You aren't. You have to do the intro quests to get out into good old EPL, much less the wider world. Until you finish the final quest in the chain, for example, all the NPCs in your capital cities are unfriendly to you, and jeer at you, throw things at you, etc.
Fortunately, given how they implemented the starting area, it shouldn't be that bad. Crowded, but manageable.
For the trillionth time, copyright infringement != stealing.
Say it all you want, that won't make it true. Oh, sure, it differs from physical theft, but it's still theft, just a different kind than your more mundane theft. Murder someone with a gun or knife, and they're just as dead.
That's an excellent way to do it. Alternatively, if you don't want to drive their piracy figures up falsely (it'll just lead to more DRM, whatever the optimists might say), you could download a no-CD crack. Nothing wrong with that. I just don't think we should advocate stealing someone's product just because they made an otherwise good product undesirable.
I'm certainly not harming the creators in any way. I'm not stealing their bandwidth, packaging, or money any more than I would by simply ignoring the product.
The key is here. While everything you said in that point is true, you overlooked one crucial fact: the creators made their work available under certain terms, so that they could get a return from the work they put into making their game (or music, or movie... this applies to all creative works). By taking the work for free, you are effectively forcing the creator to work for you under your terms, not theirs, which is a gross violation of their rights. Also:
If you cannot demonstrate your point, then that is simply your personal ethical opinion.
All opinions of moral/ethical correctness are personal opinions, and can be debated until the end of time without reaching a firm conclusion. Why do you fault this particular judgement, when you could say the same thing about any evaluation of whether something is morally or ethically acceptable?
I agree that Stardock is doing things right, and I hope they do well. I never said that we should accept DRM in our products (unless it's the ideal, transparent, and extremely hypothetical sort that doesn't interfere with our use), I said that stealing the products is not the proper response.
The proper response is what you're doing: not buying from companies who try to screw over their customers, and buying from companies who treat their customers with respect.
I'm not talking about morally acceptable on the company's behalf. The choice presented was from the perspective of the consumer, so moral correctness is then from the consumer's perspective. Yes, the company did wrong, but that doesn't make doing wrong to them right.
If your morals permit stealing, then by all means, go ahead and call it morally acceptable. Most people find stealing morally unacceptable, so my statement would stand for them.
That's completely false. Pirating software is benefiting from the publisher/developer's work, without paying for it. Not buying it is simply avoiding it altogether. It's the "something for nothing" that is morally reprehensible.
So how would you handle a collaboration among a dozen or a thousand artists?
Then they all have a share in the copyright, and when the last share expires, the work is in the public domain.
And how would you handle the case of hiring a hit man to free the copyright in a work?
As it turns out, that's neatly covered by the laws against murder. In any case, once the artist is dead, there's no reason to keep the work under copyright, even if he was killed simply to free up the work. He's dead and it's a shame, but keeping his copyright going isn't going to help anyone.
This is also an extreme case, which isn't likely to happen.
As is forcing artists not to publish at all, which is what an overly broad definition of derivative work does.
I don't support copyright having a restriction on derivative works.
Sounds really dumb if you're thinking that your shoe is just talking to your iPod. That's not all that's happening.
While the shoe connects with the iPod to do data acquisition, and you can track your workout on the iPod, you can also share your workout stats with others, help build community, etc...
Irrelevant. Everyone brings this up when discussing intellectual property, but it's not important. You can make copies for free, but that's not the valuable part, so what does it matter? When you make copies of IP, you aren't depriving anyone of a physical copy, but you're ripping them off just the same, because you're not compensating them for their work.
No. What is being paid for is not the actual materials, it is the work which was put in to obtain those materials. Some guy worked for other people, which gave him money... he then traded his work (in the form of money) to a person with raw materials, and then formed those raw materials into a finished product. Obviously in a real situation there are many more hands, but in the end, they're all exchanging their labor.
Intellectual property is no different. The labor that was expended to compose a song has value, and it is that labor and creativity that we pay for. A lack of intellectual property is abhorrent, and robs artists of the means to be compensated for that work.
No, it doesn't. It makes him someone with sane views on art. This makes him rather different from many people on this site, who have insane views on art.
Art belongs to the artist who created it, for the lifetime of the artist. When the artist dies, then you can claim that his/her work belongs to the greater culture. Not before. Any less than that is infringing upon the artist's freedom, and is 100% unacceptable.
Sane life depends on free culture.
