I only pirate games I am unsure about (especially since most games no longer come with a demo, but even if they do I usually still will pirate). I will play the pirated copy for ~1 hour or so and uninstall. If I enjoyed the 1 hour it and think it is worth my money, I will buy it. If I am still iffy, I will perhaps wait a couple months until Steam has a 50 or 75% off sale and buy it then if I still care.
Have they lost any sales on me? Perhaps, because maybe a game that I thought originally looked cool from gameplay videos but after played for an hour I found stupid I may have bought it without playing it. (Deadpool comes to mind as the last one that fell into this category). However there have also been quite a few games where I originally would have given a pass, but pirated, enjoyed it, and ended up buying it (Dishonored, Dark Souls).
Before I used this system I was getting burned on buying too many games that were shit, but also passing up on a lot of games that ended up being good (sure perhaps I later bought on steam sale, but they would have made more money at release). I don't give a shit that it is "illegal", I have no moral issues using my above system. I am almost willing to bet that if I asked the publishers if they had a problem with me using my system that they would say no (except for publishers that constantly churn out shit games)
define "intrusive" I have had steam since steam beta (2003), I have about 150+ games on steam, I am almost on steam daily. Not once in these past 10 years have I ever had an issue with steams DRM (yes I have had issues with DRM that is layered overtop such as GFWL, but not steams itself).
I have only used offline mode once or twice a couple years ago so cannot comment on that.
I have gone through many computer rebuilds in the past 10 years, and steam just keeps on working. I can download games I purchased 8 years ago in 30 minutes, it would take me longer to dig out the DVD, try and find the key(assuming I haven't lost it), hook up my DVD drive (since I haven't used a DVD in like 5 years), and then installing it praying the DVD isn't scratched to shit causing it to become unreadable. . So with my experience I would actually say a game on a DVD is way more intrusive to me than steams DRM.
yeah at low graphics, I personally like to run everything on high, which means I generally upgrade ram and GPU every 2 years (although maybe I won't need to do ram every 2 years anymore), and a full system rebuild every 4.
depends if you know absolutely NOTHING about hardware, yeah you will probably need to spend a week researching and probably even consulting friends or people on a forum. If you know even a little about hardware (say you swapped a video card in the past) the time could drop to a day. If you specced out a computer in the past, most you would be looking at is a couple of hours as you just need to catch up on sockets and video cards and bang for the buck range.
GP price points are right on for a bang for the buck system. Can definitely go cheaper but you will be upgrading sooner, but going more expensive won't extend shelf life enough (maybe 6 months) $230 for CPU (i5) $230 for GPU $120 mobo $80 PSU Ram used to be cheap and could get 8 gigs for $50 but price shot up, think closer to $80 now $80 case
SSD.. depends on what size you need. say a 120GB for $80ish or 256GB for $170 $70 for 1TB HDD
So yeah around $1100 give or take $200 depending on options gets you a great gaming rig that will play anything now and for next couple years (maybe not on ultra though). Like GP said, usually when you are upgrading your computer you don't need input devices or monitor
People who are pricing out 2k+ systems for gaming are nuts. If you have 2k to spend you are much better off spending 1k now, then building another computer 2 or 3 years from now for another 1k. The 1k computer you build in 3 years time would be at least double if not triple the speed (for gaming) of the 2k one you build now, or better yet just upgrade the video card in 2 years instead and spend only $250.
while it will be a blow to Waterloo Region economically, it will far be from a "Detroit" situation, we have many other local big tech companies such as Google, Christie Digital, Desire2Learn, Com DEV, Toyota, OpenText, and many others
I wonder what is going to happen to the 28 RIM buildings in waterloo region. Hopefully traffic will be better during rush hour. Still plenty of big tech companies in the region like opentext, google, desire2learn, com dev international, christie digital, toyota, and a few others.
I always laugh at this, "right to defend yourself" Defend yourself from what? I thought good ol' US OF A is the BEST PLACE ON THE PLANET if it is so great why do you need to defend yourself? Chances are if you need to defend yourself with guns, you are probably going to be killed anyways.
