I’ll admit that Steam is controversial – it provides a good and easy-to-use platform to digitally distribute software, but quite often the prices are higher than at retail, and some of the restrictions are, well, very badly thought out. But all that is a whole different area that I don’t want to approach.
However, it has allowed the great unwashed (or at least those curious enough) to take a peek inside what most people’s PC’s are made of. I’m talking about the Steam Hardware Survey – if you use it then you might’ve been prompted to allow results to be sent a few times. It all gets compiled and updated onto one, relatively easy to digest page, right here.
Why is it interesting? Well, it confirms that most people using Steam use Intel CPU’s and nVidia graphics cards, that DirectX 10 capable systems are on the rise, and that the single-core CPU is going out and quad cores are coming in strong.
But for me, the most interesting snapshot right now is the movement from Windows XP and Vista 32 and 64bit towards Windows 7 64bit – it just goes to show that Microsoft really have done something right with Windows 7, otherwise people wouldn’t be moving to it in these numbers. I’m not a huge MS fan, but I’m glad it’s happening.
(image borrowed from the Steam Hardware Survey page)
Well, we were kindly invited by a friend to go and see a play on Thursday evening – a Romanian play called Kebab, translated into English and performed by an English cast, etc.
I’m not going to go on about the play, mostly because I’m no good (at all) at reviewing… well, anything. But the short version is this: the play managed to shock all four of us (two of those being Romanian, and the other two 100% British ladies who’ve seen more than their fair share of culture) – and not in a good way.
I won’t say that showing the harsh reality of what some Romanians have to go through when they move abroad (in this case Dublin) is bad, or that we should sweep it under the carpet like other nations do with their less pleasant aspects; but does it really have to be so damn gory, dramatic and shocking? For me, the play was about fifteen minutes short of yelling “We Romanians are poor little victims of this horrible world, look what we have to do to survive over here! And the only reason we’re not going back home is because it’s even worse there!”.
Sadly, it’s not just a playwright or a handful of people who encourage this – it sometimes seems like it’s the whole damn country, and the only thing I’m thinking of is the 5 o’clock news on ProTV… oh, and the whole gypsy-related drama that started in Italy (no I’m not politically correct). Just stop being victims, it’s not doing the country as a whole any good. But hey, does anyone actually care? And if you do, are you actually doing anything about it?
Sau mai bine zis, “Shi faaaaashii?” – dar nu “Wassup?“.
Nefiind tag-uit, RSS-uit, blogroll-uit samd (adica nu-s in mare comunitate bloguiasca), habar n-am daca Budai este deja un fenomen raspandit sau nu. Da’ cum mie-mi place si asta-i blogu’ meu, scriu ce vreau. Indubitabil.
..look, it lives again!
No idea how long it’ll stay alive this time, so no promises. Now, let’s fiddle…