That's not true in the least. We get along just fine these days without forcing artists to make their work available to the public. Some do that, and that's great, I applaud them for their selfless contributions to our well-being. Others don't, and that's great too. They have to eat, just like me, and I have no issue with kicking back a little to enhance my quality of life. We have lots of great culture being developed RIGHT NOW, even though we don't engage in the deplorable practice of forcing artists to do certain things with their work.
Forcing artists to make their work free to all is basically one step shy of slavery. They do the work, it is under their terms that you benefit from their work. You don't get to dictate it to them.
I loved the demo, but Penny Arcade's review does make me leery. Then again, I've also harshly disagreed with Gabe and Tycho on games before, so I'll really need to see some other reviews before I make a call as to whether their complaints were merited.
What the hell are you even referencing in the game? I played the game through twice, and never saw anything like what you're describing.
This leads me to suspect you're really exaggerating, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt... if you can give us instructions on how to find the message you speak of in the game.
The moderators change from one day to the next, and meta-moderation works reasonably well at keeping things fair.
In theory, yes. In practice, I've been modded down left and right, on more than one occasion, just for saying something critical of Firefox.
it does not necessarily follow that Firefox suddenly sucks.
I never said Firefox sucked, I merely said that its lack of breaking up tabs into separate processes was unacceptable. I stand behind this statement, and it does not in any way impugn the rest of the browser.
I must not feed the trolls.
Not trolling, merely frustrated that when I express a viewpoint that is unpopular, my karma has to suffer for it (and indeed it has, because, solely due to yesterday's postings, my karma has gone from capped to "positive". The only one of my posts that was worth down-modding at all was the one you responded to, the rest was perfectly allowable discussion... but I got penalized for it. Bleah.). If I were trolling, I wouldn't very well bother responding to my critics, now would I? I'd just throw something juicy out there to stir people up, and be done with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Except the XP per level from 60 to 70 got halved, if not thirded. It's not 4-5 hours per level any more.
There are vast numbers of users who never seed at all...
On the Blizzard Downloader, you can't seed. It quits as soon as the patch is downloaded to run the patch.
but $800 on almost anything is a lot.
Over 3.5, almost 4, years? I think not. A decent salary around here is $35,000. So, when we do the math, $800/($35,000 * 3.5) = .0065 (rounded).
I really don't think that a half a percent of your income is "a lot" to spend on anything.
You aren't. You have to do the intro quests to get out into good old EPL, much less the wider world. Until you finish the final quest in the chain, for example, all the NPCs in your capital cities are unfriendly to you, and jeer at you, throw things at you, etc.
Fortunately, given how they implemented the starting area, it shouldn't be that bad. Crowded, but manageable.
I, for one, welcome our new meme-inserting overlords!
For the trillionth time, copyright infringement != stealing.
Say it all you want, that won't make it true. Oh, sure, it differs from physical theft, but it's still theft, just a different kind than your more mundane theft. Murder someone with a gun or knife, and they're just as dead.
That's an excellent way to do it. Alternatively, if you don't want to drive their piracy figures up falsely (it'll just lead to more DRM, whatever the optimists might say), you could download a no-CD crack. Nothing wrong with that. I just don't think we should advocate stealing someone's product just because they made an otherwise good product undesirable.
I'm certainly not harming the creators in any way. I'm not stealing their bandwidth, packaging, or money any more than I would by simply ignoring the product.
The key is here. While everything you said in that point is true, you overlooked one crucial fact: the creators made their work available under certain terms, so that they could get a return from the work they put into making their game (or music, or movie... this applies to all creative works). By taking the work for free, you are effectively forcing the creator to work for you under your terms, not theirs, which is a gross violation of their rights. Also:
If you cannot demonstrate your point, then that is simply your personal ethical opinion.
All opinions of moral/ethical correctness are personal opinions, and can be debated until the end of time without reaching a firm conclusion. Why do you fault this particular judgement, when you could say the same thing about any evaluation of whether something is morally or ethically acceptable?
I agree that Stardock is doing things right, and I hope they do well. I never said that we should accept DRM in our products (unless it's the ideal, transparent, and extremely hypothetical sort that doesn't interfere with our use), I said that stealing the products is not the proper response.
The proper response is what you're doing: not buying from companies who try to screw over their customers, and buying from companies who treat their customers with respect.
Thank you. Glad that someone else besides me gets it.
I'm not talking about morally acceptable on the company's behalf. The choice presented was from the perspective of the consumer, so moral correctness is then from the consumer's perspective. Yes, the company did wrong, but that doesn't make doing wrong to them right.
