if you read the forum post that supposedly "ended" this "feature" youll notice that they didnt completely rule out doing it again in the future, they just understood they were going too fast and need to slow down/sweeten things a little, you WILL see this thing again eventually, mark my words
i also think most of you guys are missing the big picture here, moderation might be a good reason to *give out to the public* for this but it really makes little sense to roll out this kind of system for just that, too much cost, testing and backlash just for a "chance" to calm down trolls that have been there since ever
a more probable reason for this is to prepare the road for integration with other services (many of which require real names), never forget that bnet is turning into a store with starcraft2's release and as such it wants to be THE store, imagine being able to use facebook/twitter, pay your taxes and order your pizza without closing the bnet window, all while leaving activision-blizzard a nice cut of the transaction
They dont really have to go out of business to screw you over
Microsoft never went under yet they closed, what, 3 digital stores already ? screwing over everyone ?
Even too much success might put your steam games in danger, say for example someone like MS, EA, Ubisoft or Activision-Blizzard give up in their attempts of pushing their own digital stores and just buy Valve then merge it with their system closing steam and making steam2 or something
or maybe Valve decides to upgrade their servers and take down the oldest games for whatever reason (this happened to a lot of digital stores)
or the owner of a game license enters a legal battle with someone else and is forced to take down their catalog from steam, or just takes it down to sell them in their own digital store abortion exclusively
hell, what if say you bought something like GTA/BloodyMurder885/Rapelay in steam and then it gets banned in your country and Valve is forced to take it down without giving you any choice on the matter even you don't happen to live in that country but the servers are based there or the other way around (if it sounds far fetched, ask Australians about their game banning streaks)
what if one day someone like that fruity Apple dude or that creepy Activision dude becomes CEO of Valve and decides to start charging a fee to "keep your account working/services" meaning that theyll start holding your games for ransom ?
there is just so much that could happen because a physical copy of the game is not in your hands, you can dismiss the risk as low and i would understand that but never think its not there, not even for a second
so ? if they think it would be in their best interest they would make public all those naughty pictures retards post as "private" too
FB is not and has never been a safe box, they are not paying the storage and bandwidth out of the kindness of their hearts you know, nor should you expect them too, they will do whatever they think its the best move to make money/benefit themselves in some way just like any corporation
People need to understand once something hits the internet its out there, no privacy promise by a huge corporation (that probably owns the data once it hits its servers and gave it self the right to change policy whenever they want in the wall of text) is going to protect it.
The Cloud sound nice and all but the hype often forgets (intentionally ?) to make the dumb user aware of the consequences and dangers of putting something in a hard drive they cannot control
the PS3 remains "unhackable" not because of Karmic justice or amazing copy protection but because of 3 simple facts:
-the Xbox360 was released a year before the ps3, so it had 1 more year to be hacked and 1 more year to make its game library more appealing (increasing interest in hacking it)
-the PS3 had a pretty uninteresting game library up until about a year ago, the install base was also pretty low compared to the other consoles until recently
-the Blu-Ray is a pretty good anti-piracy tool, pirating a ps3 game means a huge download and needing an expensive BR burner with very expensive BR blank discs. Pirating a ps3 game costs... what... maybe 40~60 times more than pirating a xbox360 game ?
at least the last 2 facts mean lower demand which leads to lower supply, as the cost of pirating ps3 games gets lower demand will rise and hacks will appear
anyone knows how is TMP supposed to work ?, is it for identifying/coprocessing vista's useless encryption or is it supposed to encrypt downloaded media to tie it up to the box, the article doesn't really explain anything ?
these anti-piracy attempts are incredible stupid, the pc is not a closed box, ppl will reverse engineer the chip and make an emulator for it in like 2 months while it existence causes additional costs because of encryption licenses (that not only will not add additional value to the customer but will actually hurt him), and will cause things not to work with old computers (news flash, a huge user base keeps their box until they blow up or are unable to keep using it without an upgrade, which takes several years, in my country you can find ppl running pentium mmx and pentium2, they even install winxp on them and endure the painfully slow speed rather than upgrade)
you know, i remember walking down the street a few years ago and suddenly stopping in front of a newspaper stand, i just couldn't believe what i had just seen, a cover of a pc magazine with a pirate skull crossed off and a "the end of piracy" sign, it seems it had an article about ancient cd DRM, you know, those that were usually cracked before the actual game came out, after rofling for a few hours i kept walking, this article sound the same way.
"We regretfully inform you that using portable games or cellphones during the flight is forbidden and will be punished with extreme prejuice *points at the on-board security personel holding flails*, by the way, please note our new credit-card driven plane phone and gaming devices available in each seat for your convenience"
i dont think i'd even consider downloading anything with drm, but i have to say its nice to be able to watch the new heroes chapters online though the nbc site when i get a free hour in college, now if fox would just follow their example...
