Of course, without a mandatory online check there's nothing to stop you form linking the disc to your account and then giving it to someone else, as long as that other person never goes online. But since it's pretty easy to have the console check the next time it goes online and block access then, and never going online would mean losing a lot of features, it seems reasonable.

That way, even if you get a disc, you can choose between sharing or the convenience of not needing the disc.

8 minutes ago, cbae wrote

*snip*

It's not like the console would have been bricked after 24 hours.

Yeah, but the thing is this always happens at the worst times. Just a few days ago, my Internet connection failed, so I couldn't get anything useful done. No problem, I was replaying Mass Effect 3, so I figured I'd just continue with that for a bit.

Unfortunately, ME3 must validate all DLC on every start, and if it can't, it will deny you access to them. While it still gives you access to the core game, you can't play the DLC and any save games that include DLC state won't load correctly.

That kind of thing is just unacceptable. It also makes me wonder how, 20 years from now, I'm going to play this game when EA has shut down all their servers for it. Fortunately, ME is popular enough that someone will probably crack it, but it really shouldn't be an issue. And it's not hypothetical either: I still play games up to 30 years old today, and I adore ME so I'll probably still be replaying it occasionally when I'm an old geezer in the retirement home.

Oh, and now that I think about it my physical DVD copy of ME3 can't be shared or resold either: purchasing the game physically basically just gives you a serial number, which you enter into Origin, which then is happy to download the game or install it from the DVD. The serial number is then locked to my account, so while I can give the DVD to someone else, they'd still need their own serial number to install and run the game. Not that I care, in this instance: like I said, I love this game, I ain't going to sell it. Running it when Origin has ceased to be is a bigger concern, as I said.

I couldn't believe Microsoft would have done such as thing but back then the "youthful" look was in. A lot of the adverts had pre-adolescent looking models and they were plastered everywhere.

That's not a matter of being "in". That's just a part of Japanese culture, unfortunately. Japanese men like youthful women (most of them seem to have a Lolita complex), so you end up with 30 year old women who look and act like they're 14. Considering that Japan is still one of the least emancipated "civilized" nations (though fortunately it is getting better), women pretty much have no choice to confirm to the stereotypes if they want to have any hopes of getting a husband or a job.

1 hour ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

It reminded me a bit of Tokyo where on every street corner in certain districts pretty ladies would try and entice you to come to their bar and buy them drinks.

That's not a part of Tokyo I've ever seen. The closest I can think of would be Kabukicho, a famous red-light district, but there it's almost exclusively guys standing outside trying to convince you to go to their sex clubs.

Besides which, have you ever been in an electronics store in Tokyo? Every single department will have at least 20 people standing around yelling at extremely high volume about their products. The floors that sell mobile phones are particularly bad. They also tend to stand outside, so even on the streets you're not safe. The sheer loudness of shopping in Tokyo can be extremely off-putting, though after a while you just tune it out and ignore them (that's what I did at least).

1 hour ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

I don't know where you get the impression that I'm angry.

Because that is the tone your writing conveys. If that is not your intent I would seriously reconsider your choice of words and writing style.

25 seconds ago, jinx101 wrote

It is yet to be seen whether the storm they've created is short term like they guess or whether it will tank the system.  We can all speculate but none of us will know until it happens. 

Yeah, there's definitely outrage, but whether it will impact the bottom line remains to be seen.

Mass Effect 3 probably had the largest instance of nerd outrage ever witnessed concerning a computer game. It started with the huge outcry about the day 1 DLC, but that was nothing compared to what would follow about the ending. It was a sufficiently large outrage that BioWare suspended work on other DLC in order to provide a expanded ending for free... about which there was then just as much outrage. Angry Joe's videos were linked to a couple of times here about the XBO, and he did similar "rage" videos about ME3. It seemed everybody hated the game. On the BioWare forums today the debate about the ending is still going on.

Yet ME3 still made tons of money, and topped numerous best seller lists. Despite all the people who very vocally proclaimed they would never give another dime to EA (and would therefore not buy any future DLC), there have been no reports that ME3's DLC actually sold less than previous DLC, quite the contrary in fact, even though ME3's DLC was more expensive than previous ME DLC.

So I don't think outrage is a good barometer for actual sales, at all.

36 minutes ago, kettch wrote

@Bas: But as a rule, the really great sales are the only time I buy games. However, most people are probably fine paying full retail which is strange. I like games, but not $50-60 kind of like.

There's only a handful of games that I've bought at full retail price. Usually these are the kinds of games that I've been waiting for a long time and want to get immediately at release. They include Uru, Myst V, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, and Mass Effect 3. The latter two are the only two games I've ever pre-ordered.

And speaking of Dreamfall, I backed the Dreamfall Chapters kickstarter for $150. Probably would've been more if I'd been able to afford it. Because screw it, I don't care if it's a ridiculous amount of money, us TLJ fans have been waiting for that game for 6 years, I'd probably sell my first born to make sure it gets made.

