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Mel Brooks weeps for this generation... And I'm a proud Paddy McKraut.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/...

Exactly. I have enjoyed some games that many considered truly terrible, "You Are Empty" springs to mind because while it wasn't anything new or revolutionary the Russian writers created a story that was as batshit as David Lynch movies and it had TWENTY FOOT TALL MUTANT ATTACK CHICKENS...seriously how could I not love a game that considered those a serious enemy type?

But when I score a game like that I make it clear it is not getting a good review because its some amazing game, instead its strictly for the cheesy goodness. Take a game like "Two Worlds", sure the gameplay is just a generic "hack and slash" just like every other Diablo clone...but the dialog, that dialog was fricking great! It was like a fifth grader had all these "old English" words like "pray" and "forsooth" and had NO fucking idea what they meant but said "Yeah that sounds all cool and hamlet and shit, lets use 'em!" and when combined with actors that sound like they come from a dinner theater in SD doing Macbeth? Priceless!

On the flipside you have GTA 4 which reviewers tripped over themselves to praise...Dafuq? That game is irritating as shit! Too damned many of the missions can only be gotten by kissing the correct ass and that involves hauling their stupid asses around and doing stupid mini-games to make their worthless ass happy...Why in the fuck am I taking a dope dealer out for dinner like I'm trying to bang him? Just give me the damned mission and STFU! Hell it was so bad there are fricking parody songs making fun of it, yet what did the majority of critics give it? 9s and 10s!

So give me real gamers ANY day of the week, I'd much rather hear "Its decent, just don't buy it for more than $5 because X/Y/Z makes it not worth more" than listen to the critics which seem more and more to just kiss the industry booty.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/...

Sonny Corleone Make Over courtesy of ED-209

I personally am about as interested in fashion as I am in programming. I write my own software and sew my own pants. (Hakamas to be precise) The last two christmasses me and my buddy spent the holidays talking about FOSS, playing Wesnoth, watching movies and sewing. Last year I fixed my favourite tango jeans (jea, I dance too, imagine) and he sowed his living room curtains. No joke.

Remember that scene in Taratinos "Death Proof", where the guy at the convenience store sells the chica "this months italian vogue" from his private stash for some steep premium? That scene is about as spot on as you can get. Seriously. Two fashion nerds striking a deal. I found it hilariously 'straight from life'.

Why am I interested in fashion? Couldn't tell exactly. For a lot of reasons.
Well, for one, as they say in Paris: Fashion designers dress the women they'd like to have. Or, more precisely, want to be, if they had a choice. ... And that's not a queer thing btw. I'm about as straight as you can get. But I enjoy looking good, I enjoy looking at cute & well dressed women even more :-) (dancing with them even more so, f*cking them even then some :-)) ... you know the drill) , and I hate the cheap quality that breaks after one year of usage. ... So I sew and repair my own. ... Extra sturdy pockets is a big deal too, as you can imagine. (Nerd Alert! :-) ) ...

Oh, and another cliche: A button a man has sewn on himself *never* comes of again. That's because at one time we get so pissed at them coming off all the time we do it ourselves - and then the right way. Ever since my mom screwed up sewing lost buttons back on I've been doing it myself. Since the age of 15 roughly. The first time I did that I used dracon kiteline to sew metal buttons back on to my jeans jacket. They too never came off again.

In my opinion being a male geek/nerd and into fashion design goes very well. And the girls dig it a lot. Especially those who like to look cute and do the hookeypookey with guys they can connect with. *grins very wide*

My 2 cents.

That means that... our whole solar system... could be, like, one tiny atom in the fingernail of some other giant being! This is too much! http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-n_RQb4tJmhY2n/animal_house_1978_smoking_pot_with_professor_part_2/

Is this really going to happen...Specially in crowded traffic...These ideas are too far fetched..

Most crowded traffic is the result of impatient drivers with poor reflexes constantly riding up the driver in front of them and then having to slam to a stop when the car in front of them brakes. This propagates backwards and creates traffic waves. Interestingly, all it takes is one driver to put an end to stop-and-go traffic.

Now imagine that 5% of the cars on the road were replaced with driverless cars that not only give the car in front of them plenty of room but also signal ahead to other driverless and safety assisted cars (e.g. ones with predictive braking) what they are about to do. Imagine that these cars didn't rubberneck or get angry and tailgate or cut people off without signaling first, because they don't have emotional humans driving them.

Imagine a world with no traffic jams thanks to driverless cars.

Street value.

If you have to resort to calling names because you can provide nothing but appeals to emotion quit wasting my time, please go away. you did NOT say "In my opinion this is why I won't buy" you did NOTHING but give out one doom scenario after another.

Now you tell me EXACTLY how are you ANY different than RMS and his "Windows 7 sins"? answer...YOU AREN'T, both use appeals to emotion with NO evidence, NO citations, NOTHING but pulling out doom scenarios...well ya know what? Tomorrow Zombie Steve Jobs could release flying monkeys and destroy the USA...BOTH are equally likely, BOTH have the same amount of evidence, BOTH are just so much bullshit.