Slashdot Mirror
if you read the forum post that supposedly "ended" this "feature" youll notice that they didnt completely rule out doing it again in the future, they just understood they were going too fast and need to slow down/sweeten things a little, you WILL see this thing again eventually, mark my words
i also think most of you guys are missing the big picture here, moderation might be a good reason to *give out to the public* for this but it really makes little sense to roll out this kind of system for just that, too much cost, testing and backlash just for a "chance" to calm down trolls that have been there since ever
a more probable reason for this is to prepare the road for integration with other services (many of which require real names), never forget that bnet is turning into a store with starcraft2's release and as such it wants to be THE store, imagine being able to use facebook/twitter, pay your taxes and order your pizza without closing the bnet window, all while leaving activision-blizzard a nice cut of the transaction
They dont really have to go out of business to screw you over
Microsoft never went under yet they closed, what, 3 digital stores already ? screwing over everyone ?
Even too much success might put your steam games in danger, say for example someone like MS, EA, Ubisoft or Activision-Blizzard give up in their attempts of pushing their own digital stores and just buy Valve then merge it with their system closing steam and making steam2 or something
or maybe Valve decides to upgrade their servers and take down the oldest games for whatever reason (this happened to a lot of digital stores)
or the owner of a game license enters a legal battle with someone else and is forced to take down their catalog from steam, or just takes it down to sell them in their own digital store abortion exclusively
hell, what if say you bought something like GTA/BloodyMurder885/Rapelay in steam and then it gets banned in your country and Valve is forced to take it down without giving you any choice on the matter even you don't happen to live in that country but the servers are based there or the other way around (if it sounds far fetched, ask Australians about their game banning streaks)
what if one day someone like that fruity Apple dude or that creepy Activision dude becomes CEO of Valve and decides to start charging a fee to "keep your account working/services" meaning that theyll start holding your games for ransom ?
there is just so much that could happen because a physical copy of the game is not in your hands, you can dismiss the risk as low and i would understand that but never think its not there, not even for a second
as far as im aware you are forced to login to keep offline mode working every few weeks
so ? if they think it would be in their best interest they would make public all those naughty pictures retards post as "private" too
FB is not and has never been a safe box, they are not paying the storage and bandwidth out of the kindness of their hearts you know, nor should you expect them too, they will do whatever they think its the best move to make money/benefit themselves in some way just like any corporation
People need to understand once something hits the internet its out there, no privacy promise by a huge corporation (that probably owns the data once it hits its servers and gave it self the right to change policy whenever they want in the wall of text) is going to protect it.
The Cloud sound nice and all but the hype often forgets (intentionally ?) to make the dumb user aware of the consequences and dangers of putting something in a hard drive they cannot control
the PS3 remains "unhackable" not because of Karmic justice or amazing copy protection but because of 3 simple facts:
-the Xbox360 was released a year before the ps3, so it had 1 more year to be hacked and 1 more year to make its game library more appealing (increasing interest in hacking it)
-the PS3 had a pretty uninteresting game library up until about a year ago, the install base was also pretty low compared to the other consoles until recently
-the Blu-Ray is a pretty good anti-piracy tool, pirating a ps3 game means a huge download and needing an expensive BR burner with very expensive BR blank discs. Pirating a ps3 game costs... what... maybe 40~60 times more than pirating a xbox360 game ?
at least the last 2 facts mean lower demand which leads to lower supply, as the cost of pirating ps3 games gets lower demand will rise and hacks will appear
anyone knows how is TMP supposed to work ?, is it for identifying/coprocessing vista's useless encryption or is it supposed to encrypt downloaded media to tie it up to the box, the article doesn't really explain anything ? these anti-piracy attempts are incredible stupid, the pc is not a closed box, ppl will reverse engineer the chip and make an emulator for it in like 2 months while it existence causes additional costs because of encryption licenses (that not only will not add additional value to the customer but will actually hurt him), and will cause things not to work with old computers (news flash, a huge user base keeps their box until they blow up or are unable to keep using it without an upgrade, which takes several years, in my country you can find ppl running pentium mmx and pentium2, they even install winxp on them and endure the painfully slow speed rather than upgrade) you know, i remember walking down the street a few years ago and suddenly stopping in front of a newspaper stand, i just couldn't believe what i had just seen, a cover of a pc magazine with a pirate skull crossed off and a "the end of piracy" sign, it seems it had an article about ancient cd DRM, you know, those that were usually cracked before the actual game came out, after rofling for a few hours i kept walking, this article sound the same way.
"We regretfully inform you that using portable games or cellphones during the flight is forbidden and will be punished with extreme prejuice *points at the on-board security personel holding flails*, by the way, please note our new credit-card driven plane phone and gaming devices available in each seat for your convenience"
i dont think i'd even consider downloading anything with drm, but i have to say its nice to be able to watch the new heroes chapters online though the nbc site when i get a free hour in college, now if fox would just follow their example ...
one word : microwave