The page in question is here : http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/Windows-Windows-7/category/102
The pricing in question is this:
$49 for Windows 7 Home Premium
$99 for Windows 7 Professional
Okay, these are the upgrade prices... which are cut in about half. Microsoft also states that the pre-order on upgrades is good as long as supplies last and classifies these prices as a limited time offer.
Question: How actually determines how much supplies are on hand, and what their value is?
The answer is of course Microsoft. It's quite literally impossible for Microsoft to run out of supplies, since they are the ones making the supplies available.
It's a cute trick though. By making the prices for Windows 7 very competitive now... as the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade is less than the cost of most Xbox 360 and PS3 games, many consumers will feel they are forced to buy now rather than paying out the regular prices later.
Thanks Microsoft, I do intend to avail myself on one of the Professional upgrades... I do need to know how to fix such installations of course... but stuff like this isn't likely to make me move away from Mepis Linux.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Friday, June 05, 2009
11 year old says Video games a waste of time... um. He's wrong.
Story is carried by the NBC-LA here: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/11-Year-Old-Graduates-From-LA-College.html?yhp=1
The jist of the story is that an 11 year old boy is graduating from an LA college, has some experience with martial arts, and says Video Games are a waste of time.
Okay, for the most part, he probably does have half a point. Back in 2008 I went over that just playing MMO's didn't automatically grant leadership skills. For the most part, Video Games are just for having fun, a way to sit back and relax.
That being said, Video Games aren't just a way to waste time. Lets skip the educational games for a minute and talk real-world applications. Steven Spielberg, the legendary film director and producer, made headlines when he used Epic's Unreal Engine to make the sets for A.I. Today, it's common practice for not only movie studios, but television studios, to build sets in game engines first to make sure that positioning and lighting is accurate before actually building sets. Ever heard the old saying, Measure Twice, Cut Once? It's the same effect. Instead of having to build a set, find out it doesn't work as expected, visual entertainment production teams can save time and money, real money, by doing the work first on a digital gaming platform.
Video games haven't just made an impact on production of visual entertainment outside of Video Games. They've also had an impact on construction and architecture. Lets say you are building a house, and you hire a qualified architect. Chances are, he'll probably use some Computer Aided Design program to check out how your house is going to be built long before he ever hands over the first set of blueprints. So, question. What has driven the development of C.A.D. programs over the past 10 years? If you answered Video Games, you'd be right. As developers have struggled to produce buildings that are more realistic and believable, they have for the most part built the tools needed to do so. Okay, if you want to get technical, Industrial Light and Magic has been capable of producing spectacular special effects, both digitally and with props, since the 1970's. However, most of the Hollywood companies that went digital use huge rendering farms backed by some form of Unix, and now Linux. However, if you stop and take a look at say, Valve's Left For Dead, you'll find an incredibly realistic farmhouse... that probably only took hours to build versus days that a movie production studio would normally take.
So, Video Gaming drove the development of faster tools, that ran on commodity hardware, and commodity Operating Systems. The gaming aspect isn't lost on other aspects of construction, such as road design. Game developers have pushed the development of tools and resources to design racing games that feature realistic surface reaction, realistic car reaction, and realistic lighting. You'd be hard-pressed to find a road construction company that hasn't used a game engine to model and try out their new roads ahead of time now.
The US military also has real world uses for video games. While America's Army has a long ways to go before it can match the full world battle simulation of Planetside, its small scale, close quarters offerings are some of the most realistic in the world. In the latest versions used by the US Army itself in training, it's replaced monsterous mainframe systems with cheap commodity hardware... and it's actually proven in battle. There are cases on the record books where field medics, and even civilins, have preformed medical procedures they only experienced before in the America's Army Video Game. Waste of time? Not according to according to the guys responsible for putting warheads on the forheads either.