I'm sorry that while you rightly call out the FOSSies on their bullshit you can't see your own, but i have provided clear evidence and concrete proof that your doom scenarios simply can't happen. hell if valve got struck by a meteor tomorrow and wiped out the company it wouldn't matter if there was anybody to release their steam unlock patch or not, 5 minutes at gamecopyworld or megacracks and you would lose NOTHING, even if Steam was gone tomorrow.

So again show me ONE person, just one mind you, that has lost a single game from Steam. I can show you plenty of guys that have lost money on retail, hell he has had to crack over half his games because the versions of SecuROM or Starfuck just won't run.

so do us BOTH a favor, either admit you are a pirate and just don't want to pay for shit, which that is your business but be honest about it, or admit that like RMS it has to do with ideology and politics and not anything about Steam itself. i mean do you not play games at all? you have the exact same risk with more than 75% of the games out there because all it takes is the company pulling the plug you are SOL, only unlike valve companies like EA HAVE pulled the plug and made retail games worthless, try playing MP on any of the games in the MOH decade pack for instance,or any of their sports games that are more than 2 years old. At least with Steam i can fire up that copy of HL 1 DM and be fragging dozens of people in minutes and that is a 14 year old game.

Again you are using a doom scenario and appealing to emotion, again I say in the future RMS will slaughter children...both are equally valid, both have zero evidence to back them up, both are just as much bullshit.

If Valve had some way to take your games that would be valid but guess what? THEY DON'T because there is this little place called "GameCopyWorld" where there are cracks for the Steam games NO DIFFERENT than for any retail game that you buy. What IS different is that Steam don't buttfuck you if you change OSes, I have games right now I can't play without downloading the pirated version because the old ass SecuROM or Starfuck DRM has a 16bit installed and a 32bit kernel hook and I'm on a 64bit OS...cue the WB"sucker" music. With Steam I can be on ANY Windows from XP-Windows 8, hell if its a game that actually has been ported I can even run it on Linux, NO hassles and NO risk.

So again show me somebody that has bought games from steam and been burned, just one, I can show you plenty of examples of those burnt by retail discs, just watch the video and look at his shelves and realize more than half of those games won't play because while the game code itself is fine, the shitty DRM code won't run so the game won't run. But the ONLY ones I have EVER found that have been supposedly "burned" by Steam turned out they were caught using wallhacks and aimbots and got banned which guess what? They would have got banned off the retail as well because nobody wants their games ruined by cheating douchebags.

So if there is actual evidence lets see it, I've already shown it is just as trivial to bypass Steam as it is ANY retail disc so Valve going under in the future (which with 7 straight years of doubling profits and coming out with a Linux version makes that unlikely) isn't any kind of evidence, its a doom scenario and appeal to emotion. Give us facts, give us citations, don't just say "They could do something bad in the future!" because I could raise Cthulhu in the future and rule the world at his side...hey it COULD happen, right?

Except ironically the crazy science actually has evidence to back it up, whereas the Jewish Zombie doesn't even have concrete evidence that he even drew a single breath. The Romans frankly made the Nazis look lazy when it came to record keeping, we can tell you all kinds of things about what was going on back then because of how anal retentive Romans were at keeping tabs...yet a guy that walked on water, raised no less than 2 people counting himself from the dead, even re-attached a soldiers severed ear gets NO writeup, if nothing else a "WTF is this then?" kind of write up?

He did get several write ups. Josephus and Tacitus are two of the major ones, but there are others who mention him. You need to realize that that 85% of everything written in antiquity has been lost. We are at the mercy of whatever has survived.

Jerusalem was completely destroyed in 70 AD. Any records there would have been destroyed. Records kept elsewhere in that area very likely would also have been destroyed in the war. Word traveled very slowly in those days and Jesus's ministry lasted only about 3 years. It did spread widely in the local area as the NT records, but there simply wasn't enough time for word about him to spread much beyond that before the crucifiction occurred, given the primitive communications of the day.

Thanks to how good the modern telescopes are getting we can actually look pretty far back into the past there are even plausible theories on how nothing exploded, IE the possibility that one of the other dimensions leaked into ours,

hairy, stop, just stop. You're making a complete fool out of yourself. "how nothing exploded" are you reading what you are writing?

"IE the possibility that one of the other dimensions leaked into ours"

1. Another universe is not "nothing"
2. That theory of an infinite universe has been proven false by philosophy for hundreds, if not thousands of years, because it leads to logical absurdities, and proven false by science since 2003 with the Borde Guth Vilenkin Theorem.

The philosophical problem is the problem of an infinite regress here is a 6 minute rundown of the problem. The problem applies to the multiverse theory as well

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3994011/william_lane_craig_the_absurdity_of_an_infinite_regress_of_things/

......but other than a single book, a book that has more errors and contradictions than you can shake a stick at BTW, which means that God was worse than your average fan fic writer when it comes to telling a cohesive narrative,

Do a bit of research and you will find that these "contradictions" are simply apparent contradictions, not actual contradictions. They tend to be the result of either misunderstanding, mis translation, time compression on the part of the author, or cultural/geographical ignorance. Sometimes they are secondary details which we would expect to differ slightly in historical documents written by different authors. If all the documents were unanimous in every detail, non believers would then deride them for all saying the exact same thing.

