CobraA1

Reply to Brad's Impulse Launch Review in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] I am very biased in favor of . . . I'd like to see . . . My other request is . . . This will be something Stardock will need to improve. [/quote] Correct me if I'm wrong - you [b]are[/b] the CEO, right? You don't "like" to see things happen - you just say the magic words and it happens, right ;)? At the very least, when you say you'd "like to see" something happen, your opinion has a lot more weight than ours. [quote]Impulse is designed to

Reply to Update next week in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]By the same token, how does producing excuses in lieu of results help ANYTHING?[/quote] As any kid who has turned in homework late knows, there's a fine line between an excuse and an explanation. And in my mind, Stardock produced an excellent explanation. I'm sorry, you come across as a little kid constantly whining "I want! I want! I want!" There was plenty of communication. They told us why there was a delay. It's not as if they have infinite people - they're

Reply to Update next week in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]In the end, and here's a lesson about life for you, negativity ultimately promotes change. Optimism will never change anything.[/quote] Neither promotes change. You see, a pessimist complains about the wind. An optimist hopes it will change. A realist adjusts the sails. [quote]A style to be sure. I would not limit it to Springer. I find most comedians today have to resort to sarcasm and cursing to elicit a laugh. If that fails then they bring out the ba

Reply to Update next week in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Let's say you buy a washing machine from a company whose service has been, over a long time, twenty times better than service from other washing machine companies. But this time, the service is only ten times better. Do you whine incessantly about how what is still some of the best service in the industry is somehow going to make you only buy washing machines from companies that have even worse service?[/quote] Or how about this: Normally the company sends over a repair person to

Reply to Update next week in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

antracer: Completely and totally agreed. [quote]It must be flexible, which means that the coders building that game must also be flexible. They can't be locked into a rigid structure built because of a TDD that was written a year ago when the game's design was different.[/quote] Actually, agile development is generally a lot more flexible than other methods of development, and can adapt well to changing requirements. It needs not be TDD: Other forms of agile development, such a

Reply to Why PC Gaming is Dying in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Look at sys-req's for XP vs Vista. 1GB ram, .2 GHz difference.[/quote] Well, look at how much hardware has changed since XP's release: What we have today far exceeds the systems we had in 2001. You could run XP comfortably on a machine with about 300 MHz and 256 MB of RAM. Very few people have machines with specs that low anymore. It's much more common today to find machines with at least 2 GHz and with 2 GB of RAM. [quote]I have two 1.82 GHz cores, so that's well over 1

Reply to Update next week in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]You are only 7 weeks to late and totally ruined the name of Stardock.[/quote] . . . and he'll be supporting it for a long time to come, I'm sure. Homeworld 2, Caesar IV, Command and Conquer 3, etc all have stopped releasing any new patches. Big name publishers rarely support their games beyond a single patch anymore. IMHO, this is where Stardock really shines, and still shines. [quote]And I am pretty sure, with all negative reactions + the emptyness on the forums from la

Reply to Tell me what is a good game? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

GalCiv 2 and Sins of a Solar Empire, of course! Pretty much anything made by Valve as well. Portal is great, although a centralized place for custom map ratings is hard to find :(. I've also got all of the Command & Conquer games, as well as the entire Myst series, although Myst can be too much of a thinking game for some people. Civ games also are high on my list, as well as Homeworld and Homeworld 2. I like strategy and puzzle games.

Reply to Piracy ain't the only reason why PC gaming is dying (my rant) in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] Er, it sounds more like they're clearing shelf space. Of course, I could be wrong.[/quote] True, although that doesn't explain the Spore ads. [quote]They probably just got tired of their BS. I know I have. "Would you like to ensure that for-" "Frak no, now leave me alone and let me BUY the frakin' thing!" "Uh, ok. Just remember, you can also trade in your old PC games." "What, you mean the ones that cost me $50 two months ago which you are offering me $2 to take off

Reply to Piracy ain't the only reason why PC gaming is dying (my rant) in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]I've had the same experience. While the PC shelfspace may not be nearly as large as the consoles, there is still quite a lot of shelf space for PC games.[/quote] Agreed. Just stopped by both a WalMart and GameStop today. The PC game shelves between the two stores were night and day: The new release shelves for PC games were larger and pretty empty at the WalMart, and the store is packed with ads for Spore, including some big ones as you walked in. Looks like new PC games are flyi

Reply to Why PC Gaming is Dying in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Well, sure, you're using Vista and you need four cores. But what do you use for gaming, four cores just barely runs Vista.[/quote] From what I can tell, Vista is much more a memory hog (and you can thank SuperFetch for some of that) than it is a CPU hog. When I'm not running anything, my CPU cores are usually pretty quiet.

