[URL=http://img641.imageshack.us/i/screencap1.png/][IMG]http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/83/screencap1.png[/IMG][/URL]

Uploaded with [URL=http://imageshack.us]ImageShack.us[/URL]

 

For the past few weeks, I've been getting this error or variants thereof whenever I try to change a 'blind. Can anyone help me figure out what's going on here? Thanks.

I don't have a dog in this fight, really, as I don't have any Apple devices (by a combination of choice and financial circumstance) nor do I own any ebook readers (although my mom is really keen on acquiring a Kindle or nook in the future). Nevertheless, I thought it would be worth linking to this article because there have been so many recent discussions about Apple's latest doodad.

I read this article a little while ago and I found it rather unconvincing. I don't think the people who buy iPads will be doing it because they're looking for an ebook reader. Frankly, I suspect the iPad sucks at this. I found it particularly laughable that the author had the temerity to suggest that it would be beneficial to the iPad share that many of the books available through Apple's new store would be marketed at a higher price point than Kindle books. It also seems weird to suggest that it is necessary to create a "meta-experience" to replace the idea of just reading.

What are your thoughts?

Bitsdujour.com will be offering Rainlendar 2 Pro at a discounted price of $6.95 on Monday, June 22.

Also, the site will be selling registrations for WinStep Xtreme for $19.95 on Thursday, June 25.

Just wanted to give folks who may not have tried these apps a heads-up!

 

 

Valve added Morrowind, Oblivion, and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth to its lineup on Steam this week (Tuesday). The price point for the Oblivion Deluxe pack (which includes the Shivering Isles explansion, the Knights of the Nine plug-in, and the official DLC) was $24.99 with a 20% discount for the first week of availability, for a net price of $19.99. Today, the regular price was increased on this item by $10 and the sale price is now $27.99. Valve also adjusted (i.e., raised) the prices on all of the other newly-available Bethesda products.

No explanation has been forthcoming from Valve on these price changes. Obviously Valve and Bethesda are free to charge whatever they wish for these products. Howvever, this feels like a bit of a "bait and switch" tactic to me. If I walked into a retail store and an employee had mistakenly put a $29.99 price tag on a copy of Demigod when the store normally sold Demigod for $39.99, in my experience, most stores would sell me the item at the lower price. What are your thoughts?

 

I was looking at Vue Easel 6 by e-on software, and then I saw that they discontinued it in favor of their new versions including the relatively-inexpensive Pioneer 7. These are both designed for people like me who are beginners and don't have a lot of artistic talent, per se. I was considering a purchase of Pioneer when it comes out of beta; at $50, it's not an unreasonably large amount of money for a hobbyist. However, I noticed as I was playing with the beta that you have to buy an extra plug-in, called RenderUp, which is $70, to produce images that aren't watermarked.

Obviously, it's their software and they can do what they want, but that just seems ridiculous. You may as well just charge $120 for the basic program.

Anyway, does anyone know of any free or cheap alternatives?

 

I was in GameStop the other day and I saw a retail copy of the new Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion, Storm of Zehir. It apparently comes in a DVD case. When I got my copy of the Premier Edition of Red Alert 3, it came in a package slightly larger than a standard DVD case made of metal. Publishers: what gives?!?!

I have a copy of the Collector's Edition of Neverwinter Nights at home and it's easily the largest thing on the bookcase it sits on. Ditto for my Age of Empires III CE, my Age of Mythology CE, and my WarCraft III CE. I also have some older titles like StarSiege that come in oversized boxes with actual honest-to-god books in them. These days even CEs for titles come in tiny boxes (see RA3) unless they're MMOs. If I spend an extra $10-30 on a Collector's Edition, I want a big, fat box that dares me to find enough space in my house to put it in and I want it full of cool-ass swag like soundtrack CDs, making of DVDs, large-format art books, shirts, mousepads, z-board keysets, home movies of the dev's cats, novels, et cetera. Don't give me a crappy in-game halo or (even more pointlessly) a hat I can wear if I buy a completely different game and subscribe to it (RA3!!)! Hell, if your game impresses me enough, I'll be your marketing bitch--give me a real-world hat emblazoned with an RA3 logo--I actually would wear that. I just got in the Marine Mania expansion for Zoo Tycoon 2 from Gogamer, and when I opened it I found a DVD and a 4-sided card with brief descriptions of the new content and some seizure warnings! Hey, Blue Fang, how about an actual manual that explains setting up shows?!

Look at Spore's Galactic Edition; it comes in a slightly larger box with two extra DVDs for $20 extra. Fallout 3 comes in a lunchbox with an extra DVD and a cheap-looking plastic figure and a tiny art book. Don't get me wrong, I'm sufficiently nerdy that I like the idea of a lunchbox, but I can tell that they decided on a lunchbox precisely because of its relatively small dimensions--again, this for an extra $20.

This isn't my first rant on this topic and I'm sorry to say it may not be my last. I hate, hate, hate this trend. I miss my big damn boxes that barely fit on shelves. Soon I'll be nostalgic for the tiny boxes that were barely larger than a mass-market paperback. I realize this isn't an issue for console gamers who are used to getting their games in DVD cases (or things even smaller than that for people who have those handheld doodads like DS and PSP). I miss Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which had actual pocket fluff (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're probably too young for this rant to have any meaning for you!).

 

[e digicons]:thumbsdown:[/e]

 

 

Maybe it's just me, but I just "made the switch" last week, getting a new Vista Home Premium 64-bit desktop and passing my XP Pro desktop on to my missus, and it seems to me that it's much more difficult to get usability out of the start menu in Vista--far more so than was ever the case in XP. I'm thinking I should probably just load my stuff back in ObjectDock + and use the docks for accessing my favorite programs. Does anybody else find that this is one of those things that Vista made worse?

 

I just got a new computer w/ Vista 64-bit installed and I'm trying to put my Stardock stuff on the new machine, but I keep getting activation errors after apps download. Any thoughts?

 

I am getting a new computer soon that is preloaded with Vista Home Premium 64-bit and I remember reading several threads that discussed certain components of ODNT being incompatible with the 64-bit version of Vista. Can someone list the incompatible products for me so I know what to expect? Thanks.

 

Just an FYI for those who are interested but haven't yet purchased a license for Winstep Xtreme; the Bits du Jour site will be offering a $20 discount on November 7.