• Orson (unregistered)

    hmm thats an odd one, what was being used in the background? Norton?

  • (cs)

    Looks like he is using the ClearType applet too...text looks nice and crisp.

  • (cs)

    Hurray for the ten thousand very small files Steam(TM) comes with...

    Addendum (2007-02-16 12:15): Make that 8834 files in 528 folders.

    10gb for 33 files, 3gb for the remaining 8301... Which includes, I must say, almost everything from the Silver package, so it is not all HL2, but still..

  • (cs)

    I applaud any jab at DNF's currently ten-year production timeline.

    Even Prey was eventually released, though, so there's hope.

  • Asd (unregistered)

    Why would you want to uninstall half life 2!!!!

    Seriously though, steam/source engine supports archive files, so why do the feel they have to extract every fecking thing?

  • JF (unregistered)
    Glenn Lasher:
    First?

    Lame?

    Yes!

  • jeb (unregistered)

    Meta-WTF: What is with the (R) in Half-life(R)? Do they want a registered trademark symbol? That's an ANSI character you know. Good old Alt-(0174). Of course if you got all Unicode you could use 00AE in hexadecimal/174 in decimal for ®. Lazy bastards.

  • Orson (unregistered) in reply to JF
    JF:
    Glenn Lasher:
    First?

    Lame?

    Yes!

    No Quack?

    captcha: waffles, what I just got done emptying from my bowels

  • (cs)

    Those 16 days are included in "expecting playing/completion time" in the ads...

  • Wizou (unregistered)

    Use Alt-PrintScreen to capture the dialog box only.. so you don't have to crop the window manually out of the full screen picture

  • cassis (unregistered)

    I like those famous "Windows minuts" or "Windows seconds"... You know, the kind of measure that has a random value as unit !

    captcha: tesla, this one isn't a random value unit :)

  • (cs)

    Ahh... what would you want to uninstall Half Life 2? One of the better single player FPS experiences of the last couple of years. And HL2: Episode 2 looks to be amazing.

  • AndrewB (unregistered)

    Wow, incredibly lame WTF.

  • nobody (unregistered)

    This reminds me of the time I realized I needed a new computer. I was installing Visual Studio .NET (please don't say that is the WTF) and the estimated time to completion was increasing, not decreasing. Eventually, the time did decrease and it installed, but it took a couple of hours.

  • anonymous (unregistered)

    I have worked on the Quake codebase, and I admire the Valve guys. I am a opensource guy, and hate DRM with my brain and guts, but Steam is something gamming need to exit a hit driven economy. Games only live a few days on the shops, so this force a "create a huge game, and create ads like crazy" that is bad for gamming, is hurting, and kill whole game companys.

    The tecnical solution to make Steam posible whas some layer of indirection to the fisical filesystem. That layers add whatever you need to create DRM, but also the very complex needs to make posible some games reuse resources from other games (Garris Mod with Counter Strike models, etc).

    The original Quake game also whas with a very god layer, that layer whas soo good that able modding (simply adding a progs.dat file on a folder, make then load instead files inside pak files).

    Half-Life2 whas distributed with DVD and CD files, but once you installed it, whas needed to uncypher stuff, and update with patchs. So installing HL2 whas 3 hours manpower, or something alike (maybe 4 hours).

    I have no idea why the uninstaller is braindead on this system, but is a small bug on a amazing complex system that Steam is.

    [image]

    ---Tei

  • matt (unregistered) in reply to anonymous
    anonymous:
    I have worked on the Quake codebase, and I admire the Valve guys. I am a opensource guy, and hate DRM with my brain and guts, but Steam is something gamming need to exit a hit driven economy. Games only live a few days on the shops, so this force a "create a huge game, and create ads like crazy" that is bad for gamming, is hurting, and kill whole game companys.

    The tecnical solution to make Steam posible whas some layer of indirection to the fisical filesystem. That layers add whatever you need to create DRM, but also the very complex needs to make posible some games reuse resources from other games (Garris Mod with Counter Strike models, etc).

    The original Quake game also whas with a very god layer, that layer whas soo good that able modding (simply adding a progs.dat file on a folder, make then load instead files inside pak files).

    Half-Life2 whas distributed with DVD and CD files, but once you installed it, whas needed to uncypher stuff, and update with patchs. So installing HL2 whas 3 hours manpower, or something alike (maybe 4 hours).