If your morals permit stealing, then by all means, go ahead and call it morally acceptable. Most people find stealing morally unacceptable, so my statement would stand for them.
That's completely false. Pirating software is benefiting from the publisher/developer's work, without paying for it. Not buying it is simply avoiding it altogether. It's the "something for nothing" that is morally reprehensible.
You forgot one feature:
Version 1.
-Is legally and morally acceptable.
Version 2.
-Is legally and morally unacceptable.
So how would you handle a collaboration among a dozen or a thousand artists?
Then they all have a share in the copyright, and when the last share expires, the work is in the public domain.
And how would you handle the case of hiring a hit man to free the copyright in a work?
As it turns out, that's neatly covered by the laws against murder. In any case, once the artist is dead, there's no reason to keep the work under copyright, even if he was killed simply to free up the work. He's dead and it's a shame, but keeping his copyright going isn't going to help anyone.
This is also an extreme case, which isn't likely to happen.
As is forcing artists not to publish at all, which is what an overly broad definition of derivative work does.
I don't support copyright having a restriction on derivative works.
Sounds really dumb if you're thinking that your shoe is just talking to your iPod. That's not all that's happening.
While the shoe connects with the iPod to do data acquisition, and you can track your workout on the iPod, you can also share your workout stats with others, help build community, etc...
Nah, still sounds dumb. ;)
Irrelevant. Everyone brings this up when discussing intellectual property, but it's not important. You can make copies for free, but that's not the valuable part, so what does it matter? When you make copies of IP, you aren't depriving anyone of a physical copy, but you're ripping them off just the same, because you're not compensating them for their work.
No. What is being paid for is not the actual materials, it is the work which was put in to obtain those materials. Some guy worked for other people, which gave him money... he then traded his work (in the form of money) to a person with raw materials, and then formed those raw materials into a finished product. Obviously in a real situation there are many more hands, but in the end, they're all exchanging their labor.
Intellectual property is no different. The labor that was expended to compose a song has value, and it is that labor and creativity that we pay for. A lack of intellectual property is abhorrent, and robs artists of the means to be compensated for that work.
Yes, it makes you a shill.
No, it doesn't. It makes him someone with sane views on art. This makes him rather different from many people on this site, who have insane views on art.
Art belongs to the artist who created it, for the lifetime of the artist. When the artist dies, then you can claim that his/her work belongs to the greater culture. Not before. Any less than that is infringing upon the artist's freedom, and is 100% unacceptable.
Sane life depends on free culture.
That's not true in the least. We get along just fine these days without forcing artists to make their work available to the public. Some do that, and that's great, I applaud them for their selfless contributions to our well-being. Others don't, and that's great too. They have to eat, just like me, and I have no issue with kicking back a little to enhance my quality of life. We have lots of great culture being developed RIGHT NOW, even though we don't engage in the deplorable practice of forcing artists to do certain things with their work.
Forcing artists to make their work free to all is basically one step shy of slavery. They do the work, it is under their terms that you benefit from their work. You don't get to dictate it to them.
He shouldn't have to.
Real specific, man. I read a whole bunch of those, which one was it?
I loved the demo, but Penny Arcade's review does make me leery. Then again, I've also harshly disagreed with Gabe and Tycho on games before, so I'll really need to see some other reviews before I make a call as to whether their complaints were merited.
Dude... Jedi Academy was only 5 years ago. I somehow sincerely doubt that LucasArts' staff has gone through that much turnover in the last 5 years.
What the hell are you even referencing in the game? I played the game through twice, and never saw anything like what you're describing.
This leads me to suspect you're really exaggerating, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt... if you can give us instructions on how to find the message you speak of in the game.
The moderators change from one day to the next, and meta-moderation works reasonably well at keeping things fair.
In theory, yes. In practice, I've been modded down left and right, on more than one occasion, just for saying something critical of Firefox.
it does not necessarily follow that Firefox suddenly sucks.
I never said Firefox sucked, I merely said that its lack of breaking up tabs into separate processes was unacceptable. I stand behind this statement, and it does not in any way impugn the rest of the browser.
I must not feed the trolls.
Not trolling, merely frustrated that when I express a viewpoint that is unpopular, my karma has to suffer for it (and indeed it has, because, solely due to yesterday's postings, my karma has gone from capped to "positive". The only one of my posts that was worth down-modding at all was the one you responded to, the rest was perfectly allowable discussion... but I got penalized for it. Bleah.). If I were trolling, I wouldn't very well bother responding to my critics, now would I? I'd just throw something juicy out there to stir people up, and be done with it.