deanb

http://log.nadim.cc/?p=78 This feature may get yanked, but given that it's in the RTM seems highly unlikely, but MS collects data on every program you install so as to verify it as safe or not. Which would for example mean MS could compile a nice list of everyone with say..uTorrent installed or, as the example in the article, Tor network and so on so forth. Or even as mundane as folks running LibreOffice and Chrome.

Same reason the Abortion factory thing never hit national news. You have read the side bar of "recent entries" right? Man swallows three controllers, Palin challenges Obama to sandwich eating contest, etc. It's an Onion wannabe site. The robot itself exists, but it's not a "loving robot", just one built to be able to carry old folks around http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/28/ri-man-the-soft-and-cuddly-robot/

Just to play devils advocate here, but the last time the US had a black president half of the worlds population was wiped out. There's not really a good track record going (of course that was also the last time an Irish convict was put in the Whitehouse too.)

Oh shit I've had a couple saved up of late. So a quick one via mums BF again: Time flies like an arrow, Fruit flies like banana. And one I may have written already: Three cowboys are in a saloon talking about their friend Tommy. The first cowboy says "I bet when Tommy arrives he'll be wanting to show off about his fancy new sports car". "Nah," says the second, "he's a good boy, he'll greet us all once he arrives." The third says "If I know one thing about Tommy it's that he's a smart guy, he'll do both". Just then the doors push open and in walks Tommy. "Audi partners".

Quite a few of them happening of late. Thought it'd be worth of documenting in a thread. The big closure of late is Sony Liverpool, AKA Psygnosis http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-08-22-sony-closes-wipeout-developer-sony-liverpool-report Popcap, THQ and someone else also had some lay-offs. Which controversially seems to have included laying off the creator of Plants vs Zombies days after the sequel was announced.

Polygon Documentary... The closest we have to a documentary is a slide I put together on Gdocs with a "how to publish an article, don't fuck up the image sizes" walkthrough. Good write up by a guy from RPS (yeah he kinda has a dog in the fight, but still) http://botherer.org/2012/08/23/polygon-and-the-documentary-that-cured-cancer/

Bass - Which is fair enough because it's not spelt base, and bass fish is actually pronounced like brass. If it wasn't for the "totally addicted to bass" song I may have gone on through life pronouncing it treble and b-ass. There was another word too but I forgot.

I don't really follow on this, but I thought there was a book thread.

http://www.cracked.com/article_20012_if-dark-knight-rises-was-10-times-shorter-more-honest.html

So folks were raving about that Deadpool Kills Marvel. It's a rather short and not at all satisfying read. Most of the time it's just him decapitating people with very little creativity in the kills. Maybe. I'm just more used to the DC stuff, especially with Batmans "if jla go bad" list. All it really hammered home is how easily folks could kill each other in the marvel universe, just writers step in. And I know it's Deadpools thing, but the 4th wall stuff, especially the end, 2as pretty lame.

I'd like to file a bug report.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP3G2FqIOnE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbcX1o24fug 28th September.

@fuchikoma: Yeah, Studio Liverpool got shut down today. Also does that mean DVD players that say they support DivX don't mean the codec if you were to burn your own discs, but a special DVD format. How confusing. Also TIL. As for Ubi's figures: Yeah most likely pulled out of their arse. It's so rare for developers and publishers to come out with these figures then point to their working out. ACR sold 7 million copies as of February this year. Now even if we were to assume that just 200K of those copies were sold on PC, a rather mediocre amount, that'd put it at nearly 3.8million pirated copies, over half of the overall sales of the game. To put PC sales any higher and the piracy rate spirals astronomically. 3.8million is 10% of the total Steam userbase, and even larger chunk of the userbase that could amply play Ubisofts titles. And FDS is pretty much spot on, movie and music industry adapted to combat piracy by knocking out lossless music, triple play blu-rays, whereas games industry moves to skinner box F2P. F2P has generally been reported to have much higher profit rates than other forms of games, and given that there's also the "oh it's free it doesn't matter if it's a bit naf" mentality, it also helps reduce development costs too. That's why developers like shifting to F2P. There's a kid earning $200K on making hats for TF2. Valve earn a pretty penny of that and all the other hat transactions. Piracy is like the get out of jail free card. "Why do you have horrible DRM" "Because of piracy" "Why is your game now gotten $200 of hidden charges" "Because of piracy". Nobody seems to want to hugely question it, if you question their piracy stuff then you must hate the industry. And it's a pain in the ass to get hold of all the data to refute it too, especially when publishers hold their sales facts n figures so close.

@TFG: Use a client. I use Live Essentials Mail, and it works great with Hotmail/Live accounts (not the new outlook accounts though, and there's no info on their site for the manual entry details). @SL: Cos Apple couldn't come out and say "I'm a Mac and I'm a Windows" because even their lawyers aren't that good. But yes they're both PCs. Pretty much the exact same hardware for a good 6 years or so too. (Used to be PowerPC, like what's under the hood of modern consoles, now on Intel X86 chips). Hence the rise of the "Hacintosh".

I'm gonna point out this is Gizmodo. Not exactly the most trustable source. (And they've a love hate relationship with apple after they got banned from apple events)

All you had to do to get the OEM copy is buy it with PC parts. Main reason "general public" had access is because you can't really split shops into "shops that only sell to public" and "shops that only sell to businesses". And there's also those of us that build PCs on a freelance basis. And as I said I think MS clicked that the OEM one makes most sense. Mac users are it for people that don't build their PCs and don't have a version of windows to upgrade from. Course I ain't bought a Windows OS for personal use for years. Woot for MSDNAA.

I think Fliying Gerbil may be asking why some of us think we should be entitled to get the cheaper OEM version when average joe is picking up the £100 copy from PC World. And I think the answer pretty much is that average joe is shopping at PC World. And also that there's pretty much no reason not to get the OEM version given there's rarely a point where you'd actually need to buy a copy of Windows at retail. For most folks they'll be upgrading (or should be), and everyone else is usually building a PC, thus OEM copy. Only times non-HP/Dell/Vaio guy should be speding cash on Windows. It's exceedingly rare, if ever, you'd buy a laptop or something that doesn't come with an OS on it.

If you're asking the question I think you're asking it's worth pointing out that MS has seemingly scrapped the traditional retail version in favour of this semi-OEM version. So the proper question should be "Why was MS charging 3 times as much for pretty much the exact same version of the OEM edition, with just a bit of phone support no one used anyway and a weird plastic box"?

Because Microsoft sell a Windows license for folks building computers and they're building computers... Not like someone up for making their own PC from scratch is going to need the phone support.

I'd say your knowledge on the matter at hand is exceedingly relevant when it comes to making life affecting votes.

Because it normally costs a fuckton more. Also best I can read this replaces both the normal retail version and weird requirements OEM version. You have Upgrade, OEM (proper), and thus personal builder one. Which makes sense (and works out cheaper).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXkmtV1kQnk A recap trailer of sorts. Quite well made. I need to rewatch The Doctors Wife. "Fear me, I've killed hundreds of Time Lords". "Fear me, I killed all of them". Oh and I think it starts in two weeks cos next weeks telly paper says at the back "Next Week: Doctor Who". edit: 8th September. Fuck.

http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/windows-8-gets-personal-use-license-for-anyone-building-their-own-pc-20120821/ So hobby builders now get their own proper version of Windows instead of picking up an OEM copy. Not much changes except now we don't have to hit "agree" to a EULA that says you're meant to be Dell not Adele.