    I have no idea why the uninstaller is braindead on this system, but is a small bug on a amazing complex system that Steam is.

    [image]

    ---Tei

    i used to have dreams about quake. i wish i had never played it so i could play it again for the first time...

    captcha: howdy ... sup dog?

  • CorporateFelon (unregistered) in reply to nobody
    nobody:
    This reminds me of the time I realized I needed a new computer. I was installing Visual Studio .NET (please don't say that is the WTF) and the estimated time to completion was increasing, not decreasing. Eventually, the time did decrease and it installed, but it took a couple of hours.

    That also always happened to me with Visual Studio.

    Microsoft really needs to fix the algorithm for all those time estimations.

  • Anonymousalicious (unregistered)

    You claim to have worked on the Quake engine, yet use words like "patchs", "gamming" and "companys"?

    Good thing C++ isn't spelling-sensitive. Oh wait...

  • Mr Firsty (unregistered)

    Last Post

  • coredump (unregistered) in reply to Mr Firsty

    Are you sure?

  • noone (unregistered)

    very last post

  • (cs) in reply to noone

    last one, ad infinitum

  • (cs) in reply to Orson
    Orson:
    hmm thats an odd one, what was being used in the background? Norton?

    As a loyal employee of Symantec, I find that.... hilarious :)

  • BillyG the Magician (unregistered) in reply to CorporateFelon
    CorporateFelon:
    Microsoft really needs to fix the algorithm for all those time estimations.

    Dude, Microsoft DID "Fix" the algorithm for all those time estimations. It starts out giving you a reasonable time for install and ticks away giving the illusion that it's proceeding according to schedule. It's only when you check the clock at start and finish that you realize they're consistently gaming you with underestimates.

  • (cs)

    All those algorithms to calculate remaining time are useless. There's a lot of things that can happen while installing or uninstalling that make those messages really incoherent. They should just stick to the progress bar and perhaps a "remaining tasks to complete".

  • After the Last Post (unregistered)

    FIRST!!!

  • After the Last Post (unregistered) in reply to rbowes
    rbowes:
    Orson:
    hmm thats an odd one, what was being used in the background? Norton?

    As a loyal employee of Symantec, I find that.... hilarious :)

    No, it's gotta be McAfee. McAfee == No CPU Cycles left to do anything

  • gl (unregistered) in reply to rbowes
    rbowes:
    Orson:
    hmm thats an odd one, what was being used in the background? Norton?

    As a loyal employee of Symantec, I find that.... hilarious :)

    That brings to mind the old joke... "Why is Peter Norton always standing there with his arms folded?"

    "He's waiting for Norton Desktop to load."

  • MedO (unregistered)

    Oh my, this DOES remind me of a thread titled "The last one to post here wins", over at h2g2. It started September 2003. At first most posts just consisted of "I win", then followed discussions about WHY the poster would ultimately win etc, and more... bizarre posts. The thread was finally closed in June 2006, and the moderator left the following final message:

    I did warn you guys about being abusive...

    I think 37,000 posts of this stuff is probably enough.

    I win.

    Captcha: smile :-)

  • (cs) in reply to MedO
    MedO:
    Oh my, this DOES remind me of a thread titled "The last one to post here wins", over at h2g2. It started September 2003. At first most posts just consisted of "I win", then followed discussions about WHY the poster would ultimately win etc, and more... bizarre posts. The thread was finally closed in June 2006, and the moderator left the following final message:
    I did warn you guys about being abusive...

    I think 37,000 posts of this stuff is probably enough.

    I win.

    Captcha: smile :-)

    37,000!!!! boggled One thing I can say, humans are competative

  • (cs) in reply to Sebastián
    Sebastián:
    All those algorithms to calculate remaining time are useless. There's a lot of things that can happen while installing or uninstalling that make those messages really incoherent. They should just stick to the progress bar and perhaps a "remaining tasks to complete".

    Agreed.

    The worst "remaining time" algorithm that I've found is on the SuSE Linux installet. It gives extremely inaccurate readings (such as, 3 hours for a basic Linux install).

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymousalicious
    Anonymousalicious:
    You claim to have worked on the Quake engine, yet use words like "patchs", "gamming" and "companys"?

    Good thing C++ isn't spelling-sensitive. Oh wait...

    I liked "fisical" myself.

  • (cs) in reply to H3SO5
    H3SO5:
    The worst "remaining time" algorithm that I've found is on the SuSE Linux installet. It gives extremely inaccurate readings (such as, 3 hours for a basic Linux install).

