I thought we all recognized this when they shut down the Zone. At least with DirectPlay games, you can run your own matchmaking service if you want. God help us when they shut down Games For Windows Live and 6 or 7 years of console ports die. I never buy a game now unless it runs on the standard QuakeWorld model - CD key auth, master server, dedicated user-run servers.

I know it's not a professional project, nor built on any real technical documentation, but I hardly think that an OS should be distributed with a driver that gets 32fps running Quake 3 on a Geforce 9. Can anyone tell me: better or worse performance than using a 3dfx card under Linux?

It melts the chocolate, so it's gotta be reverberating with the water? I assumed that's how you know the frequency.

Let's talk about some old games. Take, for one, Halo 2. It's now going to be permanently offline, as a result of it being connected to Microsoft's services. Let's go back though. Take a look at Jedi Knight. Can you play that online anymore? Nope. Microsoft service. Dead. Any of those other MSN/"Zone" games? Dead. At least DirectPlay supported LAN in the same manner as online, so the games all still support that.

But - Quake 2? Still kicking. Released the same year as JK, too, IIRC. Microsoft continues to do this; they entice game developers with easy online/multiplayer libraries and then kill the service to force people to upgrade. I fear for all the Games for Windows games; that's why I'll never buy a title that uses Games for Windows Live. 10 years down the road, all those games will be permanently offline too, as will (likely) all this trash like CoD42 which uses an even smaller and even more restricted network. Meanwhile, I'll still be playing Quake 3 (and hopefully RAGE, now that it's not being published by EA).

DirectPlay. Live. When will developers learn?

He could have been good friends with http://www.dustindiamond.com/ !

The client you linked to is about 10 years old. It offers "integration of legacy systems with Windows 2000," and comes in attractive beige plastic. It even carries a Win___ name! Considering that a throwaway cellphone you get from Verizon has about twice as much CPU power as this thing, it's definitely not "cheap" for $100.

...shit bitch motherfucker.

Wouldn't an animated Chris Hansen be a better display?

You've missed the point. Ubuntu has no crapware, so if the crapware paid for the hardware then wouldn't the hardware with Ubuntu be more expensive? There's no crapware on Ubuntu. It comes completely clean, save for Adobe Reader (which is not ENTIRELY crapware - it works just fine for reading PDF). The Windows version comes with the usual slew of useless shit (including Reader and MUCH more). Windows alone is $50 more. An identical laptop with Windows and crapware is $50 more. The crapware included with Windows, therefore, does not factor into the price.

Then why is a Dell Mini 9 (or Vostro A90 is the new branding I think) with Windows XP and (presumably) a bunch of crapware $50 MORE than the one with Ubuntu? Wouldn't they be the same price if the crapware flattened out the windows license?

I don't quite follow your logic. I don't see anything outright wrong with your claims here, but they don't seem to fit coherently. It's hard not to sound like a troll saying this, but, "what?"

Parse error.
Water which is 99% pure. Not a substance composed 99% of pure water.

The major flaw in doing things per-project is a lack of stability. Who's gonna give you a loan if you need to look for new work every few months?

Might be slightly OT (well, not relative to P/GP posts), but if this is a scheduler that will prioritize Rhythmbox's hard drive reads over my GIMP swapping, then I'm all for it. Nothing worse than having to turn off the music because your hard drive is being swapped to too much to... stream a 192kb/s mp3.

wh11111sh.