Why do you need automatic weapons to defend yourself, or hand guns. Whats wrong with just a.22 or shotgun? Canada even seems high at 30, but I bet at least 20 of those are hunters or farmers if not more. If you are just defending yourself, you don't need a concealable weapon.
except there are a few streaming radio stations available in Canada, such as rdio, and slacker, so it obviously can be done. Who knows what hopes they had to jump through to get in
I never used pandora since I am in canada (and no im not using a fucking proxy just for a radio station), but I just signed up with slacker last week and am thoroughly enjoying it.
wow that list is shit. Seriously scroll down the screen quickly and you can instantly tell which 2 are the US prisons, they don't even deserve to be on the list. Also that guy is horrible at writing, he wrote "worst prison" for every single one.
I guess perhaps it depends on the location. I know the hospital where I am is hit or miss, generally when you go it is between a 6-12 hour affair, however one time when I dislocated my toe there was literally no one in the waiting room and I was in and out in 30 minutes, perhaps cause I went in early morning at like 6 am.
Sort of, the major problem is that unless you actually have a major problem happening RIGHT NOW, it is tough to get care, and have to wait months for tests and test results. I had a friend who had a gallbladder issue, at the time it was n othing major, so he got tests, but had to wait months for them, after about a year he finally finished all of his tests and they realized it needed to be removed fairly quickly, they removed it within a month.
I have known people who flew down to the states to get care because it would have taken way too much time to get results here, so flew down to states, paid out of own pocket and had everything done in a couple days. Not to mention if you need to park, you are paying out of your ass. Having said that I do prefer our system.
You know, maybe it would be actually nice to list a few examples of the restrictions in the summary to see if I care to even read the article or not. (Yeah, yeah I know this is slashdot, who even reads the article.. even more reason to post examples)
not only minutes later, years later. I originally had my parrot when I lived with my parents, they had a bunch of cats. My bird would imitate the cats meowing. I moved out 4 years ago. He would meow for the first couple months but the completely stopped. 2 years later he started doing it again out of nowhere, he hasn't seen a cat in years
I like how they have an $80,000 option, and then want an additional $100 for shipping. Really we just gave you 80k and you want extra to ship it??
I think the crowd funding is great for projects where the person would have no way to fund the project on their own, but these private for profit businesses doing this is ridiculous, they want no risk but all the profit and glory.
I know double fine did it(I even supported it) but at least you can see where they are going with not going with a publisher
how is that shilling? The sad fact is, it is probably true. In a year or two from now this news story will most likely long be forgotten by the general public.
Yeah, and you know whats even more funny? That you are wearing a tinfoil hat. Even if for whatever reason NSA was obtaining your data (highly unlikely), do you think they would give 1 shit about it?
Maybe they need to follow the way games are going, have DLC, apps,etc Buy 1 bullet for $3 or 10 bullets for $20 You can rent a cartridge for $5 per week! Laser Scope is only $20 a day! Buy auto targeting app for 99 cents!
Or a starter bundle of 5 bullets, a cartridge for a week, and a night vision scope for $30 Don't forget about the leaderboards, kill more people than your friends! Make sure to link your twitter account so you can live tweet every kill, or post on the victims facebook wall "Haha you're dead bitch!"
I would say it could be pure coincidence if say you hit it 10 times out of 10. I find it hard to be a coincidence hitting it every single time over 100 tries. Like you, I do not believe the map-dowsers, and hey if I never seen it with my own eyes (many times) and some random dude with no credibility mentioned it on the internet I probably wouldn't believe it either.. I can only say what I witnessed with my own eyes and from what my father, grandfather, and aunts/uncles said.
Oh, and he could do it blindfolded to, we blindfolded him in the car (in a place he never was before), a few minutes before we arrived, he got out walked around until he found the best spot. We then moved him into another random location, unblindfolded him, and got him to do it like he normally did.. he ended up in the exact same spot.
