Not to mention that the severity of punishment is a jump away from the severity of the offense.

Yes, downloading movies should be illegal, but why are the charges so incredibly much more than shoplifting the DVD out of a store? If he'd done that, he'd probably still have his dorm room.

Then your point is moot. We're talking about realtime graphics right now.

And he's talking about downgrading to an old (unsupported) version... basically completely switching operating systems. If you were installing Linux (which of course is what you're talking about) on a new PC that came with Windows, you'd just reformat.

Claiming that installing Windows 7 will make reformatting impossible is silly, and that's what I was responding to.

You've just won this year's award for nitpicking. Congrats.

When is this EVER the case with ANY beta test? People CHOOSE to beta test... they're not forced into it. Aside from that, the "payment" is usually the ability to get to try out new software before everyone else, and to help make sure that the issues YOU have with it are noticed.

Not to mention that because this is an OPEN beta, Microsoft would have to give every single person who ever "beta-tested" (read: "downloaded") the software a free copy.

If I get chosen for the Starcraft beta test, I'll not only be extremely excited, but I will most definitely buy the finished product.

What are you talking about? Who doesn't reformat when they install a new OS? Maybe the general public, but they probably don't even know that the RC exists.

Also... wanting to try the new mainstream OS makes me a diehard Windows fan?

I don't think that the problem that should be focused on is that people kill each other... but that kids, for some odd reason, are going on killing sprees across the world.

It's easy to point the finger at paintballing and video games, ban them, and say that you did something. Really, we do those things because we don't KNOW the exact causes of these outbursts, and that scares people.

Maybe the first step in preventing these things is to focus more on bullying in school, and attempting to reach out to kids who might be outsiders. How that can be accomplished... I don't know, but these seem to be calculated acts of rage on the part of the killer, and we should be focusing on where that rage is stemming from rather than fumbling at misguided "solutions."

Wasn't XP built off of NT? Wasn't 98 built off of 95? Obviously improvements were made.

The average user gets their operating system with their computer. In addition to that, the average user also wants the "newest" version out there. I HAVE heard of my friends' parents "upgrading" to ME when it came out.

In general, people aren't going to know that it's not even 5% faster, and they're still going to want it.

And even easier to do yourself!

Step 1: Turn off in-game music

Step 2: Start playing music in the media player of your choice

Step 3: Start game!

Step 4: ???

Step 5: Profit!

Citation please? From my experience in looking at system specs at apple.com and the prices, this is absolutely true.

Note that I said that the average user is fine with their non-customizable parts. It's even-slightly-more-than-casual gamers that do at least a LITTLE customization.

I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. I don't know the gamers you hang around, but go to ANY large LAN party and you'll find that the majority of the people there built or at least added parts to their PCs. The people there with some sort of weird Dell XPS are usually made fun of.

I was really going to ignore your awful grammar... but that paragraph was just bad. I won't let it stop me from refuting your actual points, but just know that it makes you look silly.

.001% of people? That's 1 in every 100,000 FYI. In the small town I grew up in (which had a population of about 14,000) I knew at least 100 gamers, all of whom built their computers. I'm glad you're capable of spewing random numbers.

Good luck finding equivalent parts for less? Let's do a fun thing here, and look at apple's lowest priced iMac ($1,199). Now I spent 5 minutes composing semi-equivalent parts (some are better), and I have almost halved Apple's price.

Thanks for not knowing what you're talking about. When you buy Apple, you're buying the brand, not really the value.

Except that absolutely isn't the only reason PC gamers don't use Macs.

Macs are overpriced for the components they have and are almost completely uncustomizable. Obviously the very similar hardware that they all run on is good for the average user who just wants to play a simple game, but for actual gamers it's not as good.

When I can build a Mac from scratch and not have to spend a bazillion dollars on everything, I'll CONSIDER switching... until then the PC gives me the customizability that I want.

So John Stewart is liberal. Regardless, he calls people out on bullshit. He's an entertainer... not a reporter. It's not his fault that the right are more ridiculous.

ZOMG DRM SUX. It only hurts the customer experience! Pirates won't be stopped by it!

Remember, "better" is a subjective term.

I think the game is absolutely gorgeous... the backgrounds especially, but the entire pastel look is really cool. Show me a flash game that has something that's actually beautiful, not just "zomg 3d flash!"

Not to mention that the levels actually make you think. Did Mario do that for you? Prince of Persia maybe, but the time reversal mechanic of Prince of Persia was essentially just an extra life. In Braid you use it in... SO many ways. Get past world 1 and maybe you'll see.

It's generally considered a bad game if most people didn't like it, not if a few did. Part of making a good game/movie/anything is making it accessible... to a degree of course, some people just aren't interested in meaning.

However, you could name anything and I could find somebody who likes it and somebody who hates it. For Deus Ex IW, the problems I had with it were really odd animations and voice acting (I know, Deus Ex had these same things), extremely odd system requirements (it ran crappy on my Geforce 6800, which was considered a mid/high quality card), and generally dumbed down gameplay compared to the the original.

I think it's safe to say that poop tastes bad even when there are probably hundreds of people out in the world who enjoy it.