    I noticed that to, it gave me <2:00 untill installation but it was finished in about a hour and a half. The most accurate one's I've seen is with Ubuntu, it's Update Manager is almost always dead on.

  • 1337 h4x0r (unregistered) in reply to Anonymousalicious
    Anonymousalicious:
    You claim to have worked on the Quake engine, yet use words like "patchs", "gamming" and "companys"?

    Good thing C++ isn't spelling-sensitive. Oh wait...

    Maybe english isn't his first language... you know, there are people living outside Anglophonia gasp

  • Builder (unregistered)

    During any uninstall, if a dialog ever pops up and asks you something like: Are you sure you want to remove these shared libraries? Well, the estimated time left factors in how long it takes you to hit ok and continue with the uninstall.

    What if you started the uninstall before you went to bed and woke up the next morning and hit ok? Well, that's easy... you get that huge number of minutes left to uninstall.

    It's not really a wtf.

  • (cs) in reply to malfist

    An hour and a half? That's pretty much a lot for a Linux install. I've completed a Debian install from the net in about that time. But installs from CD/DVD only take 30-45 mins as much. Do SuSE install the whole media?

  • (cs) in reply to 1337 h4x0r

    laik mi and a lot of oder pipol.

  • DF5 (unregistered) in reply to matt
    matt:

    i used to have dreams about quake. i wish i had never played it so i could play it again for the first time...

    captcha: howdy ... sup dog?

    That is the most romantic thing I have ever heard.

    So great in the idea, but saddly impossible in real life. -DF5

  • (cs)

    I get it. The Real WTF (tm) is that someone is trying to uninstall Half-Life 2.

  • Nick (unregistered)

    I haven't installed HL2 since I finished it years ago, but I recall it taking a LONG time to install, what with the decrypting and all. I'd start it back up, were it not for steam...

    How ironic, my captcha was QUAKE.

  • Romeo (unregistered) in reply to gl
    gl:
    rbowes:
    Orson:
    hmm thats an odd one, what was being used in the background? Norton?

    As a loyal employee of Symantec, I find that.... hilarious :)

    That brings to mind the old joke... "Why is Peter Norton always standing there with his arms folded?"

    "He's waiting for Norton Desktop to load."

    Best IT joke of the year (since now)

    CAPTCHA: Doom - a good game also

  • Dan F. (unregistered)

    yay, my WTF got submitted. to answer questions:

    • no, there is no norton or mcafee installed (EVER.)
    • yes, cleartype is installed on my beautiful 24" widescreen LCD.
    • it actually took like 4 minutes to uninstall
    • i was uninstalling because i wanted to move it off to another harddrive and windows doesnt support symbolic linking
  • Rick (unregistered) in reply to Dan F.
    Dan F.:
    - i was uninstalling because i wanted to move it off to another harddrive and windows doesnt support symbolic linking

    Actually, yes it does.

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/205524

  • (cs) in reply to Dan F.
    Dan F.:
    yay, my WTF got submitted. to answer questions: - no, there is no norton or mcafee installed (EVER.) - yes, cleartype is installed on my beautiful 24" widescreen LCD. - it actually took like 4 minutes to uninstall - i was uninstalling because i wanted to move it off to another harddrive and windows doesnt support symbolic linking

    You win... oh, wait...

  • kilroy (unregistered)

    LAST!!

  • (cs) in reply to Dan F.
    Dan F.:
    - i was uninstalling because i wanted to move it off to another harddrive and windows doesnt support symbolic linking
    Move the directory, remove ClientRegistry.blob and restart Steam ;)
  • Duston (unregistered) in reply to cassis

    Is that like "Football seconds" or "Basketball seconds?"

    I'd say the captcha, but it's way too much like a President I strongly dislike.

  • (cs)

    I was copying a large amount of data in Windows Vista about a week back and it showed 1d 6h to transfer. I took the amount of data, I divided it by the transfer rate after watching to make sure the transfer rate didn't change to much. I came up with about 11m. It took about 11m.

    Yes, time estimation code isn't all that precise, but it's not hard to write one that's in the ballpark.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    So what isotope did you use to get this kind of half-life?

  • (cs) in reply to rewind
    rewind:
    Looks like he is using the ClearType applet too...text looks nice and crisp.
    "Applet"? It's just a checkbox setting under Display Properties.

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