It is not just a matter of the stick waving either, I can't remember exactly how it went, but something like how fast it waved determined how deep it was, and then how much up and down it went determined how much water there was (I may have it reversed)
OK maybe I worded it wrong, but God was his life, in everything he did, so like anonymous coward said, his word was his bond, he never cheated anyone, helped anyone who needed help, did a ton of charity work, etc
I was a skeptic to, but my grandfather was one (they called it water witching around here). There were a few locally, but my grandfather was the most known and best, everyone within a half hour radius would call my grandfather when they needed a well dug out (and this was 30+ years ago). He would use any standard stick that was laying around. He never charged the people money (people were a lot more neighborly back then instead of just looking out for themselves), so wasn't like he was out scamming them, very religious so not a liar.
Not once did he screw it up, he hit water every time. I was a skeptic to before I seen it, and it didn't seem like it would work for just anyone. I tried it along with a lot of my relatives, and it wouldn't do a thing, my one uncle it did it a bit.
It was funny one time this guy tried digging a well on his property twice kept getting dry, my grandfather went out and did the dowsing told him here this is where you got to dig(they guy didn't like my grandfather for some reason, and was a major skeptic), the guy ignored my grandfathers advice, dug up 3 more spots in the following 2 years, kept hitting dry again. Finally fed up he called my grandfather back to confirm the location, grandfather goes back, exact same spot detects water, guy digs there and sure enough hits water.
Um, ok so say you know a critical piece of information, you are refusing to give it up, they start torturing you, so you lie and tell them what they want to hear, they crosscheck it and realize you were lieing , not they torture you even worse. Maybe even threaten to kill your kids (say, 24 style), are you going to keep lieing? I know I would break really fast. Although I don't know what you would do in the position if you don't actually know something but they think you do.. that would suck
3 times in a year? Maybe you are part of the problem (obviously still people behind you fault, but you can have a part, such as breaking too fast/hard not signaling properly, etc)
Slashdot Mirror
I only pirate games I am unsure about (especially since most games no longer come with a demo, but even if they do I usually still will pirate). I will play the pirated copy for ~1 hour or so and uninstall. If I enjoyed the 1 hour it and think it is worth my money, I will buy it. If I am still iffy, I will perhaps wait a couple months until Steam has a 50 or 75% off sale and buy it then if I still care.
Have they lost any sales on me? Perhaps, because maybe a game that I thought originally looked cool from gameplay videos but after played for an hour I found stupid I may have bought it without playing it. (Deadpool comes to mind as the last one that fell into this category). However there have also been quite a few games where I originally would have given a pass, but pirated, enjoyed it, and ended up buying it (Dishonored, Dark Souls).
Before I used this system I was getting burned on buying too many games that were shit, but also passing up on a lot of games that ended up being good (sure perhaps I later bought on steam sale, but they would have made more money at release). I don't give a shit that it is "illegal", I have no moral issues using my above system. I am almost willing to bet that if I asked the publishers if they had a problem with me using my system that they would say no (except for publishers that constantly churn out shit games)
define "intrusive" I have had steam since steam beta (2003), I have about 150+ games on steam, I am almost on steam daily. Not once in these past 10 years have I ever had an issue with steams DRM (yes I have had issues with DRM that is layered overtop such as GFWL, but not steams itself).
I have only used offline mode once or twice a couple years ago so cannot comment on that.
I have gone through many computer rebuilds in the past 10 years, and steam just keeps on working. I can download games I purchased 8 years ago in 30 minutes, it would take me longer to dig out the DVD, try and find the key(assuming I haven't lost it), hook up my DVD drive (since I haven't used a DVD in like 5 years), and then installing it praying the DVD isn't scratched to shit causing it to become unreadable.
.
So with my experience I would actually say a game on a DVD is way more intrusive to me than steams DRM.
yeah at low graphics, I personally like to run everything on high, which means I generally upgrade ram and GPU every 2 years (although maybe I won't need to do ram every 2 years anymore), and a full system rebuild every 4.
depends if you know absolutely NOTHING about hardware, yeah you will probably need to spend a week researching and probably even consulting friends or people on a forum. If you know even a little about hardware (say you swapped a video card in the past) the time could drop to a day. If you specced out a computer in the past, most you would be looking at is a couple of hours as you just need to catch up on sockets and video cards and bang for the buck range.
