Comment XP support (Score 2, Insightful) 330
Meh. I'm just glad they're still patching Windows XP.
Comment Re:Good for them (Score 1) 277
That this kind of regurgitated, thoughtless, statist propoganda can get rated "insightful" shows you what a +5 is worth around here. Which is why I started browsing at 0.
Comment Sort of like the shovelware on a new PC? (Score 1) 271
That's...kinda weird. Anyone tech-savvy enough to be buying bare HDD is just going to reformat it anyway, right?
I look at it like netbooks & laptops that inevitably come pre-configured with Windows and a ton of crapware: I may have little use for it, but there's nothing stopping me from wiping the drive & installing OS of my choice. If it lets them sell the machine more cheaply, under the fiction that the shovelware is "free advertising" for the vendors, it's a win for both me and the manufacturer.
Oh, except it's NOT a better deal. $100 is steep for only 500 GB. It would only look like a "deal" if you shop for components at Best Buy.
Judge Finds NSA Wiretapping Program Illegal 136
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that a federal judge has ruled that the NSA's warrantless surveillance program was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration's effort to keep one of Bush's most disputed counterterrorism policies shrouded in secrecy. Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled that the government had violated a 1978 federal statute requiring court approval for domestic surveillance when it intercepted phone calls of Al Haramain, a now-defunct Islamic charity in Oregon, and of two lawyers who were representing it in 2004. Declaring that the plaintiffs had been 'subjected to unlawful surveillance,' the judge said that the government was liable to pay them damages."
Submission + - GeForce GTX 480 BIOS Update and Cooks an Egg (legitreviews.com)
demitri writes: Hardware review website Legit Reviews has taken the heat issue of the newly released NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 Fermi DX11 video card and put a positive spin on it! They slapped a piece of tin foil and tried to cook an egg on the heatsink of the GTX 480! I don't want to completely spoil the fun, but this was prompted after a BIOS update on the card failed to fix the dual monitor heat issue LR discovered! They even had some forum members create their own George Foreman Grill spoofs featuring NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang! Check it out!
Sex.com is Going Down 124
nathanielinbrazil writes "A motion to dismiss the involuntary bankruptcy of Sex.com has been filed in a California court. Operational turmoil has put its owner in the doghouse with its creditors, who want to take over. 'It's the best domain in the world by far,' said Mike Mann, who has tried to keep the creditors at bay. Sex.com is estimated to be worth $100m. Let the games begin!"
Comment Re:Drive Safely Not Slowly (Score 1) 801
one word: revenue.
Comment Re:Other strategies... (Score 1) 801
Sure, but I have a hard time seeing how the Portuguese system enhances revenue to the State^H^H^H^H^H^H^H improves safety.
Comment How is this "trouble for Hollywood?" (Score 2, Insightful) 335
Not as long as ISPs offer most of us nothing better than high-latency 1.5 Mbit DSL, or low-rate cable. If we even get a choice of those two.
Oh, I forgot, the FCC is going to magically solve the last-mile (or last-500-feet) problem. Right, there you go.
Comment Another game with good voice acting: Half Life (Score 1) 251
The original one. The character I remember most is the unnamed G-man. There was something jarring about his phrasing and the timing of his lines. He was a good example of "less is more" in characterization.
The Seven Hidden Browsers In the Windows Ballot 246
Barence writes "Two weeks ago Microsoft started rolling out a Windows update within the European Union, giving every Internet Explorer user the option to switch browsers. As well as the five big names, anyone who scrolls the ballot window to the right will find seven further browsers, none of which is exactly a household name. There's no quality control being offered, either — they're simply the '12 most widely-used web browsers that run on Windows 7,' based on usage share in the European Economic Area. But what are these unknown browsers actually like? To find out, seven PC Pro staff installed a browser each, used it exclusively for a day, and ran a variety of tests. The browser-by-browser verdict on the hidden seven: two are worth a look for specific reasons, the other five are only likely to give an internet novice a horribly outdated idea of what web browsing is like."
Comment Re:Deus Ex 2 (Score 1) 398
The unfortunate outcome of Thief 3 breathed new life into the Thief 2 fan mission community. Over 5 years after T3's release, you can still find more new T2 fan missions than T3 fan missions.
I think this is explainable by a few reasons:
The level editing tools for T3 are supposedly quite poor, compared to what exists for T2 (here I'm relying totally on hearsay, as I haven't the requisite patience to develop my own levels).
Also, there are major things missing in T3 that people had got used to in T1 and T2: no swimmable water, and no rope arrows.
Eidos devs reported that they simply could not get rope arrows to work, despite lots of effort, so we got those goofy Spider Man gloves. Apparently the Havok engine doesn't handle water immersion, thus the "fall into the water = die" at the harbor.
Comment Re:Most games I can think of (Score 1) 398
Don't make me "tap" a button to perform a action. Who thought of that?
Word. I actually wore out a keyboard's "Shift" key (albeit a $12 Aopen, no big loss) with the stupid "sprint" tapping in Grant Theft Auto San Andreas.
Had I been sufficiently motivated, I guess I could have set up a macro to save wear on the Shift key, but I shouldn't have to.
Comment Re:Awful ports? (Score 1) 398
What's worse is front panel USB ports that are crammed together with their long axes aligned. If you have a slightly fat USB dongle/flash drive or, Glub forbid, USB-to-SD adapter, the neighboring USB port is completely blocked.
I'm looking at an HP DC5850 on my desk, which has the USB ports stacked (e.g. long axes parallel). That's the better way to do it.
Comment Re:Guitar Hero World Tour... (Score 1) 398
I think they did the same thing with Guitar Hero 3. My system is hardly a lightweight, garnering a 5.7 overall score in Windows 7, with a 6.1 (!) in Memory. Dirty details:
-Core 2 Duo E8500
-4 GB DDR3 1333 MHz (PC 10666) RAM
-GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512 MB (PCI Express 2.0 16x interface) video card
And while GH3 under Windows XP (haven't tried it in 7 yet) runs acceptably, there's often hints of hitching in the animation. Turning off the crowds helps only a little. It definitely feels like it's being run in an emulator, or was at least ported with little to no optimization done.
The frustrating thing is, I know the consoles it was designed to run on are MUCH less beefy in hardware than my PC. True for GH World Tour as well, I'd wager.
The big publishers just don't care any more. Why should they? In the console world, they get to control both the software and the hardware (properly, the console mfg. controls the hardware, but the point is it's locked down and fixed-configuration).
Infinity Ward gave PC gamers the middle finger with Modern Warfare 2, and I see no reason things will get better. I would be surprised if they even bother with a Windows 7 version of Modern Warfare 3.