If you have an afternoon to spare, here is a lecture series looking at the gospels from a historians perspective. There are other lectures, but I am only going to list the ones that go over the larger supposed "contradictions" and shows how they are not.

04a Alleged Historical Errors in the Gospels (Matthew & Mark)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKzSV8bWKk0

04b Alleged Historical Errors in the Gospels (Luke & John)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5kJuTkUo0w

05a Alleged Contradictions in the Gospels

And what pisses me off is the DRM never works, it would be different if they could trot out some numbers to show that when game X was DRM free they sold Y but when DRM was added they sold X+Y but nope, all that ends up happening is shit like this where a guy has to go and crack a brand new game that he just paid $60 for because the DRM has made just playing the damned thing impossible.

And I know EXACTLY how he feels as i have a bunch of games from the late 90s-mid 00s that I HAVE to use the pirate version just to play the game i bought because while the game itself has NO problems running on a 64bit modern OS the DRM is 16bit shit that if you are lucky just crashes, if not it'll try to jam 32bit kernel hooks into a 64bit kernel and fuck up the whole OS. Oh and to add insult to injury the remover that the DRM companies put out to get rid of their shit? Doesn't run on a 64bit OS! Argh!

This was never about piracy, after all the pirates blew through every DRM schema like crap through a goose. All this kind of crap does is punish the people THAT GIVE YOU MONEY while rewarding the people that rip you off. Imagine two shops side by side selling games. the one selling legit games punches you in the balls with every purchase, while the shop with the "wink wink" copies not only hands you the game for free but gives you a pizza...which would you choose?

For an example of an actual paying customer getting screwed over by DRM crap just watch this video where a brand new retail copy simply won't run because of completely craptastic DRM. Be sure to pay attention to the shelf behind him, you can literally see game boxes piled nearly to the ceiling. this is the kind of guy you WANT as a customer, the kind that buys on release day, buys a ton of games, most businesses would kill for a customer like that but the publishers crap all over them with DRM.

Yes they do. At least Gravity applies to them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J394yXbZZEs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThQ4hgw3iI0

I haven't bought any Ubisucks since the always online DRM debacle but since Ubisuck can pull numbers out of their ass how about I pull a few of my own?

I USED to see plenty of pirated games on the PCs that came through my doors, now I don't, why? Steam made it easy and cheap to buy, no different than how many of the music lovers go to iTunes and/or Amazon now instead of wasting time looking through badly labeled P2P files. Funny part is the only games I DO see more often pirated? Those with really nasty system breaking DRM like....drumroll...Ubisuck!

What Ubisuck needs to do is take a lesson from Valve, make it easy, make it simple, make it cheap. I bet if someone at /. would get a hold of Valve and ask them (without naming names) to compare the sales of the bundles with nasty DRM VS those that only used Steam you'd find shock! Gasp! That people don't want to mess with all that hoop jumping, online pass, always on broken down bullshit and so simply walk away or go talk to Mr Pirate that has a functional copy. I know I had my CC in my hand to buy the AC and Splinter Cell bundles...until I saw the always on DRM crap, then I just went down the line and bought other bundles instead.

But this guy says it better than I ever could (warning: Language NSFW but who can blame 'em?) and gives a perfect example of how nasty DRM doesn't do anything but bite the consumer in the ass. Watch as he has to crack his brand new retail boxed game just to get the damned thing to run.

So please Ubisoft, feel free to make console only (which just FYI but CL is full of cracked X360s for as little as $100 with games preloaded) if all you are gonna do is take a steaming dump on your games with always online shit. I USED to buy a lot of your games Ubisoft, hell I'm looking at the Far Cry box sitting on the shelf in front of me where I broke it out to run it during slow periods in the shop, but no more. I don't pirate your games either, I just give my money to companies like Valve that give me working games in return. No Sale.

It reminded me of this though...which is a lot funnier than I remember.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1303926/beavis_and_butthead_vaya_con_cornholio/

Not at all.

Not to mention it is NEVER the pirates that get bit in the ass by this, its the players who paid good money. For everyone who wants to see a player getting bit in the ass by DRM in just watch this video (warning language NSFW) and watch as someone who bought a $60 game finds out how DRM bites.

