Little things that annoy the hell out of you

[Mischief Maker]

I'm posting this from a smartphone. I'm in the middle of a fresh install of Windows 7. Usually the process of checking for updates on a fresh install takes between 15 and 20 minutes, at least that's how long it took last year.

This has taken over two and a half hours and I still have not finished with the check for updates step.

I can only assume that Microsoft is intentionally routing Windows 7 updates to their slowest server possible in order to irritate customers into switching to their stupid windows 10.

Man, remember back in the late nineties when they were talking about antitrust action against Microsoft for monopolistic business practices? Then Bill Gates got smarts and Microsoft started making campaign contributions to politicians and suddenly no one is thinking there's anything monopolistic about Microsoft Behavior at all.

EDIT: Disregard. It was a bug. There was a patch. But considering how pushy Microsoft has been with Windows 10, can you blame me for assuming the worst?

[Blinge]

did you make sure it's not instantly lumping you with all the win10 files?

I haven't heard reports of that happening on a fresh 7 install, but it wouldn't surprise me.

[Mischief Maker]

-snip-

[atheistgod1999]

Last night, I was standing in line at the supermarket checkout and noticed some tabloids for sale. One said that Jim Carrey commited suicide, and despite knowing that tabloids are usually bullshit, I was still kinda wondering if he actually died because I thought that they wouldn't go as far as claiming someone died.

A few minutes before typing this, I googled his name and found that he's still alive and couldn't even find any suicide attempts when searching for it.

Why do big stores sell these things?

[KAI]

This fucking pic. Sega hiring rom hackers is as bad as Nintendo sueing fans imo.

[Ed Oscuro]

The media rush to judgement over Ryan Lochte, based partly on "facts" that were not true, leading to shrill pieces like this. Of course this is also a sure sign of why one should collect one's thoughts and speak to some counsel (hopefully legal) before making statements, but he didn't even file a police report. Likewise, it's not clear on what legal basis Brazilian authorities managed to extort $11,000 out of one of his companions. As for Lochte, it appears that all he has done is tear down a sign and make some public statements which were exaggerated from the truth - though none of it, except for his statement that he alone faced off against the rogue cops, was entirely misplaced. In fact, the "other side" seems to have done its part in throwing inaccurate statements for the sake of image. Say what you will about this one American, but if somebody came to the US and did something, the police and prosecutors would not tell lies to the public in order to safeguard America's honor. I can understand why Lochte has lost four sponsors (all of them?) but consider also that Michael Phelps had his second DUI not two years ago, and has managed to keep some sponsor cash coming in.

So, it seems Lochte's real mistake was stepping into an all-too-familiar quagmire of politics and policing, and at a highly inopportune moment in his personal career.

[Lord Satori]

This fucking pic. Sega hiring rom hackers is as bad as Nintendo sueing fans imo.

Yeah, giving someone a job for making a thing and rendering ten years worth of work invalid by forcing them to take it down at the last moment are completely comparable atrocities.

[Blinge]

This fucking pic. Sega hiring rom hackers is as bad as Nintendo sueing fans imo.

This bit of context was quite interesting.

https://youtu.be/omKGDC4JaMU

[FinalBaton]

This fucking pic. Sega hiring rom hackers is as bad as Nintendo sueing fans imo.

wut

[KAI]

I mean, both companies are shit if they can't make games by themselves anymore.

[atheistgod1999]

I mean, both companies are shit if they can't games themselves anymore.

Since when has Sega been good? Even the earliest Sonic games are pretty mediocre; Sonic 1 has the wrong kind of physics for some of the levels (Super Mario Bros. physics would've worked better for Labyrinth and Scrap Brain Zone IMO), for example.

[tomwhite2004]

Since when has Sega been good?

I'm no fan of sonic either but thats the least of what they should be known for. The arcade output is simply incredible, I would even argue unmatched by any company over such a long period. Not to mention home games on non sega hardware post dreamcast like the yakuza series, monkey ball, skies of arcadia, panzer dragoon orta, f-zero gx and jet set radio future etc, I really could go on and on about how strong a library Sega has.
Shame that you judge Sega on what they are now compared to what they were at their peak. Plus, any company with Toshihiro Nagoshi onboard can't be that bad, just look at the dude!

[WelshMegalodon]

I'm no fan of sonic either but thats the least of what they should be known for. The arcade output is simply incredible, I would even argue unmatched by any company over such a long period. Not to mention home games on non sega hardware post dreamcast like the yakuza series, monkey ball, skies of arcadia, panzer dragoon orta, f-zero gx and jet set radio future etc, I really could go on and on about how strong a library Sega has.
Shame that you judge Sega on what they are now compared to what they were at their peak. Plus, any company with Toshihiro Nagoshi onboard can't be that bad, just look at the dude!

Don't feed the troll.

[lilmanjs]

If you're going straight through an intersection, don't be the asshat who gets in the left turn lane and then cuts off not only me on my bicycle, who is following the rules of the road, but also the minivan behind me. I've never seen somebody peel out of a 4-way stop as fast and with horns blaring as the other day. That Honda driver was pretty pissed. Needless to say the 4-way stop was right after the traffic light intersection I was nearly ran over in. Was fun nearly getting taken out once again.

[null1024]

I mean, both companies are shit if they can't make games by themselves anymore.

Eh, makes sense.

I dunno, as excited as I am for Mania, Sonic Team's track record isn't terrible at the moment.
Colors was more than decent, other than the sheer amount of filler stages there were. Unleashed was quite decent -- it's got flaws, but it's a more polished and enjoyable game as a whole than the rest of the 3D Sonic games before. Generations is excellent, other than Classic Sonic handling somewhat badly. Lost World was a misstep, but it's not a fundamentally awful game.

