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  • #11
    Originally posted by panda84 View Post
    - back when I got a 56KB connection I spent more than 2 hours to get my original Half Life 2 copy to install;
    This is problem one with Steam, or any other online delivery system.

    The stuff only really works when you've got something resembling broadband- and ISDN/IDSL doesn't count... Dialup breaks a lot of things upon the wheel because most developers when they do network-centric stuff don't take into account evil latencies and other similar problems when you talk dialup or slow always-on connections.

    - another time I wanted to start HL2 after more than a year I didn't played it Steam gave me a weird error that prevented the game to update. And if you don't update you can't play. I had to search the forums, delete some configuration files, reboot, dance, swim, pray, start steam, update, start half life, wait 3 minutes and then I can finally play.
    Most of this was because of a bug combined with your being on dialup. The problem would probably have taken seconds on a high-speed link. Note, this is not excusing it or me not agreeing with you that it was a seriously crappy experience- Valve ought to do better than they did there with it. One should ALWAYS test something like this with dialup and find problems like the ones you encountered.

    So I personally rate Steam as one of the best crapware™ ever shipped by a software house (just after Windows ME and before the Norton Antivirus "make my Athlon XP behave like a 386" version).
    Heh... Vista rates as the absolute best crapware™ ever shipped in my book. It's even more craptacular than Norton or ME ever could of drempt of- it's just that not everyone has twigged on to just how bad it really is yet- YET.

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    • #12
      Originally posted by Svartalf View Post
      Heh... Vista rates as the absolute best crapware? ever shipped in my book. It's even more craptacular than Norton or ME ever could of drempt of- it's just that not everyone has twigged on to just how bad it really is yet- YET.
      Sorry but MS BOB is the worst crapware? ever.

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      • #13
        Originally posted by deanjo View Post
        Sorry but MS BOB is the worst crapware? ever.
        Heh... I might buy that line of thought...

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        • #14
          Originally posted by Extreme Coder
          tragic? why is that?
          As mentioned DRM and other things... I'll elaborate.

          Originally posted by Svartalf
          Choose one or the other, but you can't have both right at this time- it's just not going to happen. Moreover, if you have the first, you can be in a position to get them to wise up about the other, but you're not going to get the other from the second position unless all the Windows, MacOS, and Console sales all dry up as a result of DRM being in the mix.
          It's true that both at the same time is a problem but there is one problem with your solution. Once they have Linux with DRM do you really think they step down and weaken or even remove the DRM over time? Sorry, I'm a realist in this situation and I predict that if this happens DRM will be thightened more and more until the Linux people like the Windows ones stop buying and pirating like it happens right now on Windows. If let DRM into the system it's like a cancer... you are never ever going to evict it from the system anymore. Money rules... and kills :O

          Originally posted by xav1r
          If i may disagree, I think you can have both. Or at least a different kind of DRM. One that isnt really DRM. Im working on such a workaround.
          Mind elaborating? I spend quite some time thinking about this DRM mess on Linux while working on my game engine especially since some potential users stated concerns in this direction. Now over the course of all my thinkings and mind-testing I came to the conclusion that ( for SP only ) there exists no DRM system that is not crackable but still annoys ( or let's say criminalize ) the legit customer. If somebody comes up with a solution that works, be my guest, but so far I'm positive it's not possible.

          Originally posted by panda84
          Pleasing experience all in all...
          Double this. I can confirm these troubles with flat rate and broadband so it is NOT a dial up only problem but a general one. That said steam is annoying to work with. I've been involved in a beta ( and had some chats with devs since I'm in the same boat ) and the system had been rather hostile to a solid beta testing and bug hunting. This started with update dramas and ended up with random crashes which could not been reproduced since steam simply fucked something up somewhere in the pipeline. Support they said from the side of Valve is good but the delivery platform is shit. Anyways... I had also to deal with the Source SDK once for making some modding tool ( god knows why I had been so stupid to EVER ACCEPTED THIS TASK!!! ) and steam had been the biggest rock on the road. Not only did it notoriously break my SDK installation it also randomly rejected to run it at all ( crowning the madness with a crash right after complaining ). Yeah... < sarcasm >the experiences with steam are really very pleasant < / sarcasm > <.=.<

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          • #15
            Originally posted by Svartalf View Post
            Heh... Vista rates as the absolute best crapware? ever shipped in my book. It's even more craptacular than Norton or ME ever could of drempt of- it's just that not everyone has twigged on to just how bad it really is yet- YET.
            Oh yeah, nearly forgot. Of course this one is the king of crapiness. Against this Steam is a saint

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            • #16
              Heh... Vista rates as the absolute best crapware? ever shipped in my book. It's even more craptacular than Norton or ME ever could of drempt of- it's just that not everyone has twigged on to just how bad it really is yet- YET.
              Can you elaborate why? I would like have precise arguments when im critizing vista. But, seriously, why, i've heard that the 64bit flavor of vista is actually very good.

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              • #17
                My take on Vista is that it does not offer anything that XP couldn't. The only reason for it to exist is that MS needs to sell a new major product every few years.

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by Svartalf View Post
                  Most of this was because of a bug combined with your being on dialup. The problem would probably have taken seconds on a high-speed link. Note, this is not excusing it or me not agreeing with you that it was a seriously crappy experience- Valve ought to do better than they did there with it. One should ALWAYS test something like this with dialup and find problems like the ones you encountered.
                  Well, I already switched to ADSL back when I reinstalled HL2 for the second time. It worked for some time, then I abandoned it for a year or so, and then tried to run it again.

                  The result was "This game is currently unavailable". For a moment I thought it was a bad joke but it wasn't!



                  Heh... Vista rates as the absolute best crapware? ever shipped in my book. It's even more craptacular than Norton or ME ever could of drempt of- it's just that not everyone has twigged on to just how bad it really is yet- YET.
                  Didn't ever used it, that's why it's not on my list.

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                  • #19
                    Besides the fact that Vista kills any sane application ( especially games ) it is the most cumbersome to use OS in existence. And then all this stupid security systems pretending to protect the user but in fact they hinder you all the time doing daily work but when a malicious soft comes around it happely grants full system access without a second though ( reminds me on DRM on games: hinders legal customers and pirates still can do how they please ). Then there is this OpenGL hating. Granted it got "relieved" a bit but still M$ tries to screw over OGL on Vista. Then the Areo shitness. I showed various people the out-of-the-box Vista desktop with all the shit blinking left and right leaving you fucking guessing what happens next if you click anywhere and an out-of-the-box Kubunutu. Guess what they considered "user friendly"... a hint... it has not been Vista.

                    So all in all it's a major league failure. I have Vista on my laptop besides Gentoo since I have to test my apps with Vista too not only XP ( and belief me... I don't like this ). It's one hell of a cancer on your system.

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by xav1r View Post
                      Can you elaborate why? I would like have precise arguments when im critizing vista. But, seriously, why, i've heard that the 64bit flavor of vista is actually very good.
                      Vista doesn't bring anything to the table that XP doesn't already bring, save DRM, and it's twice as bloated as XP.

                      Furthermore, the device layer "redesign" causes no end to misery and is part of the source of the 40% overall degredation in performance. Moreover, you NEED 4Gb of RAM to bring it to the same levels of performance XP obtained with 2Gb- and Linux does with 1Gb.

                      It's not secure like they claim it is.
                      It's not stable like they claim it is.
                      It requires a top-end gamer-class machine to be usable at normal levels.

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