Reply to Piracy ain't the only reason why PC gaming is dying (my rant) in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]On my last few visits to stores like Gamestop, EB, Walmart and Best Buy, you are lucky to find one shelf of PC games.. while console games now take up 90 percent of their gaming area.. [/quote] I invite you to come look at Steam and Stardock Central/Impulse, which are digital stores offering PC games. http://www.steampowered.com/ https://www.stardock.com/products/sdcentral/ https://forums.stardock.com/forum/457 http://www.impulsedriven.com/

Reply to Why PC Gaming is Dying in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]I wouldn't entirely disagree, but the process isn't that much different then typical computer tasks of formating, insert image, and follow a few steps.[/quote] Most people don't even do that much, as an OS is pre-installed on most PCs. [quote]The future seems to be shifting to Nvidia's CUDA (Tesla systems), because of it's incredible performance and cost-to-performance ratio, i.e. some big companies are already changing over.[/quote] Indeed, video cards are beco

Reply to Why PC Gaming is Dying in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

Well, for one thing it's ready for future games and future software, which I'm sure will use more of it. Hardware manufacturers have made it very clear that computing is going multicore in the future, rather than cranking up the GHz. For another, I do a bit of raytracing and photo manipulation as a hobby, and that's where the quad cores will really get maxed out.

Reply to Why PC Gaming is Dying in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] But is there a significant performance gain? That's the key issue.[/quote] Hard to say, as none of the cores were maxed out, even with the affinity set to use only two of them. My bottleneck isn't my CPU.

Reply to Piracy ain't the only reason why PC gaming is dying (my rant) in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Simply put, consoles can offer things that PC's do not offer the day the game is released. Fantstic graphics at a relatively cheap price. Take the xbox 360 for example: default graphics are HDMI into an HDTV while most PC's have no video support beyond DVI.[/quote] Well, with my computer I use a DVI to VGA adapter, and my monitor supplies me with a nice 1600x1200 resolution @ 75Hz, non-interlaced. Have a good old fashioned CRT, although a new LCD is on my wish list. Problem is, w

Reply to Does the U.S Prison system need a new direction? in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Edit: Cobra, drinking water can kill you, everything you eat contains cancer causing elements when consumed in high enough levels, you can get diabetes from eating candy bars. Risk is a part of life, deciding that something should be illegal because it might be bad for the user is absurd. Everything is relative, marijuana is harmless because more people are killed by candy, caffeine, cold medicine, peanuts, any number of common, every day substances.[/quote] I find it fascinating

Reply to Why PC Gaming is Dying in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] By "support" I meant "take advantage of". Is there an actual performance gain when using a quad core as opposed to a dual core with Vista / XP?[/quote] Yes. The scheduler will do its best to distribute the threads between the cores equally. [quote]Again, the question I'm asking is if these games take advantage of the quad core's capabilities and provide a significant performance gain compared to using a dual core.[/quote] I have not measured the performance

Reply to Does the U.S Prison system need a new direction? in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] . . . it is harmless marijuana smokers . . . [/quote] Studies (some peer reviewed) I have linked to on the previous page, the Wikipedia links to, and Google links to claim otherwise. It has known and studied negative effects on both the individual and on society as a whole. Most of the claims of harmlessness are coming from people who are not looking at the research, or are simply ignoring the research and pretending it does not exist. It can be easily argued whether it

Reply to Why PC Gaming is Dying in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]I will take it, that you are not familiar with that even a PS3 is a fully-functional computer, but, that is not you fault it is still not advertised/marketed as such. For instance, the PS3 already has word processors, spreadsheet, rendering, simulation, web browsing, and other applications. The issue is absolute lack of consumer knowledge of these facts, i.e. pointing to the earlier it's not really marketed as such.[/quote] It is true that consoles are indeed computers, however t

Reply to Does the U.S Prison system need a new direction? in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Why where you registred as a sex offender?[/quote] He dragged the other person by the genitals - which may be cruel and unusual, but not really a sexual offense in my opinion, since it was a violent activity, not a sexual activity. He didn't attempt any real sexual activity. But hey, that's just my opinion, and it's ultimately up to a judge to decide. I am not a lawyer. [quote]24 So, I'm going to deny the Commonwealth's 25 request for the charge.[/quote]<br/

Reply to Does the U.S Prison system need a new direction? in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]statistically no it doesn't[/quote] Statistical source, please. [quote]all four of these points are unsupported by studies and at least two of them are bullshit myths. [/quote] "Unsupported by studies" meaning you never bothered to look. Studies exist in plenty of numbers; you are simply ignoring them. My points about mental disorders are actually supported by studies. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673607611623/abstract ht

Reply to Honesty and Common Sense Sweeps the Galaxy in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

More to follow: People in the USA suddenly realize that freedom of speech includes the freedom of people to say something you might not like. People in the USA also realize that there is nothing in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights giving them the right not to be offended.

Reply to Why PC Gaming is Dying in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Also, if someone is on a tight budget and they had to decide between a PC or a console, the PC will win every time. Consoles only perform one function (gaming), PCs many. There is no competition. And if you recall, most of the world is struggling just to get their first PC and consoles are likely out of the mix in those areas for years to come.[/quote] Quite true: If a household has neither a PC nor a console, then the PC is very likely to be bought, because it is needed for a lo

Reply to PC game piracy hurts us all in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]The damn game is not available in my country[/quote] Country codes is one thing I am very much against. IMHO it's companies creating their own laws, and IMHO it hurts trade and hurts economies. This is also the case with nearly all forms of DRM: It completely ignores what Copyright law really is, and creates new rules that do not exist under current laws.