Burnout 3: Takedown was my favorite. I had so much fun playing that game both solo and with my friends online. Burnout: Paradise never captured the same feeling for me, though.

It’s difficult for you to follow that 5 is higher than 4 and that Pro is better than non-Pro? Seriously?

I honestly don’t remember what my setting is. I probably set it for graphics since I only play single player games now, but who knows what I was thinking when I set that 4 years ago and never thought about it again.

This may or may not be a real screenshot, but it definitely feels accurate based on my time in the game.

Yes, people would actually starve themselves to play WoW. They will pee in diapers to not stop playing WoW. Definitely not as much now, but 15 years ago some people were seriously addicted to it.

Yes, but there is no technical justification for Spotify to not have real-time, remote access to a database, even if the database is constantly changing. We have had the technology to do that for 25 years. If Spotify is not properly handling the contracts to legally stream content, then some of the fault lays with them. Spotify is basically claiming their defense is ignorance. They can’t be held liable because they didn’t know what they could and couldn’t stream. How is that a legal justification for breaking the law? And Kobalt’s reasons for not letting Spotify know is also dumb.

Cases like this are frustrating. Spotify should NOT be able to stream any artist they want without paying them. But the judge said that’s OK because the victims waited too long to complain. The judge also said it’s totally OK that Spotify doesn’t have a list of what is legal for them to stream, simply because the list is constantly changing. This isn’t a paper list typed out by some secretary. This is a computer database that can be checked a thousand times a second.

There’s also the fact that who was the actual copyright holder was questionable and changed hands during the whole thing, so nobody knew who they should be contracting with.

The point of the sanctions wasn’t to end Huawei or slow them down in the market. It was to prevent access to specific technologies for the Chinese government. All companies in China are owned by the government, so all data gathered by companies (either from customers or from suppliers) goes directly to the government.

Also, profitability is a weird metric when a company is financially backed by a government.

I hope enough companies realize the inherent danger to their IP this feature brings. Or that the government realizes the inherent danger to CUI data and forces there to be an admin level lock of the feature so normal users can’t just turn it on.

I and many others can’t just switch to Linux because we are required to use company laptops/desktops that are admin locked.

You do know that many millions of people are given laptops/desktops for work that have locks that prevent new OS’s from being installed, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit

Sony coined the term GPU in 1994 for what was in the Playstation.

Nvidia might have marketed it as the first GPU, but other companies had combined 2D/3D processors on a single chip marketed to consumers well before the GeForce, including Nvidia themselves with the Riva 128. The GeForce was the first product from Nvidia marketed as a GPU, but that doesn’t mean it was the first product to market that was either called a GPU or not called that but still was one. It WAS the first to market with a T&L system (though Rendition had T&L on a chip first it never made it to market).

I think the video answers that quite clearly.

Break it harder.

The first GPU card sold to the public was the GeForce 256 in 1999.

No it wasn’t. Rendition had the Verite back in 1996 that was true 3D and 2D on the same single video card. At the same time as the Verite was the 3DFX Voodoo (released 1995), but it was 3D only and needed a second card for 2D. Rendition was also the only 3D accelerator natively supported by Quake.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had more fun with any game than I did with BF1942. It was just so much fun. There were games with smoother play and deeper mechanics and better graphics, but none were as fun. The dumb mechanics made it amazing, like being able to lie down on the wing of a plane and snipe people while your buddy flew, or dive bombing and parachuting out at 10ft above the ground to capture a point, or shooting the main cannon from a tank into a barracks that has 15 people spawned inside it, or piloting a goddamn aircraft carrier and running it aground to get to a spawn point safely. It was so stupid but so fun.

I am unable to play Fallout 4 because E is hardcoded to be “Use.” You can change all the movement keys, but for some reason you cannot change that keybinding. So you can make E be forward movement, but every time you approach a door or chest or person you will automatically open or talk whether you want to or not.

It made the game completely unplayable for me.

The question was, “what games popularized certain mechanics.” The question was not, “what games created or introduced certain mechanics.”

Yes, there were other MMOs before WoW, but WoW took MMOs to a completely new level of popularity. I didn’t play ANY MMOs before WoW and wasn’t really interested to, but it was so popular that I jumped on to see what the deal was. Since then I have played ESO, LOTRO, AOC, and one other whose name I forget.

Other MMOs were popular among gaming nerds before WoW, but WoW made MMOs popular to normal people.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-10/security/threat-protection/security-policy-settings/interactive-logon-machine-account-lockout-threshold

Right there, in plain English directly from Microsoft:

"Failed password attempts on workstations or member servers that have been locked by using either Ctrl + Alt + Delete or password-protected screen savers count as failed sign-in attempts.

The security setting allows you to set a threshold for the number of failed sign-in attempts that causes the device to be locked by using BitLocker. This threshold means, if the specified maximum number of failed sign-in attempts is exceeded, the device will invalidate the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) protector and any other protector except the 48-digit recovery password, and then reboot. "

This is capitalism 101: whatever makes the most money is what they support. It doesn’t matter who is hurt (or not hurt), or what is right/wrong. As long as they can make more money than they are losing by lawsuits, they will keep doing this. If they can avoid doing anything at all and not get sued while getting paid by customers, that’s even better.

I don’t think you’re right. Those bullets are: “The following list provides examples of common events that cause a device to enter BitLocker recovery mode when starting Windows:”

Why would entering the Bitlocker PIN too many times cause BitLocker to activate? If you are entering a BitLocker PIN then you have already activated BitLocker, right? Please explain to me why, in your scenario, I would be in the position to enter the BitLocker PIN too many times when all I was doing was restarting my tablet after an OS update.

The last bullet says it also happens when “Exceeding the maximum allowed number of failed sign-in attempts.” So even if you are correct that the first bullet is about the BitLocker PIN, then the last bullet is about failed sign-in attempts to Windows.

I like how you keep dismissing someone who is providing evidence by replying with being a jerk instead of giving helpful or factual information. You’re dying on the stupidest hill here.

Where is /c/confidentlyincorrect when you need it?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/operating-system-security/data-protection/bitlocker/recovery-overview

Very first goddamn bullet: “Entering the wrong PIN too many times”

Bitlocker activates when you enter an incorrect OS password too many times. I had my tablet set to unlock without a password or pass code, so I never used whatever pass code I set up a year and a half earlier. After one of the OS updates it forced me to log in with a pass code. I tried some pass codes I thought I might have used, thinking that worst case I would have to do a time delay before trying again… because again, MS never told me Bitlocker was installed and never told me it had a password and never told me I should write down whatever password Bitlocker set for itself and never told me that Bitlocker would lock my entire harddrive if I entered an incorrect password too many times.

But go ahead and keep telling me it’s my fault MS added something so intrusive without telling me.