BTW look at his shelves behind him, there are thousands of dollars worth of legitimate games, more than half of which he says no longer work because of DRM. I have found this out as well, because ever since I switched to 64 bits with Win XP X64 in 2006 I have found many of my games won't work, not because they won't run on a 64 bit OS, but because the shitty DRM doesn't. Oh a word of warning...DO NOT install older Starforce and SecuROM games on a 64 bit OS without cracking it before first launch! I have found that some versions of SecuROM and Starforce will try to embed 32 bit kernel hooks into a 64 bit kernel for disastrous stability and crashing problems. Oh and their "removal tools" WILL NOT WORK on a 64 bit OS! If you don't have a recent image backup or another OS to boot into so you can scrub it like malware (which it is) then you are fucked.

this is why I'm telling those that ask about D3 to buy Torchlight II instead. Not only is it a better deal, with Steam offering BOTH TL I & II for $20 or a 4 pack for $60, but it doesn't require always on Internet just to play SP.

You are just learning what some of us have no for years friend...every OS sucks!

Well lets see...you can't buy Ubisoft, EA, Activision/Blizzard, and Valve...what's left? The indie games? if you think you are any better off with SecuROM or Safedisc you might want to watch this video and watch a user get buttfucked by SecuROM.

And how EXACTLY is valve supposed to take ONLY MP out of games they don't own while leaving the SP behind? they don't own the code and i'm sure it says in the contracts with those that publish on Steam what valve can and cannot do and i doubt seriously ANY company would agree to hand over their code or develop a kill switch for JUST the MP just to make someone like you happy. And it isn't ripping anyone off anymore than throwing someone out of a theater for talking on their cell or sneaking in food would be considered ripping someone off, unless you think the theater should have a special 'rulebreaker booth" so those people that refuse to play well with others to still get their money's worth? it says quite clearly that wall hacks and aimbots will result in bans so if you go around acting like a total jackass one should expect consequences. If anything I'd argue that the whole "I should be allowed to be as big a prick as I want problem free!" attitude is what's wrong with this country, nobody gives a shit if they ruin it for everyone else as long as THEY get what THEY want.

And as for the last bit if you are pro piracy then at least have the guts to come out and say so. there is a difference between being pro piracy and showing there isn't any real way to take a game away from you with Steam than there is to take away your disc once you bought it. in BOTH cases they are trivial to bypass and in BOTH cases you will still be banned for being a douchebag. In fact i doubt you'll find a single game, either free or for pay, that will let you cheat your ass off and ruin it for everyone else without getting banned. Do you scream if WoW punts someone who cheats? in the end you can't find a SINGLE example, not one, where someone lost their games while following the very basic rules of conduct. That makes your entire argument hypothetical and you might as well argue that some day MSFT will flip a switch and turn off your windows until you write them a check because frankly both scenarios would be suicide and about as likely as me growing wings out my ass and flying south for the winter.

Don't just NOT buy those games but please DO buy similar games that don't screw you on the DRM, hell there are plenty on Steam and GOG that don't require any extra BS. Sadly if all you do is don't buy they will use PPT math to say the lost sales were all pirates which will justify their getting even more SOPA/PIPA style laws passed, whereas if we can say "Look at the games which didn't have the extra crap and look at their sales" then it will be much harder to blame it on piracy.

And please tell everyone you know to avoid such DRM garbage, and send them links to videos like this (warning language NSFW but who can blame him) and tell them that just because it don't bite you in the ass TODAY it very well could tomorrow. hell use me as an example, I've HAD to pirate damned near every game i bought before 2009, why? Because I switched to a 64 bit OS and their &^%^&%$ DRM doesn't work on 64 bit OSes! What is worse is there are many games with certain DRM (Starforce and SecurROM cough cough) that will FUCK YOUR PC UP HARD because it will try to jam their 32bit kernel hooks into your 64bit OS. With the rise of 64bit into the mainstream you'd be amazed how many "My PC is acting all weird and crashy" I've traced back to them installing some older game.

Thanks for pointing out that I didn't say "just go pirate it" but pointed out what shouldn't even NEED to be pointed out, that when the price rises to above a certain threshold piracy (or a black market with physical goods) flourishes and when it drops below a certain threshold where the needs of the majority are met trivially then those markets dry up. You would think this would be the most obvious and common sense thing said here but i guess i'll need to give another example.

Now with new games I simply refuse to pay more than $20, if you don't offer it to me at that price or below (my personal sweet spot is $10 or less) then i simply walk away and that is money you have left on the table which when you are talking a price per unit of literally pennies then that is just stupid to leave that money on the table and as L4D showed when you hit the sweet spot the sales become truly astronomical. hell I would argue there are even times that giving away something valuable for nothing can pay off long term, as it was the Portal I giveaway that got me on steam where they have gotten easily more than $200 off of me in the past 6 months.

Now have I pirated games in the past? yes I have. is that because I felt entitled? no it is because the companies refused to service my needs and the pirates did.; i have been on 64bit operating systems since 2005 and many of the games before the release of Win 7 were tied to 32bit DRM that at best simply would give you nothing but the finger in return for your money but i quickly found that was NOT the norm, the norm was to try to jam 32bit code into a 64bit kernel using hooks which took a giant shit on the entire system and threw stability right out the window. so in my case the pirates actually offered me a better value not so much on price but by offering a product I could actually run without fear that it would trash my system. I'm not the only one who has been bitten by DRM, watch this video (warning language NSFW) and look at how many PC games the guy owns and gets nothing for his money. He would have been better off pirating. If you don't serve the market the market will route around the damage, be it with black markets or knockoffs or piracy. that's just how it works folks.