Sega's internally developed 2017 project has me slightly on edge since Sonic Team has burned us before, but it's possible and maybe even probable that it might be good.
When it comes down to it, Sonic Mania is a dream project that likely ended up being done for PR reasons, and they have every reason to need to build that up, both for Sonic's sake and for Sega's sake.

Man, I wish Sega would do a not-Sonic major project though. I love Sonic as a series, but Sega's pushed it far too much overall.

Since when has Sega been good? Even the earliest Sonic games are pretty mediocre; Sonic 1 has the wrong kind of physics for some of the levels (Super Mario Bros. physics would've worked better for Labyrinth and Scrap Brain Zone IMO), for example.

S1's handling isn't really an issue in Marble, Labyrinth, or Scrap Brain. I think those stages are too slowly paced overall [well, I like Scrap Brain a fair bit still], but S1's handling is tight enough that you can more than easily do the platforming the "slow" half of S1 goes by.

When you aren't rolling, Sonic's movement in S1 is pretty sedate and controllable. When you are rolling, you've got room to maneuver and can go crazy balls out fast with a small bit of effort.
S2 and then S3&K increase the speed overall, but your handling is still pretty similar when doing fine platforming, and each game after S1 blended platforming and speed sections better than the last.
There's also very few platformers from the day with as interesting stage or visual design as Sonic at the time, and this was at a time when platformers were a major genre to the masses.

As for Sega in general, Sega's been the biggest name in arcades from the early-mid 80s up into the mid-2000s, pouring massive amounts of money into new top-of-the-line hardware and bringing in huge revenues while the arcade scene was still a major market. Sega's Model 2 era is what I think of if I'm imagining some kind of golden-era of gaming, when they were making games like Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter 2, Virtual On, that sort of thing.

Sega's been damn good. Just because Sega's managed to leave their reputation in tatters despite their pedigree doesn't mean they weren't ever good.

[FinalBaton]

I mean, both companies are shit if they can't make games by themselves anymore.

Ah, thought your point was something else entirely I misunderstood

Yeah I agree with what you're saying then

Well... at least Sega is gonna remaster the Yakuza games, and did so with Valkyria Chronicles this year. So there's that. They seem to be doing slightly better than in the last few years, let's hope that their output's quality will keep trending upwards.

But yeah, there's no doubt that they're a shell of their former selves at this point.

[Blinge]

You could say it's a positive step: Sega acknowledging & rewarding these two fans/modders' passion, experience and track record of making decent sonic content.
Sonic Mania has the potential to be a good game made by fans for fans, instead of it being outsourced to some team that doesn't give a shit.

This is just an alternate view, I don't care about sonic either way,

[BIL]

Sonic Mania has the potential to be a good game made by fans for fans, instead of it being outsourced to some team that doesn't give a shit.

This is just an alternate view, I don't care about sonic either way,

I feel similarly, and I'd expand the net to include better contractors too (Treasure and Natsume produced masterpieces for Konami and Taito; M2 got their start with a bedroom-coded Gauntlet fan port to X68000). I'd totally time-travel into Irem's offices circa 1988 and force them to recode Holy Diver's controls at gunpoint (*politely ), so I'd be a hypocrite to assume other outsiders will inevitably produce inferior results.

Such arrangements certainly can soil beloved properties, but it's not inevitable.

*I've got it all planned out - language barrier? not a problem! Hand me the pad, programmer-san! See how when I try to move and jump at the edge of a pit, or turn and shoot, I die cos the interpreter eats button inputs coinciding with the pad? That is SHITTU FACKING GEEMU!

[BrianC]

Sonic Mania also reminds me of GCC, a company that started out hacking arcade games and ended up making awesome ports and arcade games for Atari and Midway. They were the company behind Food Fight, Ms. Pac-Man, and Jr. Pac-Man.

[Xyga]

Big-ass nightmare spider-flavoured coffee.

I was this close to drink it.

The worst thing is I believe it was already dead inside the coffee pack I'd just opened.

Do you fellow Europeans also buy the cheap Bellarom coffee from Lidl ? http://www.lidl.de/de/bellarom-kaffee-f ... ss/p165867

Now you know.

[atheistgod1999]

My PC not turning on after removing my GPU and Soundblaster, vacuuming all the dust out, and putting the cards back in. I wanted to see if it would fix this weird interference with the (dedicated) sound card.

I had to write this post on my slow, off-brand $100 android phone.

[BIL]

That's one of your "bit too obvious" posts.

Or maybe not! BROTIP: vacuum cleaners will fuck up ICs with ESD, or at least my nan always told us.

[atheistgod1999]

Fuck, did I just break my motherboard (or worse yet, everything else as well)? At least it was made of budget components from no later than 3 years ago.

[Ed Oscuro]

Is quash the worst poster ever to survive on shmups? I don't recall shoe-sama ever was close to being this bad.

[ryu]

I've vaccuumed PC parts a few times. Never did anything bad to them.

Check the solder point where the power button goes, there might be a loose connection.

[Lord Satori]

Some guy at least twice my age decided to strike up a conversation with me at the urinals of a school bathroom.

The weirdest part was that he was making small talk as opposed to something else. It didn't help that we were the only two people there.

I'm still a little freaked out even though this happened almost ten hours ago.

[bigbadboaz]

Some guy at least twice my age decided to strike up a conversation with me at the urinals of a school bathroom.

<dead stare ahead> "I don't talk to anyone when I have my dick out."

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Pretty sure I just spent fifteen minutes talking to a bot on a dating website. How sad is that?

[BIL]

If the balls don't touch it's a-ok!

[atheistgod1999]

Pretty sure I just spent fifteen minutes talking to a bot on a dating website. How sad is that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngLEfuDtBbE