I've been shockingly nice.
You want your freedom take it?
That's what I'm counting on.
I used to want you dead, but
Now I only want you gone.
She was a lot like you
Maybe not quite as heavy
Now little Caroline is in here too
One day they woke me up
So I could live forever
It's such as shame the same will never happen to you.
You've got your short sad life left
That's what I'm counting on.
I'll let you get right to it
Now I only want you gone.
Goodbye my only friend.
Oh... did you think I meant you?
That would be funny if it weren't so sad.
Well you have been replaced
I don't need anyone now
When I delete you maybe I'll stop feeling so sad
Go make some new disaster
That's what I'm counting on.
You're someone else's problem
Now I only want you gone....
Now I only want you gone....
Now I only want you... gone....
Should Ford be waived from issuing a recall on a 19-year-old car purchased in 1995 if a safety defect is revealed?
Comparing a physical device costing tens of thousands of dollars whose defects can cost the lives of the user versus a piece of software costing $100 or less whose defects cause inconvenience to the user totally makes sense!!!!!111
But two swing out of the realm of opinion, you compare Windows XP to "OpenSource darlings like firefox" whose long-term support is measured in "months, not years". This is a bad comparison. A better comparison would be Ubuntu LTS which includes firefox and whose support is measured in years not months. However Canonical having only a fraction of a percent of the marketshare that Windows XP does, is not making a business model in supporting releases for over 14 years.
As a direct comparison, Windows XP is OVER TWELVE YEARS OLD now and has not one, not even two, but three major versions newer available to the public. In Ubuntu terms, Windows XP is the equivalent of Ubuntu 06.04 LTS (12.04 being the current LTS as 14.04 has yet to be released) and should be treated accordingly.
"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything." -- Russell Baker
