I think you underestimate the power of the music industry. They may not be worth quite as much as the tech industry, but they're still worth a ton and they were smart enough to lobby the politicians to be on their side (DMCA, **AA lawsuits, etc.) from the beginning. We should also hold accountable the people in the tech industry who supported them by coming up with these ridiculous DRM schemes in the first place and convincing the music/movie industries that they would be "unbreakable" when they know damn well there's no such thing. If the tech circle had held their ground in the first place and said "we can't create something that won't be broken, it's impossible" every time they approached them, I bet they would've given up long ago.
It's the end of the world as we know it! Yeeeeeah yeah yeah...something like that. It was only a matter of time. If it takes Steve Jobs to kick start an industry wide backlash against DRM, then so be it.
WTF is going on is that when you push A1, you physically get a Hershey chocolate bar. With electronic voting machines, you get nada. Zilch. Nothing. Diddly squat. Oh, except for a little screen that says you voted for Candidate A, but how do you know? You didn't mark off a piece of paper that can be verified by hand. Your vote is now a series of bits somewhere in the magical land of cyberspace. Electronic voting only works with a verifiable trail, and that basically defeats the purpose of the electoral system because your vote can now be checked and hence influenced. Give me our good old fashioned paper voting up here in Canada any day.
That is precisely what is happening. Blizzard didn't have the capital to develop a game like WOW on their own so they basically had to strike a deal with the devil in order for it to happen. Vivendi gets the majority of the profits, with comparatively little going back into Blizzard to fund further development of game content. Vivendi is a terrible publisher, everyone in the gaming community has heard nothing but bad things about them, much like EA.
Unfortunately, Banjo Hero won't be out for some time. According to the Guitar Hero II loading screens, their next project is 2008's Accordion Hero. Polka fanatics rejoice!
It's just a music/rhythm game! An extremely fun and well produced one, nonetheless. Seriously, these games are popular for a reason. It's a simple concept that anyone can grasp and become good at. It is FAR easier than actually becoming that good on a guitar, and that's precisely the reason it resonates with so many people. Easy to learn, hard to master, fun to play. And it's great fun with a group of people. Hell, I'm having a party with friends for the release of the second game because we all love it! Only one of us can actually play guitar, and it doesn't matter. This is just an extremely fun game that brings people together. Anyone who is a fan of music/rhythm games should absolutely pick it up.
People are complaining that Sony is basically pissing in the Kool-Aid and no matter what they do, everybody will still throw money at them (not disagreeing, just observing). The same thing happened with Nintendo back in the days of the NES and early SNES. In fact, they turned Sony down when they were developing the CD addon for the SNES back in the early 1990s, a decision that directly lead to Sony reworking that project as the original PlayStation console. Quite the reversal we've got going on here! Does this mean Sony is also in for a shock of some kind in the near future?
As long as the subscription fee stays the same regardless of whether you buy the expansion or not (and it does in every MMO I've ever seen), is the fact that you have to pay for it once even an issue? You spend way more money on monthly fees than you do on actually buying the game in the first place. That's where they make their money. You all know this as the razor/blades strategy: sell the razor cheap and make money selling the blades. The video game industry has been doing this since the glory days of Atari. Of course, this becomes a bigger issue if they're releasing, say, multiple expansion packs per year, but come on. This is Blizzard we're talking about! It may take 2 years to get an expansion, but at least it's a very significant upgrade.
The problem here is not necessarily the defamation and publishing falsehoods, but the impersonation of somebody else that I feel is the real concern. If the kids had simply made a post saying that their principal was a lesbian, this may not be true but it's ultimately less harmful that actually impersonating the person. Because they impersonated another person in order to defame them however, I feel strongly that they should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. I don't mind people saying bad things about me, but impersonation (and ultimately things like identify theft) make me boil over with moral outrage. Yet another reason why, as http://www.somethingawful.com/ so accurately states, "The Internet Makes You Stupid".
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Haven't they ever heard of encrypting your BitTorrent downloads?
