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I know some of you are avid GTAO players (Grand Theft Auto Online).
Last week Rockstar (aka R*, makers of the GTA series) pushed out a patch that included the much-maligned BattlEye software, which (in short) is intended to prevent cheating and third-party mods. They're probably better at it than R* ever was.
For years, R* has pushed out updates that try to mitigate said cheating and modding; it's been mostly a futile cat and mouse game. And it's only now that they've decided to start relying on a third-party to take care of that for them.
And the modders ain't happy. Don't get me wrong, they've managed to tweak their mods in very little time so they work again, but they're still unhappy and they've decided to take it a step further.
Since then, R*'s servers have been the target of DDoS attacks on an on-and-off basis. R*'s own service status page doesn't show it (most of the time I check), but this page shows reported outages and shows definite spikes. I've experienced these outages myself...the game launches, but you can only go into story mode (which is completely offline); the whole online side of it is unavailable as it fails to log you in.
The game's now over a decade old, yet still generates over half a billion dollars a year for them (according to multiple sources). If these outages annoy enough players, this is bound to start affecting them financially sooner or later.
I'm really curious at this point to see who's gonna blink first.
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It's bizarre to me.
Amongst all that you mention the stupid BattleEye thing pretty much killed all Linux and Steamdeck play overnight.
That probably wasn't a huge percentage but it wasn't nothing or I wouldn't have heard about it.
They probably flushed quite a bit of yearly revenue just doing that, none of those folks will spend anymore.
OTOH, these games tend to be overrun with hackers and cheaters shortly after release. Only now a decade later it has become a problem?
But R* is crazy anyway. I spent an hour with some younger modders looking at some things for them. Was blown away by the whole json-everywhere. Didn't expect to even see it because it'd be terrible in context. Driving screws with a hammer.
Oh, it was though. It was. In fact it was even worse because they messed it up. Fixing it after GTA had been out for like 5 years cut their load times by like 70%.
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"I can't continue because I can't install this CD on my laptop."
A phrase uttered just yesterday by a coworker.
I bought a serial-to-USB adapter for him to connect his laptop to a scale, but the driver came on a CD and wasn't available on the internet.
Just packed my external CD player from home so he can continue on Friday.
Takes you back some 15 years 
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It would be quicker to buy another adapter (maybe of a different manufacturer). 
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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If you really want to screw with him, put it on a 5.25 floppy. 🤣
Jeremy Falcon
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3.5", I could still deal with - years ago I salvaged an external 3.5" floppy drive that hooks up via USB, when the previous company I worked for shut down, and I was given first dibs on any hardware I was interested in.
But I've never seen the same type of setup for a 5.25" floppy drive.
[Edit]
Had a quick peek at Amazon. They have a crapton of different models for 3.5" floppies, but I haven't seen a single one for 5.25". I did find a 5.25" drive, but that was just an internal drive with an IDE connector. Good luck with that...
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dandy72 wrote: But I've never seen the same type of setup for a 5.25" floppy drive.
Back in the 80s, those 5.25" drives were still used a lot despite 3.5" ones being out. By the time the 90s rolled around, we had cat pictures to contend with. Ain't got no time to mess about with low storage when it comes to cat pictures.
Jeremy Falcon
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Lucky you that the driver for the external CD player didn't come on a CD.
Happened to me for a Plextor drive I had once upon a time.
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I've seen installation instructions for a CD player come on a disc. I never could figure out how to read them.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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I have a little portable DVD rom / actually maybe it's a writer too - that I keep around for just such occasions. I haven't used it in years.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Y'all still have serial ports on pcs over there, like rs-232 type?
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Do not forget to make an *.iso of that CD, this way you won't run in the same problem again (at least not with that software / drivers)
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Someone came to me yesterday saying their Seagate drive wasn't working. I explained that the problem was right on the label: "Seagate" and that the safest thing is to take a hammer to the unit before throwing it in the bin and buying a western digital. He tried using it some more, and the whole system crashed. I hate being right.
That same day a dear friend of mine and I were on the phone and he got the windows error "Unable to enumerate objects in {folder}"
I told *him* his drive was bad. Ran CrystalDiskInfo on it and sure enough, SMART was critical.
