FthrJACK

Speculative date is 27th June

Some of us, sadly, would be happy if we could get CEO to go as far as deploying XP in the first place, let alone SP2 9 months is actually a very long time, it doesent take that long to test the SP on a few isolated machines. If you run into problems you cant resolve however.. then 9 months would explain it. The thing is with businesses, is they tend to use proprietry hardware on the whole, and therefore fall foul of the rogue hardware component from hell with no visible FCC number and no compatible driver. They then have to rely on their hardware vendor to bring out a driver, which often takes from Julember to never. I still cannot understand why companies and governments willfully throw thousands of dollars at mediocre workstations that tie them to one sided and unworkable contracts with hardware vendors, who then run laughing all the way to the bank. Then, when it comes to renewing the contract.. they do it again and throw yet more money down the drain on yet more proprietry hardware. I only ever see a small number of benefits from this kind of deal, and huge amounts of problems. Most companies, especially small to medium sized ones would be beter off buying non proprietry hardware, or even building their own if they have approprietly skilled staff. I will put my money on that being the reason though, proprietry hardware not being compatible, despite the fact that current versions of windows have more drivers shipped with them as standard than any other OS has ever done before. Its in the Proprietry vendors interests to tie their customers to unworkable, non upgradable equipment, not only the hardware, but the software being part of it. Dont forget they usually ship windows with the workstations, and often have clauses in contracts about not changing the OS version. If they built their own, they could upgrade to newer versions of windows, use old equipment for jobs they might find, dual boot operating systems instead of having a unix machine in one corner and windows 2k machine in another and a winXP in another.. all for different software suites and tasks etc. It could actually save some companies money in the long run to take control of their own hardware, they just tend to take the stupid way out instead.

A few things that may help: If you are running norton internet security, disable it, turn it back on (if you really must) after the download has finished. Make sure your cookie settings in your browser are set correctly, disabling cookies from the page will prevent you downloading any files, the site needs to place a cookie in your cache to auth you for download. As Prath mentioned earlier, dont use a download manager if you are experiancing problems downloading, as invariably the download manager is the cause of the problem. Hope this helps.

Anyone from MSFN going to be picking up BF2? cant wait personally, check the movie out called "The Loop" see near bottom of page @ TotalBF2.com i think most of the movies there are DiVX format.

Block the application from using the internet... unless you are using it to upload and manage your website that is ive still never used a beter web editor than Dreamweaver though.

moving this to the unattended section where it will get more attention

Yeah ive been saving up insults. heh, now back on topic you hijacker!

Forgive the topic line but... http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/c...en/kidtalk.mspx

They will target whatever is popular, this is just proof of Firefox's continued success. spammers, telemarketers, and spyware propagators = like flies around brown stuff.

Anyone seen this? http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=compusa_sucks

yes COD is another.. awesome game, but lasted me a whole 2 days or something.

oh its going to be great, trust me on that. BUT, i think it will probably be a bit short, like Max payne was.. awesome game, but over too quick. we shall see!

the gfc files should fit on one dvd. you dont need to burn the whole steam folder. Total size of all your gfc files should be about 4.7gb

if you purchase silver or gold off steam you also get the entire valve back catalogue of games bundled with it. The prima guide and silly stickers in not interested in, sticker i dont want, and strategy guides are just books full of spoilers, a game like this i would rather figure out on my own. ill be getting the silver pack on steam as soon as i can order it. the "Raising the Bar" book though... all about the development of the game - now that i would like to own. apparently its a pretty thick book though.

seen it before, the gap is because the last bit of it has to go under water so that shipping lanes are kept clear. Seen this before though?

very nice animation. thats something ive been looking into myself recently is getting a graphics tablet for photoshop so i can get into painting in this way. checkout http://www.sijun.com/ The guy is about 21 years old, works for VALVe as a senior artist, and runs an art website. in the completed works forum checkout the "post your personal best" thread... some incredible works in there by visitors to his site.

Beauty of steam though is you can play your games before they are even fully downloaded. it willd ownload the core files first then the early maps etc etc. i was able to play opposing force after just 20minutes of downloading.

im currently working on a cover for the case, ill post it when done

Mac.. i made it buddy, i made several others too but thats my fave one. http://www.cme-corp.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/exploded.jpg Gordon came from a wallpaper, alyx also, but a different one. they where basically just cut out and some smoothing applied to the edges and stuff with the dodge/burn tools and smudge/blur. very minor touch-up. Some Feathering applied to Gordons right arm and shoulder where he overlaps alyx. Alyx was subjected to same treatment and scaled up a bit, also opacity tweeked on her. dont want her to be focus of attention, shes background. the Lambda sign i drew, turned into a brush. then back in the image i made a layer, scalled the brush up and slapped it in, dropped the opacity, then rasterised it. added some effects like drop shadow, Gradient overlay etc. Then with the delete tool and suitable brush i made it look worn and battered, and then feathered the outer edge too. the black box is just that. a black box with opacity settings. the steam logo i got from steams site, inverted it, cleaned it up, made a brush. same for dvd logo, and ati logo. they are just brushes i made. the text round the side was written out then attached to a path. the half life text is made using the HL2 font i found on the web. text has various effects applied, gradient overlay, drop shadow, inner glow, etc. pretty simple really Thanks for the props tho! Crispy... CE version sucks. it only has HL2 and CS:S and a silly tee shirt. oh and buying that puts money in VUG's pocket and they suck. you will only install the game, install steam, and put the box and disk on a shelf someplace and never touch it again. if you do ever have to reinstall from the disk then you are going to have to download all the updates from steam too.. where as if you made a backup of steam your game would be uptodate on disk. Steam: silver package has more going for it and will cost less than CE Other versions i did before comming up with the final design: http://www.cme-corp.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/h...2_DVDCOVER4.jpg http://www.cme-corp.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/h...2_DVDCOVER3.jpg http://www.cme-corp.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/h...2_DVDCOVER2.jpg

yes if you use your code from your ATI voucher. ATI voucher holders will also be able to "upgrade" their voucher from Bronze level to whatever else they want by paying a small amount in conjunction with their voucher, the details are still being worked out so its not definate yet but VALVe are looking into doing it ready for purchase day so wait and see.

No, the game isnt released yet. it will stay on your PC in "locked" form, next week Valve are going to let people buy the game over steam. However it will be like pre-ordering from a store. You still wont be able to play it then. Valve arent allowed to let people play the game until its publishers anounce the game as "GOLD" and it goes on sale in stores. So until the disks are in stores you cant play it. buying over steam though saves you a trip to the store and you can play the game immediately the minute it goes on sale in shops. if ever you format your pc dont worry, install steam again, login and it will download all the games you own again. OR.. just install steam and overwrite the program directory with your steam backup (what the DVD label is for) If you purchase the game next week on steam then it will unlock Counterstrike Source, (and possibly the whole VAVLe back catalogue -- depending what package you buy) and you will be able to play that until HL2 is released. there will be three packages, bronze, silver, and gold. more info at www.steampowered.com

If you have preloaded HL2 from steam and want to backup your preload onto DVD, you might want a proper label for it (or print it onto the DVD iteself) i made this earlier, hope someone has a use for it:

yeah no worries downloading the torrent from the link... thats why its there. i meant if you know of anywhere else the link might be popular, feel freen to post it, more people using the same torrent the beter

if you know anywhere that the torrent might prove popular post it there, we could do with more peers

yes but i really need a 64bit CPU and 8X mobo to get the best out of it, could do with DDR400 also. ill be upgrading soon hopefully anyway.