AFBlues covered this topic in a very effective manner recently, in this comic : http://www.afblues.com/?p=941. A UAV, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle had crashed. Nobody was hurt, injured, killed, or whatever. Now... just where do you think the implementation for UAV's came from? If you said Video Games, you got it right. Most of the major improvements in remote control and video control have come from video games. To many UAV pilots, sitting down at their console and flying their craft is exactly identical to sitting down at a computer monitor and loading up a really good flight simulator.
The examples of real life implementations of video games go on. Space Shuttle Launches? Take a good look at the inside of NASA's space centers when they put a shuttle launch on TV. Air-Defense and Missile Command Systems? Good luck determining whether or not a Patriot Missiles Control deck is a game. It isn't of course, but if you wanted to, you could use it to simulate an entire missile attack and counter-attack. The implementation of video games in real life is not just limited to Military applications either. City bomb squads depend on robots and controls that were developed as off-shoots of... you guessed it... video games.
The idea of using games for combat training has been around for years, it was one of the major plot points to Orson Scott Card's book, Ender's Game. In that book, children were told they were playing games... instead they were training for, and then actually implementing real battle strategies and controlling epic fights light years away. Monica Hughes used the same sort of plot point in her book, Invitation To the Game. The plot point there consisted of a group of grade school graduates being introduced to an alien world... through a video game. Then there was Star Trek and the Holo Deck. In fiction, the ideas have been there for decades. Now, those ideas are here... in reality.
Okay, as I explained back in 2008, just playing a game doesn't automatically grant you certain skills. However, certain games can teach you certain skills. Playing a Flight Simulator won't automatically teach you how to pilot a Cesna. However, you can use a Flight Simulator to improve your skills and how you interact with the equipment. You can train your eyes to detect certain positions of the aircraft. Most flight schools put pilots through hours in simulators before sending them up in a real craft. Waste of time? I've yet to meet one pilot who thought a Flight Simulator was a waste of time.
Now, I realize that I am dancing around the issue of how an 11-year old managed to get a degree in LA's University System. That is a can of worms on it's on. From that single comment on video games though? I seriously question how good LA's school system is if it could turn out somebody that can't even see basic benefits that video gaming has brought over the past years.
Then again, it is LA. I've been there. I can't really say I'm surprised.
The jist of the story is that an 11 year old boy is graduating from an LA college, has some experience with martial arts, and says Video Games are a waste of time.
Okay, for the most part, he probably does have half a point. Back in 2008 I went over that just playing MMO's didn't automatically grant leadership skills. For the most part, Video Games are just for having fun, a way to sit back and relax.
That being said, Video Games aren't just a way to waste time. Lets skip the educational games for a minute and talk real-world applications. Steven Spielberg, the legendary film director and producer, made headlines when he used Epic's Unreal Engine to make the sets for A.I. Today, it's common practice for not only movie studios, but television studios, to build sets in game engines first to make sure that positioning and lighting is accurate before actually building sets. Ever heard the old saying, Measure Twice, Cut Once? It's the same effect. Instead of having to build a set, find out it doesn't work as expected, visual entertainment production teams can save time and money, real money, by doing the work first on a digital gaming platform.
Video games haven't just made an impact on production of visual entertainment outside of Video Games. They've also had an impact on construction and architecture. Lets say you are building a house, and you hire a qualified architect. Chances are, he'll probably use some Computer Aided Design program to check out how your house is going to be built long before he ever hands over the first set of blueprints. So, question. What has driven the development of C.A.D. programs over the past 10 years? If you answered Video Games, you'd be right. As developers have struggled to produce buildings that are more realistic and believable, they have for the most part built the tools needed to do so. Okay, if you want to get technical, Industrial Light and Magic has been capable of producing spectacular special effects, both digitally and with props, since the 1970's. However, most of the Hollywood companies that went digital use huge rendering farms backed by some form of Unix, and now Linux. However, if you stop and take a look at say, Valve's Left For Dead, you'll find an incredibly realistic farmhouse... that probably only took hours to build versus days that a movie production studio would normally take.
So, Video Gaming drove the development of faster tools, that ran on commodity hardware, and commodity Operating Systems. The gaming aspect isn't lost on other aspects of construction, such as road design. Game developers have pushed the development of tools and resources to design racing games that feature realistic surface reaction, realistic car reaction, and realistic lighting. You'd be hard-pressed to find a road construction company that hasn't used a game engine to model and try out their new roads ahead of time now.
The US military also has real world uses for video games. While America's Army has a long ways to go before it can match the full world battle simulation of Planetside, its small scale, close quarters offerings are some of the most realistic in the world. In the latest versions used by the US Army itself in training, it's replaced monsterous mainframe systems with cheap commodity hardware... and it's actually proven in battle. There are cases on the record books where field medics, and even civilins, have preformed medical procedures they only experienced before in the America's Army Video Game. Waste of time? Not according to according to the guys responsible for putting warheads on the forheads either.
AFBlues covered this topic in a very effective manner recently, in this comic : http://www.afblues.com/?p=941. A UAV, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle had crashed. Nobody was hurt, injured, killed, or whatever. Now... just where do you think the implementation for UAV's came from? If you said Video Games, you got it right. Most of the major improvements in remote control and video control have come from video games. To many UAV pilots, sitting down at their console and flying their craft is exactly identical to sitting down at a computer monitor and loading up a really good flight simulator.
The examples of real life implementations of video games go on. Space Shuttle Launches? Take a good look at the inside of NASA's space centers when they put a shuttle launch on TV. Air-Defense and Missile Command Systems? Good luck determining whether or not a Patriot Missiles Control deck is a game. It isn't of course, but if you wanted to, you could use it to simulate an entire missile attack and counter-attack. The implementation of video games in real life is not just limited to Military applications either. City bomb squads depend on robots and controls that were developed as off-shoots of... you guessed it... video games.
The idea of using games for combat training has been around for years, it was one of the major plot points to Orson Scott Card's book, Ender's Game. In that book, children were told they were playing games... instead they were training for, and then actually implementing real battle strategies and controlling epic fights light years away. Monica Hughes used the same sort of plot point in her book, Invitation To the Game. The plot point there consisted of a group of grade school graduates being introduced to an alien world... through a video game. Then there was Star Trek and the Holo Deck. In fiction, the ideas have been there for decades. Now, those ideas are here... in reality.
Okay, as I explained back in 2008, just playing a game doesn't automatically grant you certain skills. However, certain games can teach you certain skills. Playing a Flight Simulator won't automatically teach you how to pilot a Cesna. However, you can use a Flight Simulator to improve your skills and how you interact with the equipment. You can train your eyes to detect certain positions of the aircraft. Most flight schools put pilots through hours in simulators before sending them up in a real craft. Waste of time? I've yet to meet one pilot who thought a Flight Simulator was a waste of time.
Now, I realize that I am dancing around the issue of how an 11-year old managed to get a degree in LA's University System. That is a can of worms on it's on. From that single comment on video games though? I seriously question how good LA's school system is if it could turn out somebody that can't even see basic benefits that video gaming has brought over the past years.
Then again, it is LA. I've been there. I can't really say I'm surprised.
Monday, June 01, 2009
CoH cheaters caught? you tell me
If there's one thing I hate in online games, it's players that cheat. I especially hate those twho finds ways to break various games, or find ways to grief other players. Now, I've used both this blog, and Gamenikki.com before to call out various people who I believe have crossed the bounds. Well, two of my friends just screen-capped me dealing with appearent cheaters in Atlas Park. Since NCSoft tends to be extremely slow, to completely non-responsive to dealing with these types of issues until their hand is forced, I'm going to go ahead and force it. You read through these screen-shots and tell me whether or not some of the players are out-right admitting to abusing the AE system.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Funny... I never had a problem with AMD kit...
Yes, I have heard about the EU's ruling against Intel. You can stop flooding the Mepisguides inbox now. Yes, I am collecting my thoughts on the matter... but as usual... you can probably expect me to try and fully put something compelling together, rather than just a knee-jerk reaction.
This post... however... is a little bit closer to home. See, a couple months ago Intel sent me a 920 Core I7 processor for benchmarking purposes. Only... I haven't been able to use it. The only Intel motherboard I actually own... is the D975XBX. While I do have to admit that the motherboard has been absolutely stable with everything that I've thrown at it... I've been over it's largely limited CPU support before. I also mentioned that getting Mepis and Vista installed involved some jumping through BIOS hoops and low level configuration. Well, that's what I'm by and large paid to do by some of my customers.
So, I saved up and was recently able to pick up the DFI LANPARTY JR X58-T3H6. I already wrote about the board last month when I first saw it on Newegg. It's a MicroATX motherboard with 2 16x PCI-Express slots, full 16x slots at that, which is a product I've been banging on motherboard makers to produce for years.
Only... I should have paid attention to the fine print. Over the past couple of months HardOCP and Newegg ran a special for a 6gb Triple-Channel set of Memory from OCZ, specifically model OCZ3X1333LV6GK. At about $75 with free shipping, I wasn't complaining.
Except... the DFI board that I bought... does not support this memory. The only OCZ memory that the DFI board lists as supported consists of models OCZ3FXT20002GK, OCZ3P20004GK, and OCZ3P16002GK. Attempting to run the OCZ memory I actually have on this motherboard just results in the CF bios error, which in the manual means incompatible memory.
Now, in all fairness, I am supposed to be the person who knows this stuff. Yet... I've never had this kind of memory problems with AMD kit or ATi kit. I've used off-brand, non-vendor certified memory on AMD kit since the Abit KG7. Both my Asus P542-D2 Asus P4R800-VM motherboards performed with pretty much any memory I threw at them. It's only been the Intel D975XBX, my Clevo D900T, and now this X58 motherboard, that have thrown fits on specific memory types.
***
DFI responded stating that these two triple-channel kits had been tested
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231225 DDR1600 3x2gig = 6gig.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231230 DDR1333 3x2gig = 6gig.
Soon as I have another $100 to go spend on memory, I'll try them.
This post... however... is a little bit closer to home. See, a couple months ago Intel sent me a 920 Core I7 processor for benchmarking purposes. Only... I haven't been able to use it. The only Intel motherboard I actually own... is the D975XBX. While I do have to admit that the motherboard has been absolutely stable with everything that I've thrown at it... I've been over it's largely limited CPU support before. I also mentioned that getting Mepis and Vista installed involved some jumping through BIOS hoops and low level configuration. Well, that's what I'm by and large paid to do by some of my customers.
So, I saved up and was recently able to pick up the DFI LANPARTY JR X58-T3H6. I already wrote about the board last month when I first saw it on Newegg. It's a MicroATX motherboard with 2 16x PCI-Express slots, full 16x slots at that, which is a product I've been banging on motherboard makers to produce for years.
Only... I should have paid attention to the fine print. Over the past couple of months HardOCP and Newegg ran a special for a 6gb Triple-Channel set of Memory from OCZ, specifically model OCZ3X1333LV6GK. At about $75 with free shipping, I wasn't complaining.
Except... the DFI board that I bought... does not support this memory. The only OCZ memory that the DFI board lists as supported consists of models OCZ3FXT20002GK, OCZ3P20004GK, and OCZ3P16002GK. Attempting to run the OCZ memory I actually have on this motherboard just results in the CF bios error, which in the manual means incompatible memory.
Now, in all fairness, I am supposed to be the person who knows this stuff. Yet... I've never had this kind of memory problems with AMD kit or ATi kit. I've used off-brand, non-vendor certified memory on AMD kit since the Abit KG7. Both my Asus P542-D2 Asus P4R800-VM motherboards performed with pretty much any memory I threw at them. It's only been the Intel D975XBX, my Clevo D900T, and now this X58 motherboard, that have thrown fits on specific memory types.