That's why I didn't say contact the companies because that won't help with PPT math, they'll just file 13 it and pretend it never existed, won't affect their PPT math in the slightest. No what we need is the EFF to set up a site to combat PPT math where those of us boycotting can sign up so that when some megacorp pulls out some PPT math the EFF can say "Members of congress the gentleman is ignoring the fact that his DRM has caused enough trouble for consumers that many of them are boycotting their products. here is a list with but a small sample of those that have pledged to NEVER buy a single product from this company".

I would also suggest everyone have this video bookmarked (warning language NSFW) so that when a shill pops up and says "They are only protecting their IP, this doesn't hurt the consumers!" we can all paste the video and rub their noses in it as it is a textbook example of a legal customer getting punched in the balls by DRM. If you watch the video he has to crack his brand new retail game simply to make it run because otherwise the DRM won't let him actually play the game. And thanks to not being allowed to return an open box, even if the product is defective, in most stores that leaves us trapped in a catch 22 where we can't play the game we legally bought without breaking DMCA and becoming criminals.

And yet again the pirated version is the superior version. Is it any wonder why we get PC gamers posting rants when they get fucked out of their money? Personally all i use anymore is Steam and GOG and if a game says it uses third party anything its buh bye, no thanks. BTW if any Steam guys are reading this? you REALLY need an icon so when I'm looking at a long list of games, like during one of your sales, i can see which are only Steam and which have extra crap. And before anybody says 'ZOMG Steam IS DRM" yeah yeah to serve man is a cookbook. Steam DRM is also the most trivial to bypass there is, the net is full of Steam hacks, so if Valve ever goes under it won't take me 3 minutes to have my games hacked.

But I think we need a new tag for douchebag DRM, probably called "Hey its Ubisoft" as when it comes to treating customers like shit and giving them the finger while they take their money NOBODY innovates like Ubisoft, they are at the absolute bleeding edge when it comes to active douchebaggery, from DRM that burned drives to always on crap that we see gives them a way to give everyone who was stupid enough to buy from them an electronic Goatse, nobody but nobody leads in the area of digital douchebag behavior like Ubisoft, nobody.

Then you will enjoy this video because his getting bit in the ass by DRM should be an inspiration to us all. here is a guy that has spent thousands on games yet STILL has to go to crack sites just to make the damned things he PAID FOR work.

That string comes up all over the place. Seems pretty difficult to figure out, in just a moment. This is my favorite result: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4130367/1qaz2wsx/ :P

What is this, wikipedia? Your google broken or something? You haven't actually been into a mobile store? Fine - Top 10 best selling Android phones 2011. Best Android phones June 2011 Top 5 selling Android phones 2011. Not a cheap device listed.

I think the idea's a lil bland, I mean ... yay you put some free apps they could go get anyway.

Ditto: Results in Present Face.

BigDog can already jump, end of the video on this page has an example:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1168947/unbelievable_boston_dynamics_bigdog_march_08/

Pretty impressive if you ask me. Simply no helium, hydrogen or anything but basic Physics.

Next time, kids, why not start from this idea?

it's called a solar balloon
here's a video with instructions to make your own

Being able to control an avatar is a great step, but it's not too hard to imagine coupling this with one of Kamen's iBOT vehicles to allow these people to regain some mobility. Throw some grappling arms on there and the person might even gain a bit of independence.

Extra Credit is a great show about games and their development. I'm into game development myself and please, everyone who is too do as I - watch their shows. Think about what they have to say.

They also got a video about microtransactions and one about the skinner box. They don't talk about moral though. So here for those interested in the topic but to lazy to RTFA. Its a video, just lean back and watch. Kinda entertaining as well.

• Microtransactions (9:10)
• Skinner Box (7:02)

Their video's are currently hard to find because they got apart from their old home "the escapist" and the videos there all just 404.

Well then are they gonna PAY ME when they fuck up my PC? No? Then bite me. I buy my games yet I play the downloaded version, why? Because I have found their shitastic DRM DOESN'T FUCKING WORK and in fact will fuck your shit up buddy! I've seen PCs that acted like they were infected, with crashes and slowdowns, fucking up all over the place, and it turned out to be just SecuROM and Safe disc having a nice little fight! Maybe you should watch this educational video and learn something.

And what about the shows I never would have bought if it weren't for P2P? I live in a valley so OTA is right out and frankly the cable shows so damned many commercials I can't stand to watch even 20 minutes of a show to find out if I like it because of the constant commercial bullshit. Right behind me as I speak, sitting on a nice shelf with collectors figures my late sis bought me for bookends, is the entire Joss Whedon collection, which set me back about....ohh I'd say a good $500 since I bought them at release. Since my area had NO WB I would have NEVER watched a single episode, nor would I have ever bought or rented it, because really the description sounded lame. I mean the guy from the Taster's choice commercials and a soap opera actress? WTF? But I downloaded a couple of episodes and loved the writing, so I went out and bought the entire series as they were released on DVD.