A day or two before that a friend came to me reporting a BSOD in windows in their gpu driver. I told them a BSOD on a modern windows box like that points to a hardware issue. "But there are no lines on the screen or other artifacts". Me: "Doesn't matter. You overheated your GPU running AI messes on it because your thermals weren't set up properly from the factory (it was a laptop) and now you've cooked it." Poured over the event log, tried different driver versions, and even linux before he decided to call in his warranty.
On one hand, I've saved these people potentially hours of frustration and trouble.
On the other hand, after all that I'd be the last person I'd want to talk to about my computer, because I'd jinx it: "Your hardware is bad"
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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I've had the same experience. Several years ago we bought an external RAID array populated with 4 Seagate hard drives. Over the next 1-½ years each of the Seagate drives failed and were replaced with Western Digital drives we had on hand. The RAID array ran with the WD drives until the array controller died.
We bought a new and larger version of the RAID array. Interestingly, it's populated with Western Digital drives  .
Software Zen: delete this;
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honey the codewitch wrote: the problem was right on the label: "Seagate"
Your mileage may vary. I have only Seagate in my NAS and two of them have over 50000 hours (5.75 years). I switched to Seagate from WD after a couple of bad experiences. Later on I found out that it goes by model: both companies have had "duds" at different moments. My advice is to search reviews by HDD model.
Mircea
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I tend to ask around, especially after I end up with multiple bad drives from a manufacturer, as I have Seagate.
I encourage you to as well. You'll find so many more horror stories when it comes to Seagate.
I mean, I haven't done any kind of study, so it's anecdotal, but it's enough that I won't use a Seagate, even if it's given to me.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Well, in my case the proof is in the pudding 
Mircea
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Don't get me wrong, I'm glad your experience has been better than mine.
But mine is such that I won't touch them.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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I have had a similar experience with Seagate drives. went through a couple before I bailed on them. My only working Seagate SSD is external, not heavily used. Have Acer SSD, Helix SSD, Sandisk SSD. I have a draw full of old drives SATA USB, USB adapters, a portable USB 3.5 floppy disk drive,....
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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I keep saying I try hard to leave my personal bias out of it, but I've personally experienced so many failures, and keep hearing the same from so many people, I can't come up with a better conclusion that Seagate drives are just disproportionately SO much worse, I've sworn them off even if they were half the price of any other competitor. I was even given a system with multiple Seagate drives in it that were either already dead, or proved to be unreliable.
I've said this before here in the lounge, right now, all the Seagate drives I've ever owned are dead - not a single exception. Of all the WD drives I own, there's maybe one or two if I start looking hard enough in the oldest pile; of all the drives I no longer use, it's not because they died, it's because they're now so small they're no longer worth using. In each case, on the day I decided to stop using a drive, it was still spinning and I could still read data off of it. I wish I could say I'm exaggerating, but I have the pile of drives to prove it if someone wanted to pick them all up and start examining them one by one.
Seagate must have some good drives, otherwise how could they be so consistently bad, and yet the company remain in business. They must have some big, BIG government contracts that keeps them afloat. Which by itself isn't very reassuring, but that's another story...
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It could be that their commercial drives are reasonable.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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The consumer drives I see on Amazon are comparable in price/capacity with their competitors.
How different can "commercial" drives be? Are they so much more expensive to produce they couldn't compete (use those for the consumer market)? How do others manage, then?
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I don't know. I was just spitballing. I'm not even sure if they have a commercial line, though I remember back in the day their scsi drives used to cost a mint.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Well, WD has different "color" drives to identify their intended use...green/blue being consumer, then I know there's red, gold, black and I think I saw some purple. RAID, NAS, 24/7, whatever purposes. I never looked into the details.
For years now I just purchased their external drives (the "My Book" series), then take them out of the enclosure if that's not how I want to use them. A few years ago those had the green labels, but lately they've been blue.
So I only buy the "cheap" drives, yet they outlive the "equivalent" consumer Seagate drives...that's all I know and that's all I can say. My own observations speak for themselves so that's what I'm sticking with. 
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