.. depends on what size you need. say a 120GB for $80ish or 256GB for $170
GP price points are right on for a bang for the buck system. Can definitely go cheaper but you will be upgrading sooner, but going more expensive won't extend shelf life enough (maybe 6 months)
$230 for CPU (i5)
$230 for GPU
$120 mobo
$80 PSU
Ram used to be cheap and could get 8 gigs for $50 but price shot up, think closer to $80 now
$80 case
SSD
$70 for 1TB HDD
So yeah around $1100 give or take $200 depending on options gets you a great gaming rig that will play anything now and for next couple years (maybe not on ultra though). Like GP said, usually when you are upgrading your computer you don't need input devices or monitor
People who are pricing out 2k+ systems for gaming are nuts. If you have 2k to spend you are much better off spending 1k now, then building another computer 2 or 3 years from now for another 1k. The 1k computer you build in 3 years time would be at least double if not triple the speed (for gaming) of the 2k one you build now, or better yet just upgrade the video card in 2 years instead and spend only $250.
while it will be a blow to Waterloo Region economically, it will far be from a "Detroit" situation, we have many other local big tech companies such as Google, Christie Digital, Desire2Learn, Com DEV, Toyota, OpenText, and many others
I wonder what is going to happen to the 28 RIM buildings in waterloo region. Hopefully traffic will be better during rush hour. Still plenty of big tech companies in the region like opentext, google, desire2learn, com dev international, christie digital, toyota, and a few others.
I always laugh at this, "right to defend yourself" Defend yourself from what? I thought good ol' US OF A is the BEST PLACE ON THE PLANET if it is so great why do you need to defend yourself? Chances are if you need to defend yourself with guns, you are probably going to be killed anyways.
.22 or shotgun? Canada even seems high at 30, but I bet at least 20 of those are hunters or farmers if not more. If you are just defending yourself, you don't need a concealable weapon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
Why do you need automatic weapons to defend yourself, or hand guns. Whats wrong with just a
except there are a few streaming radio stations available in Canada, such as rdio, and slacker, so it obviously can be done. Who knows what hopes they had to jump through to get in
I never used pandora since I am in canada (and no im not using a fucking proxy just for a radio station), but I just signed up with slacker last week and am thoroughly enjoying it.
wow that list is shit. Seriously scroll down the screen quickly and you can instantly tell which 2 are the US prisons, they don't even deserve to be on the list.
Also that guy is horrible at writing, he wrote "worst prison" for every single one.
I guess perhaps it depends on the location. I know the hospital where I am is hit or miss, generally when you go it is between a 6-12 hour affair, however one time when I dislocated my toe there was literally no one in the waiting room and I was in and out in 30 minutes, perhaps cause I went in early morning at like 6 am.
Sort of, the major problem is that unless you actually have a major problem happening RIGHT NOW, it is tough to get care, and have to wait months for tests and test results. I had a friend who had a gallbladder issue, at the time it was n othing major, so he got tests, but had to wait months for them, after about a year he finally finished all of his tests and they realized it needed to be removed fairly quickly, they removed it within a month.
I have known people who flew down to the states to get care because it would have taken way too much time to get results here, so flew down to states, paid out of own pocket and had everything done in a couple days.
Not to mention if you need to park, you are paying out of your ass.
Having said that I do prefer our system.
You know, maybe it would be actually nice to list a few examples of the restrictions in the summary to see if I care to even read the article or not. (Yeah, yeah I know this is slashdot, who even reads the article.. even more reason to post examples)
not only minutes later, years later. I originally had my parrot when I lived with my parents, they had a bunch of cats. My bird would imitate the cats meowing. I moved out 4 years ago. He would meow for the first couple months but the completely stopped. 2 years later he started doing it again out of nowhere, he hasn't seen a cat in years
I like how they have an $80,000 option, and then want an additional $100 for shipping. Really we just gave you 80k and you want extra to ship it??