I think you underestimate the power of the music industry. They may not be worth quite as much as the tech industry, but they're still worth a ton and they were smart enough to lobby the politicians to be on their side (DMCA, **AA lawsuits, etc.) from the beginning. We should also hold accountable the people in the tech industry who supported them by coming up with these ridiculous DRM schemes in the first place and convincing the music/movie industries that they would be "unbreakable" when they know damn well there's no such thing. If the tech circle had held their ground in the first place and said "we can't create something that won't be broken, it's impossible" every time they approached them, I bet they would've given up long ago.
It's the end of the world as we know it! Yeeeeeah yeah yeah...something like that. It was only a matter of time. If it takes Steve Jobs to kick start an industry wide backlash against DRM, then so be it.
Sony doing something idiotic? Naw...
WTF is going on is that when you push A1, you physically get a Hershey chocolate bar. With electronic voting machines, you get nada. Zilch. Nothing. Diddly squat. Oh, except for a little screen that says you voted for Candidate A, but how do you know? You didn't mark off a piece of paper that can be verified by hand. Your vote is now a series of bits somewhere in the magical land of cyberspace. Electronic voting only works with a verifiable trail, and that basically defeats the purpose of the electoral system because your vote can now be checked and hence influenced. Give me our good old fashioned paper voting up here in Canada any day.
That is precisely what is happening. Blizzard didn't have the capital to develop a game like WOW on their own so they basically had to strike a deal with the devil in order for it to happen. Vivendi gets the majority of the profits, with comparatively little going back into Blizzard to fund further development of game content. Vivendi is a terrible publisher, everyone in the gaming community has heard nothing but bad things about them, much like EA.
Unfortunately, Banjo Hero won't be out for some time. According to the Guitar Hero II loading screens, their next project is 2008's Accordion Hero. Polka fanatics rejoice!
It's just a music/rhythm game! An extremely fun and well produced one, nonetheless. Seriously, these games are popular for a reason. It's a simple concept that anyone can grasp and become good at. It is FAR easier than actually becoming that good on a guitar, and that's precisely the reason it resonates with so many people. Easy to learn, hard to master, fun to play. And it's great fun with a group of people. Hell, I'm having a party with friends for the release of the second game because we all love it! Only one of us can actually play guitar, and it doesn't matter. This is just an extremely fun game that brings people together. Anyone who is a fan of music/rhythm games should absolutely pick it up.
People are complaining that Sony is basically pissing in the Kool-Aid and no matter what they do, everybody will still throw money at them (not disagreeing, just observing). The same thing happened with Nintendo back in the days of the NES and early SNES. In fact, they turned Sony down when they were developing the CD addon for the SNES back in the early 1990s, a decision that directly lead to Sony reworking that project as the original PlayStation console. Quite the reversal we've got going on here! Does this mean Sony is also in for a shock of some kind in the near future?
As long as the subscription fee stays the same regardless of whether you buy the expansion or not (and it does in every MMO I've ever seen), is the fact that you have to pay for it once even an issue? You spend way more money on monthly fees than you do on actually buying the game in the first place. That's where they make their money. You all know this as the razor/blades strategy: sell the razor cheap and make money selling the blades. The video game industry has been doing this since the glory days of Atari. Of course, this becomes a bigger issue if they're releasing, say, multiple expansion packs per year, but come on. This is Blizzard we're talking about! It may take 2 years to get an expansion, but at least it's a very significant upgrade.
The problem here is not necessarily the defamation and publishing falsehoods, but the impersonation of somebody else that I feel is the real concern. If the kids had simply made a post saying that their principal was a lesbian, this may not be true but it's ultimately less harmful that actually impersonating the person. Because they impersonated another person in order to defame them however, I feel strongly that they should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. I don't mind people saying bad things about me, but impersonation (and ultimately things like identify theft) make me boil over with moral outrage. Yet another reason why, as http://www.somethingawful.com/ so accurately states, "The Internet Makes You Stupid".