EDIT: Also, I never suggested that MS was strong-armed into adding the DRM. Rather, I think that MS added the DRM on their own accord because they thought the publishers would like that feature. Which of course they do, they're just not admitting it because of the backlash.

1 minute ago, Dr Herbie wrote

I don't think it was at 'unprecedented levels' until SOny whipped it up this week.

You have to hand it to Sony's marketing department, the way they made use of the sentiments expressed at the XBO's reveal to manipulate public opinion in their favour was truly marvelous.

2 hours ago, Dr Herbie wrote

I can happily say that I've never shared a game or even bough or sold one second-hand. When I was a kid, if we wanted to play a friend's game, we would simply go to their house and play it on their computer. You know, actually leaving our bedrooms, walking in sunlight, socialising, that sort of thing.

When I was a kid, when you wanted to play a friend's game, you gave them a bunch of floppies and they made a copy. None of us knew that was illegal. Copy protection didn't matter, since the version they had was usually already a copy, and therefore cracked.

In our defense, quite a lot of the stuff we traded back then was shareware (like the free chapters of Commander Keen or Wolfenstein). It's not like we knew the distinction between shareware and retail games. Most of us barely knew English, if at all.

And quite a lot of the games I copied back then I ended up buying, eventually. Some of them more than once (e.g. I got an original, a collection, and/or a copy from gog.com). The Myst games are the worst in that regard: I bought Myst as much as six times (original, masterpiece, 10th Anniversary DVD, gog.com, realMyst, and iPhone). Riven, 5 times, appropriately (original, DVD, 10th Anniversary DVD, gog.com, and iPhone).

8 minutes ago, evildictait​or wrote

Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm going to wait and see what games are on the consoles before deciding which console to get.

I'm no expert in this area, but it seems to me that all the DRM stuff is things MS is doing because the games' publishers want them. If that is the case, it could end up that more publishers prefer the XBO which means MS might end up with more exclusive games.

Basically, it can generate an XSD schema from a ConfigurationSection, to which you can then add annotations to document the elements and attributes of the section, and then generate an HTML documentation file from that schema. The tool can be used with Microsoft .Net and Mono.

As an example, check out the schema for the documentation generator's own configuration section as generated by the documentation generator, and with added annotations. And finally, the documentation file generated from the annotated schema. This is only a very trivial configuration section, but it gives you an idea of what the output of the documentation generator looks like.

More information and downloads here.

And for good measure, my desktop:

1 hour ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

@blowdart: Yep. No further major investments from Microsoft. IOW you won't see WinRT app support for desktop apps.

From what I understood desktop apps will be able to have live tiles in Win8.1, so that's something at least.

9 hours ago, PaoloM wrote

We're being trolled, right?

That's the beauty of this thread. He thinks he's trolling us, we think we're trolling him. And everybody has a good time.

Still doesn't change the fact that I, a grade C YouTuber at best, get more views than that in a month. Hmm, maybe if I put that on my resume, I can pick up chicks?

4 hours ago, PopeDai wrote

The world would be a much better place if Word died and instead we released a first-class LaTeX typesetting product, that forced users to watch a 3-minute training video on how to use the dang thing.

As someone who has written several papers and an entire Ph.D. thesis in LaTeX: no, it really, really wouldn't.

Also: bring back the old Equation editor! I have arrow-keys, let me use them!

Are you insane? The new equation editor is way better than the old one. The inline entry mode (sadly very poorly documented) alone is worth it.

And even if it was 150k, that number is way too low to brag about. Even someone like me, who is only a moderately popular LPer (4259 subscribers), has more than 4.5 million views. And I wouldn't even brag about numbers like that. Only when you get near someone like NerdCubed (also a kind of LPer, with 780k subscribers and 148mln views) does it become worth even mentioning your YouTube stats.

Epic fail, Dan, epic fail.

9 hours ago, fanbaby wrote

*snip*

I guess no ChromeOS for you...

Care to share with us your top 10 desktop apps?

Here's a small sample of my most used desktop apps:

• Outlook 2013
• Internet Explorer
• Windows Media Player
• File Explorer
• Skype
• Word, Excel, OneNote 2013
• Visual Studio 2012
• PuTTY
• Cygwin
• Eclipse
• SQL Server Management Studio
• Notepad++
• Reflector
• WinRAR
• PowerShell / PowerShell ISE
• Audacity
• Fraps
• VirtualDub
• Steam, Origin, several games

So yeah, ChromeOS is probably out of the question for the time being. As is Windows RT, at least as a replacement. Both could work for an additional device, I suppose.

Turns out their AV software was blocking it because the address is www.ad.nl...

13 minutes ago, Dan276 wrote

You can say, I helped vote for that picture.

Congratulations, you've managed to find something that would be even sadder to do than bragging about cheevos.