I think the crowd funding is great for projects where the person would have no way to fund the project on their own, but these private for profit businesses doing this is ridiculous, they want no risk but all the profit and glory.
I know double fine did it(I even supported it) but at least you can see where they are going with not going with a publisher
how is that shilling? The sad fact is, it is probably true. In a year or two from now this news story will most likely long be forgotten by the general public.
Yeah, and you know whats even more funny? That you are wearing a tinfoil hat. Even if for whatever reason NSA was obtaining your data (highly unlikely), do you think they would give 1 shit about it?
Maybe they need to follow the way games are going, have DLC, apps,etc
Buy 1 bullet for $3 or 10 bullets for $20
You can rent a cartridge for $5 per week!
Laser Scope is only $20 a day!
Buy auto targeting app for 99 cents!
Or a starter bundle of 5 bullets, a cartridge for a week, and a night vision scope for $30
Don't forget about the leaderboards, kill more people than your friends! Make sure to link your twitter account so you can live tweet every kill, or post on the victims facebook wall "Haha you're dead bitch!"
I would say it could be pure coincidence if say you hit it 10 times out of 10. I find it hard to be a coincidence hitting it every single time over 100 tries. Like you, I do not believe the map-dowsers, and hey if I never seen it with my own eyes (many times) and some random dude with no credibility mentioned it on the internet I probably wouldn't believe it either.. I can only say what I witnessed with my own eyes and from what my father, grandfather, and aunts/uncles said.
Oh, and he could do it blindfolded to, we blindfolded him in the car (in a place he never was before), a few minutes before we arrived, he got out walked around until he found the best spot. We then moved him into another random location, unblindfolded him, and got him to do it like he normally did.. he ended up in the exact same spot.
It is not just a matter of the stick waving either, I can't remember exactly how it went, but something like how fast it waved determined how deep it was, and then how much up and down it went determined how much water there was (I may have it reversed)
OK maybe I worded it wrong, but God was his life, in everything he did, so like anonymous coward said, his word was his bond, he never cheated anyone, helped anyone who needed help, did a ton of charity work, etc
Well, a still single bottle of water is much different than water flowing under the ground.
Well all they got to do is taking a meeting with the Firefox developers and it shouldn't be a problem
I was a skeptic to, but my grandfather was one (they called it water witching around here). There were a few locally, but my grandfather was the most known and best, everyone within a half hour radius would call my grandfather when they needed a well dug out (and this was 30+ years ago). He would use any standard stick that was laying around. He never charged the people money (people were a lot more neighborly back then instead of just looking out for themselves), so wasn't like he was out scamming them, very religious so not a liar.
Not once did he screw it up, he hit water every time. I was a skeptic to before I seen it, and it didn't seem like it would work for just anyone. I tried it along with a lot of my relatives, and it wouldn't do a thing, my one uncle it did it a bit.
It was funny one time this guy tried digging a well on his property twice kept getting dry, my grandfather went out and did the dowsing told him here this is where you got to dig(they guy didn't like my grandfather for some reason, and was a major skeptic), the guy ignored my grandfathers advice, dug up 3 more spots in the following 2 years, kept hitting dry again. Finally fed up he called my grandfather back to confirm the location, grandfather goes back, exact same spot detects water, guy digs there and sure enough hits water.
Um, ok so say you know a critical piece of information, you are refusing to give it up, they start torturing you, so you lie and tell them what they want to hear, they crosscheck it and realize you were lieing , not they torture you even worse. Maybe even threaten to kill your kids (say, 24 style), are you going to keep lieing? I know I would break really fast. Although I don't know what you would do in the position if you don't actually know something but they think you do.. that would suck
3 times in a year? Maybe you are part of the problem (obviously still people behind you fault, but you can have a part, such as breaking too fast/hard not signaling properly, etc)