They THINK this will get people to buy the frankly God awful horseshit they've been shoveling lately, but they're wrong. Guys like me that try before you buy simply won't be buying much at all, and you certainly ain't gonna get those masses living from paycheck to paycheck to pay, they'll just do without. The dumbshits could have been finding ways to monetize these people, like the way games are going free to play with microtransactions, but instead they'll find out the hard way without the word of mouth brought by P2P their sales are gonna suck the big wet titty. I wonder what they'll blame when they can't blame piracy? Sadly they'll probably just have themselves declared "too big to fail" and take the money directly from our collective wallets with taxes, and give us the finger in return.

Meanwhile as the US empire gets the short bus to the information superhighway the rest of the world will simply route around and we can just accept the days of the USA being anything but another third world shithole are behind us. The future is information, and sadly most of America simply won't have access to it. We'll all be fat, lazy, stupid, and broke, with nothing to do but stare blankly at the idiot box. Eh I hope India and China enjoy this gift, and become better superpowers than we were, as with no tech they'll be no future tech jobs and we don't make shit here anymore. maybe they think we can all work in Hollywood?

Uhhh...why EXACTLY would you throw their stuff on TPB when it is dirt cheap and they are nice to you if they did indeed follow the GOG model?

I have bought probably close to 50 games from GOG since I first heard about them. Could I have pirated those games? Of course. So why did I buy them from GOG? Because not only is GOG cheap but they give you extras such as having all their games tested to work on x64 (you'd be surprised how many games even a couple of years old don't run well on x64) and along with that which is VERY important to me since I've been on x64 since late 05 they give me, in no particular order: soundtracks, avatars, guidebooks, keyboard layouts, calendars, behind the scenes, expansion packs pre integrated, and a VERY nice forum full of helpful folks that have everything from mods to walkthroughs to howtos, all in an easy to use format.

This of course doesn't even bring up the fact that nearly all their games are less than $10, most under $7, I can download them as many times as I want (not that I would ever need to thanks to the next part), are trivial to backup onto a USB HDD (just a single .exe or on large games an .exe and several .part files, simple) and of course have NO DRM, don't phone home, don't bitch if I want to have them installed on more than one of my machines, has a nice Adobe Air based download manager, in short everything "just works" and at a killer low price point.

I think you'll find pirates can usually be broken down into two camps: 1.- those that can't afford the crazy prices they are asking for the product, which is a classical reason why a black market springs up like piracy, and 2.-those that are tired of being fucked by DRM. I have often bought games off of Amazon only to leave the pretty box unopened and use the pirate version. Why? Because the shitty fucking DRM don't work, and in fact can seriously fuck to the point of reinstall x64 OSes. While I don't I can see plenty getting fed up and just not bothering with the buying part when the pirate version is the better product by a HUGE margin and for an example of how buyers get fucked by DRM watch this video (warning language NSFW, but if you watch it you'll know why he is POed) .

But I think you'd find if eBooks followed the GOG model piracy would be almost non existent. I mean why bother? If it is cheaper, faster, and you get all kinds of incentives to buy, why bother pirating? In fact I'd say my PC game purchases have easily tripled since finding out about them, ironically while going on forums trying to get my PITA legal copy of Redneck Rampage to run on XP X64. I was so frustrated trying to get DOSBox and all the other hoops I had to jump through to work I gladly rebought only to find it all"just worked" while giving me all kinds of extras like the expansions and the cuss packs. After that I was hooked and I'm sure if we saw the same on ebooks there would be tons of folks like me lined up with their CC out.

But instead they'll try to assrape you on the price to prop up the dead tree version and most folks will do something MUCH worse than piracy....they simply won't bother at all. And sorry about the length but as someone who has had to deal with the messes DRM can cause, such as drives thrown in PIO mode or computers stuttering and glitching because the DRM crap code was throwing conflicts, I personally wish the garbage would DIAF.

You want to know what is sad? I have gotten to the point that when I buy a game I take its nice shiny box and put it in the closet and just run the "Razr1911" version. Why? Because their shitty ass ring 0 DRM garbage makes a modern X64 OS run like ass, so yet again its the pirate version for the win!

If for any reason I need to install new hardware, or move my game folder to that new drive I just bought without wanting to do a full reinstall, the pirate version "just works" whereas the DRM version is crap. Starting with Bioshock II (which makes you run GFWL, which I've spent more time fighting that POS software service than I have the bad guys in the games) I've simply bought the game and left it in the package. The Razr1911 version doesn't need GFWL, it has a pre hacked version already included that "just works" hassle free. And that doesn't count the fact that so many of the games I buy simply won't run OOTB because the DRM ignore the drive (because I have two burners and no players) and calls me a pirate for daring to have burners in my machine! WTF? who doesn't have burners in their machine today? Hell they are cheaper than the players!