***
DFI responded stating that these two triple-channel kits had been tested
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231225 DDR1600 3x2gig = 6gig.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231230 DDR1333 3x2gig = 6gig.
Soon as I have another $100 to go spend on memory, I'll try them.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Proof that Valve will actually do anything if there is money to be had
This is one of those convenient for me type posts. Valve has gone and made a pretty good case that they will pretty much do anything if there is money involved for them...
up to and including publishing a Uwe Boll game: http://store.steampowered.com/app/31300/
If I have to explain to you who Uwe Boll is, that's actually a Good Thing from my point of view. The best way I can put this is by using just one Link.
Germany's answer to Ed Wood.
up to and including publishing a Uwe Boll game: http://store.steampowered.com/app/31300/
If I have to explain to you who Uwe Boll is, that's actually a Good Thing from my point of view. The best way I can put this is by using just one Link.
Germany's answer to Ed Wood.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
CoH: Kotaku Repost
This is a quick repost of a comment I made on Kotaku. Since I could not find it after the post was made, copying it here.
and with one move, Champions Online and DCU were rendered into dust. -over reaching sweeping statement made to sound like somebody who played the games had said something meaningful.
Here's the problem with the statements about Champions Online: It's being made by the same guy, Jack Emmert, who was directly responsible for City of Heroes stagnating. Most beta testers agree that Champions Online, now, is just about where City of Heroes was 2 years ago. That's not a good place to be when one thinks about how far City of Heroes has come with it's free issue expansions. While there is a lot of hype surrounding Champions Online, and it is hype, the fact is, the development behind it isn't the development team behind City of Heroes. It's the development team that was behind the canned for quality reasons Marvel Universe Online. Take that how you will, but if you honestly think Champions Online will somehow deliver a good experience to play? You've got a lot more faith than I do in people that have a track record of ruining games.
The problem with DCU, and it's not really a problem, is that it's an SOE game. If you think about the majority of SOE releases, you'll probably only come up with 2 games that actually had long-lives as MMO's. Those are Everquest and Everquest 2. All of SOE's other properties ranging from Star Wars Galaxies, to that Pirate Game, to Planetside, have problems with developers loosing sight of what their game is about. To many players, SOE has the worst history possible in the development of MMO games. Given SOE's track record, one is forced to wonder not when, but HOW the upcoming DC MMO will be screwed up or over. I'm not saying DCU is going to be bad. It actually looks quite interesting, and should DC actually maintain control over the development, does pose a threat to NCSoft's Playerbase... or does it? A lot of people today play two or more MMO's. NCSoft already has a partnership with Sony, and while Marvel has a bad history with what is now Paragon Studios, DC does not. Could there be a link-up between CoH and DCU? Probably not, but I wouldn't be so quick to think that Statesman and Synapse wouldn't have a quick crossover with Superman and The Flash.
Another problem I see in these comments come from those who whine about a level cap. Well, there's a reason most games have a level cap. Players have a goal to shoot for. Moving the level cap onwards and upwards forces players to continue to re-evaluate and redesign their characters. World Of Warcraft is a prime example of why developers should maintain a consistent level cap. The constant ever upward spiral of levels prevents all but the hardest core players from experiencing character archtypes in an effective manner.
There is no other way to say this: If your player base strategy depends on forcing players to continue to chase rebalanced levels instead of actually producing content for the players to experience, then you have failed. World of Warcraft, at first glance, seems to be counter-intuitive proof. Until you actually start looking at how the player base is made up. There are tons of flavor of the month classes. The majority of the player base aren't gamers, but merely people who find the interface simple to understand, and consider World of Warcraft to be a safe option. It's sort of like the difference between Halo and Metroid Prime. Real gamers wondered what the heck people were on about with Halo and didn't understand why Metroid Prime didn't get that sort of public exposure. However, the barrier of entry to Halo was much lower, and therefore palatable to the mass market. World Of Warcraft's level grind is attractive to the semi-gamer market since they can basically pick one or two character classes and stick with it. Then if anybody asks why don't they play something else, they have a legit excuse that they don't have the time to go play another class.