For a good example of how this DRM bites you in the ass I invite you to watch this video (warning language NSFW, but you watch it you'll understand why he is POed) and share it with everybody you know. People don't realize that for many of us piracy isn't about "getting free stuff" it is about being able to use what we paid for because if the DRM don't work there is nothing you can do, as most places won't accept opened returns. As the guy in TFL I posted says "It IS bullshit!" and I have to agree. Nowhere else are you allowed to sell products that are broken by design and fail so often to do as intended.

I wouldn't say it is just that, it is also that there is only so much eye candy you can look at while getting shot at, and too many turned gamers off by putting out completely shitty console ports, with just a little bling added if that.

In the 90s and early 00s I was the type that had a new PC every two years and was constantly upgrading in between, all trying to get the good framerate. But now with so damned many games being designed for crappy 5 year old consoles first you know what? kinda pointless ATM. I'm quite happy with my Phenom II 925 quad (picked up nearly 2 years go) and the HD4850 my GF picked up for me (those were released in what? 07?) and even on newer games like Batman AA and Just Cause 2 frankly I get all the eye candy I can look at and it runs just fine at my native 1600x900, so why bother upgrading?

I think the problem is too many focused on the bling bling and not the overall gaming experience. I have a couple of gaming customers that bought Crysis for the benchmarking, but do they actually play it? Not really. Sitting here playing in the shop I have folks come in and go "ooooh wow, what is that?" when I'm playing Brothers in Arms, even though that game is going on 8 years old. The reason they oooh and ahhh is because they focused on the experience with decent acting and a story that flows, so you feel like you are in the middle of Band of Brothers on HBO.

Frankly, and I doubt I'm alone, I'd be happy to play a game with Far Cry 1 level graphics if it has a decent story and great controls. Too many of the newer games feel like nobody even bothered to test it with a keyboard to see if it was playable, or it has show stopping bugs that make it so you end up having to wait, sometimes months, just to get a game stable enough to play through.

Bling bling is nice, but give me story, give me some decent AI, I'm so sick of devs bolting on MP and expecting that to be the "fix" for their shoddy AI. If I wanted to run around like a chicken with my head cut off while someone screams nigger and faggot I'd be playing halo. Thanks but no thanks devs. Give us atmosphere and a believable world, give us AI that will put up a good fight instead of the cheap "rubber band AI" that EA uses, where on hard you have a private that can snipe from 1000 yards behind cover while taking more rounds than the Terminator. We have multicore now, why aren't you using them for pathfinding and AI?

And finally do something about your shitty DRM devs! I'd list all the times it has bit me in the ass but I think this guy says it best. So in the end I end up playing older games, games where all the patches are out, where I can download the crack so DRM don't bite me in the ass, games where I've seen enough reviews to know it is actually worth my time. In the end I'd say the consoles are just a symptom of a larger disease, the Activision "Lets milk that IP!" disease, where everything is just another copy of another copy and is frankly boring as hell. Why should I bother upgrading, when the new bling bling games the only thing they offer is bling?

Don't feel bad, you aren't the only one getting bit in the ass by the DRM (the pirates OTOH are playing just fine) and for an example (be sure to note the HUGE pile of game boxes lining all his shelves) check out this video (warning:language NSFW but when you watch it you'll understand why he's POed).

In the end this scam benefits ONLY the manufacturers of DRM. It does ZERO to stop piracy, even the "online only" games like AC2 having running hacked version on Emule and the other P2P sites, it royally pisses off and fucks over your customer, who gets pissed when the game he bought runs like ass and won't run at all sometimes, only to find out they got bit by DRM, and it doesn't help initial sales, see how many warned customers off of Bioshock II thanks to a shitty DRM schema on Amazon. I know I was gonna by it at release and took one look at the warnings and just waited until it was bargain basement and bought it while playing the hacked version (just so I could have both boxes, I like having the boxes).

To the GOG guys? Thanks. I've been putting my money where my mouth is and for the most part your games rock (don't buy i76 if you are on a multicore, it runs like ass) and the fact that you make games easy to backup and reinstall is definitely a selling point for me. Keep up the good work GOG, and can you get Deathtrap Dungeon?

The results are everyone's fault but most of all the Allies who set it all up.

I wouldn't say that.

I bet five will get you ten they were using shitty Ring 0 DRM that was written for x86. You actually got lucky as I have seen Ring 0 x86 crap install into x64 and the the uninstaller WILL NOT UNINSTALL no matter what you do and the Ring 0 crap since it can't read 64 bit code will cause the whole system to become as unstable as Win9x as it assumes you're a pirate and tries to constantly rescan.

For a perfect example that you can point to when someone says "the DRM isn't obtrusive, it doesn't hurt legit customers, blah blah blah" I'd suggest you watch this video (warning language NSFW, but when you see why he is POed you'll understand) and bookmark it to answer the pro DRM crowd. Also take note and point out the literally dozens of games boxed behind him lining the shelves which he points out many no longer work thanks to DRM.