City of Heroes, by sticking with a level cap, encourages the player base to field several different archtypes. Okay, not everybody is going to play a defender. Not everybody is going to play a corruptor. However, the percentage of the player base that has actually tried to level multiple archtypes is significantly higher than other MMO's. While I could be wrong, I think only Guild Wars has a higher ratio of players with multiple character types.
City of Heroes also has the strength, at least on the hero side, that players have a variety of ways to level up. It is possible to take 4 different single Archtypes to level 50 and never take the same level path. I should know, I purposely went out of my way to do that.
Now, that is is my point of view. I see constant level cap increases as a sign that the development team does not know what they are doing. There is little doubt that somebody will say World of Warcraft's stellar player-base numbers prove that idea wrong.
So I'll leave with just this question:
For those who play World of Warcraft, how much of the current player base you know actually worth PLAYING WITH?
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Bootleg... AVG?
A friend of mine at Adventure Crossing brought me a computer from a friend of theirs that reportedly had a virus. On boot I ran into something I've literally never seen before... running on startup was a Personal AntiVirus application that had the exact same layout and GUI elements of Grisoft's Free AVG anti-virus application. The computer did have AVG 8.0 installed, but any calls made to the AVG application were re-directed to the Personal Anti Virus application. The new PAV app would find and detect multiple virus's, then refuse to remove those virus's without an expensive licensing key.
What happened was this: Internet Explorer had been infected by a malicious ActiveX control. The malicious ActiveX control appearently contains a list a number of legitimate sites, such as Microsoft's Windows Update, and upon visiting these sites users are given an IE-style information bar saying the page is infected with malicious software. The user is directed to install the faux copy of AVG, which uses the gaping security hole that is ActiveX to take over system functions.
While such problems can be prevented primarily by NOT USING INTERNET EXPLORER AT ALL, much less using Windows at all, my fix was pretty simple.
I dropped to safe mode and installed an updated version of SpyBot Search and Destroy which let me elminate the Personal Anti Virus from the start up menu, and trash the ActiveX components. Also in safe mode I deleted the PAV folder from Program Files and cleared out the start menu entries under C:/documents and settings.
Once the system was back up, installed and ran AVAST. Recently I've tended to prefer AVAST for Windows AV needs. AVG has gained quite a bit of bloat in recent versions, and while it is still a fairly competent malicious software solution, much more than competitors from Symnatec or McAfee, it's moving out of the light-weight system-resource light market.
Also, if you have a matching good Windows Xp disc, I'd suggest running a sfc scannow to check system components. In my case, several files had to be replaced from the disc, though I don't know how much of that was due to the particular problem the computer was brought to me for.
What happened was this: Internet Explorer had been infected by a malicious ActiveX control. The malicious ActiveX control appearently contains a list a number of legitimate sites, such as Microsoft's Windows Update, and upon visiting these sites users are given an IE-style information bar saying the page is infected with malicious software. The user is directed to install the faux copy of AVG, which uses the gaping security hole that is ActiveX to take over system functions.
While such problems can be prevented primarily by NOT USING INTERNET EXPLORER AT ALL, much less using Windows at all, my fix was pretty simple.
I dropped to safe mode and installed an updated version of SpyBot Search and Destroy which let me elminate the Personal Anti Virus from the start up menu, and trash the ActiveX components. Also in safe mode I deleted the PAV folder from Program Files and cleared out the start menu entries under C:/documents and settings.
Once the system was back up, installed and ran AVAST. Recently I've tended to prefer AVAST for Windows AV needs. AVG has gained quite a bit of bloat in recent versions, and while it is still a fairly competent malicious software solution, much more than competitors from Symnatec or McAfee, it's moving out of the light-weight system-resource light market.
Also, if you have a matching good Windows Xp disc, I'd suggest running a sfc scannow to check system components. In my case, several files had to be replaced from the disc, though I don't know how much of that was due to the particular problem the computer was brought to me for.
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