So consider yourself lucky Jitterman, as you'd be amazed how many customers CD/DVD burners I've had to throw away thanks to DRM throwing them into PIO mode and burning the motors, or how many times a customer has had to pay me because "I think I have a virus" which turns out to be shitty DRM that is as nasty as any badly written malware and can take a rock solid XP or Windows 7 system and bring it to its knees. I'd also suggest frequent backups as well as system restore points before any game install if you are running x64, since as I said many x86 Ring 0 DRM crap WILL install itself onto x64 without warning or user interaction and proceed to make an unholy mess of your system.

But yet again the legit customer gets burned, the pirate has a game that "just works" and runs better than the legit version with fewer bugs and errors as well as needing fewer resources. Sad isn't it?

KIDS THESE DAYS

Pretty sure shiny things existed for kids of the past too...

Also, Suck On This:

A recent survey by consumer research firm Experian has found that PS3 owners are actually much, much older than Wii and Xbox owners. The study says the Wii attracts 18-24 year olds, while the Xbox 360 nabs 35-44 year olds. The PS3 then gets those who are 44 or older.

It is now safe to switch on your brain. :-P

Also, suck on this: http://taylorflatt.instablogs.com/entry/study-ps3-more-popular-among44-age-group/

A recent survey by consumer research firm Experian has found that PS3 owners are actually much, much older than Wii and Xbox owners. The study says the Wii attracts 18-24 year olds, while the Xbox 360 nabs 35-44 year olds. The PS3 then gets those who are 44 or older.

It is now safe to turn on your brain :-P

What does that have to do with banned x360s being cheap and plentiful? What does that have to do with the fact that counting used and refurbs you are probably looking at 3 to 1 on x360 VS PS3 in the marketplace, thus helping to drive used units even cheaper? What does that have to do with MSFT's ban hammer creating a huge pile of pre hacked x360s that you can simply drop your "back up" games on? What does that have to do with DVDs being much easier then BDs to download?

Oh right, absolutely nothing, you just wanted to wave your "I have a PS3" fanboy flag. Well good for you, here is a prize. Of course it doesn't change the fact that part of what I do for a living is help to wire people's homes so they can get the most out of their equipment, therefor have probably a little more experience than you in this area, and have found more than a few PS3s being used almost exclusively* as high end BD players. So enjoy your console and feel free to ring in when you actually have something to say other than "PS3 Roxorz!"

*- Almost exclusively in that with the exception of God of War and a few other first party titles the PS3 just plays BDs. If given a choice between the same game on both platforms I've noticed they will nearly always pick the x360 due to the much nicer multiplayer experience on XBL.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1013057/laser_safety_glasses_tutorial_demonstration/

Won't take long. Nothing like a $20 part to defeat a $1million dollar weapon....

Or people like me that have to clean up the mess when their buggy as fuck DRM shits itself and dies, breaking shit all the way? Why don't YOU try cleaning up the mess that you get with Starforce+Safedisc+SecuROM, sometimes ending up with multiple versions of each because the older version refuses to hand off to the newer? Do you have ANY idea how many DVD and CD burners of customers I've had to shitcan because those stupid DRM schemas would throw a drive into PIO and the people wouldn't realize and bring it into to me until the motor had burnt? Oh and don't forget those lovely Sony rootkits that I STILL run into occasionally thanks to those "CDs" still floating around like the clap.

Sorry MR AC Troll, but there are plenty of us that buy our media that hate DRM with a passion. It is buggy, badly written, ALWAYS sucks up resources, will default on the side of SCREW YOU, but here is a guy (warning, language NSFW) who sums up better than I ever could why DRM is ultimately completely useless bullshit. And please not the HUGE PILES of legitimate media all around him, meaning that is THEIR CUSTOMER they are pissing on. Enjoy MR AC!

Blackbirds falling out of the sky! I thought only a few blackbirds were lost. But then I realised that they weren't talking about this kind of blackbird.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/866007/how_to_light_a_cigarette_with_batteries/

I don't know if you've heard of this website, it's kind of up and coming, called Google. You just type in something you don't know, and in about 10 minutes, you'll know it.

as it turns out.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/607965/how_cold_a_car_can_handle/

the video's been on metacafe since 2007, and I'm pretty sure I learned this in school many years ago.

Again, wrong, and you're lying.

It has been tested billions of times over.
Coin flips are very fucking fair.

No one who claims to have shown it to be unfair has actually demonstrated a non-retarded method of testing their theory. All of their claims hinge on a faked flip - they toss the coin into the air and intentionally try to get it to flip an odd or even number of times. A regular coin toss looks like this http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1700843/coin_flipped_in_slow_motion/ . You can both see and hear it flip in the air. The morons who claim coin flips are unfair are intentionally throwing (instead of flipping) the coin in the air - the coin doesn't actually flip quickly, it mostly wobbles and gets a few flips, which you can control fairly reliably with your toss strength.

Maybe next time you'll shut up instead of spewing bullshit you know nothing about. (I doubt it.)