Well, I wouldn't be surprised if MS was involved somehow, since this would certainly get Silverlight installed on a large number of systems. However, even movie execs aren't stupid enough to drop a profit generating customer.
Gamecube? Xbox? Though not released at that date but current gen wasn't all released at the same date either.
Yes, that was exactly my point. They were not released at the same time. The PS2 was released a good year before the Xbox and Gamecube (in the US). When the PS2 was released, its only competition was the Dreamcast. Obviously, I did not just completely forget about the Xbox or Gamecube...
They followed a similar strategy with the PS2 and are likely trying to recreate it. However, PS2's only competitor was the Dreamcast (which was no 360 in terms of sales), this time Sony came into a market with a clear leader already. Nonetheless, I still want one.
They did this same strategy with the PS2 and its emotion engine or whatever. I remember after about a year, hearing about how these first gen games still hadn't even used a good hunk of the PS2's power. Well, if you look at some of the games that came out over the next few years, I'd say they were right! And he is right, you are not really going to see a vast improvement in the games on the Xbox over the next years. Developers are already trying to max out the hardware. The PS3 may be tricky, but there is still huge room for improvement in games (and its not like they look bad already).
I agree. On a smaller scale, I had a roommate a while back who would download music through bittorrent non-stop. I mean, she was downloading faster than she could possibly listen to it. Because of this, I could never play multi-player games. We had an argument, and she felt justified because she was paying her part. In the end, we just got 2 internet connections (one through the phone, other through cable). But there is the problem. We were all paying less by sharing 1 line (split by 3), but she was using most of the bandwidth. Some people just can't share, I suppose, so we had to force her to get her own connection and pay more. How do you do that on a scale as large as an ISP without traffic shaping?
Well, at least MS is sending a clear message. If you want to interop with Windows in any way, you'll be violating a few patents. That's probably the main reason they provide no extra support for other file systems, or (historically) office formats. However, the fact that they're finally starting to act on this, really shows they're worried. Unfortunately, this lawsuit will probably go, mostly, undetected by the public. TomTom and MS will probably settle, resulting in TomTom paying some small licensing cost for 1 or 2 of the patents. I'm not really sure that MS would want this to actually go to court, since I think they just want to spread some fear about Linux, rather than risk losing. IMHO, I think MS should go after all the other software that supports MS Office documents next. That'll get the public's attention and hopefully speed up adoption of open formats.
Also TF2 runs just fine under current wine, in DX9 mode, if you disable GLSL.
I'll give it another go, but my last couple of experiences getting HL2 or any other source games installed, and Steam itself, on Wine was not spectacular. It also took a long time, just for it not to work. I just don't have the free time I once did a couple years ago =[
But... Q3A IS multiplayer.
Have you tried to play multiplayer Q3A recently? Not a lot of servers out there.
Luckily Id has a long history of Linux support and have stated that they are developing both Mac and Linux versions of Quake Live. They've even GPL'd the Quake III engine. It's why I buy every game they make.
Which is fantastic, by the way. I booted into Windows and tried to play TF2 the other day, after not playing or booting into Windows for several months. Between Windows updates, Steam updates, and then actually finding a server that would let me in, I was playing in about 1h 30m. I only wanted to play for 1h and it was now passed my bed time. My most played game is still Quake III Arena (Linux). Takes about 20 seconds from "hmm, I feel like playing a game for 20 minutes" to actually playing said game. If this can make that just as fast, but multiplayer, I'm sold.
They are already making huge amounts of profits. I think the music industry just feels that that is all the game is; music. For example, a warner exec said, "the amount being paid to the industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content that we own and control, is far too small." They don't want to just license their music to the game companies, they're pissed they're not producing and making the games themselves.
Of course it's different if you are one of those users that installs an operating system just for the purpose of playing with themes, etc but not doing any significant work.
Well, at least sh -c 'rm -rf/*' wouldn't kill most installs, as most people don't run as root. Would still be super annoying to reload user files from a back up though.
FTA: Only half the kids had representation. An appeal likely would've taken about as long as their sentences, but cost the parents a significant amount of money.
Prison is about more than just keeping threats away. They also act as deterrents for people not in prison, a source of retribution for the victims, and rehabilitation for the inmates. What he did was utterly despicable. The article said the average rate of sending youths to juvie was 1/10, and the judge was sending them at a rate of 2.5/10. That means approx. 3000 youths were sent to prison that should not have been. 3000 people had their lives affected by this. What's 3+ months of your childhood worth to you? Multiply that by 3000. The judges should be locked away for life.
Really? Ubuntu out-of-the-box has, basically, drop shadows, support for alpha channels in X, and some fancier close/open/minimize animations. I think what you are seeing is people who have went the whole way an enabled all the various plug-ins available. Most people don't actually do this. Even Vista really doesn't have much. Drop shadows, support for transparency, and some fancier animations on standard operations (close, min, etc.). The only really flashy thing it has is the side bar. I'm pretty sure that OS X is the same way. At the very least, they're close enough that "a lot less eye candy" must be hyperbole. Don't include people who add all the bells and whistles afterward, you can do that with a mac too.
I didn't realize we were a bunch of robots looking purely to optimize our efficiency. I like wobbly windows. Why? Because it looks cool. It's the same reason I pay more for clothes and my car. Now, I would still like to mention that Ubuntu does not come with wobbly Windows on by default. That is a feature you have to enable, which, judging from your post, I guess you did.
With the bread analogy, the other bakeries would sell their own bread (games), not the stale one. I'm saying don't buy Spore, not buy it from somewhere else. Use games in the Debian repository instead:) The only game I really play on my PC still is Neverwinter Nights (1). It just requires a CD key, has a native linux client, and is a lot of fun. The reason I get so worked up over people "cracking" their games, is that it makes the game seem better than it is. If someone is playing a DRM-laced game and it stops working, I don't want them to be like, "oh, I'll just apply this patch, et voila!" That masks the problem that the game is shit and is unplayable as it is. People should be getting pissed that they can't play their game, not annoyed that they have to crack it to play it.
But that's my point. Only EA sells Spore, so you have to decide if the DRM is worth playing Spore. EA is selling you Spore with DRM. They are not selling you Spore without DRM, so when you remove that DRM you are in fact violating the spirit of the agreement between you and EA. And it is an agreement, EA sold you the right to play Spore as they say, they did NOT sell you a copy of the game to do whatever you want with. Yes, DRM is shitty and it sucks you have to resort to stealing to play your game, but you should be insulted that EA has made you resort to stealing to play Spore, not mad at me for saying you stole.
You know you are getting DRM, and when has that ever been remotely unobtrusive. You know you are getting into something that will limit your use of the product in the future, sometimes severely, so you should not be suprised when it stops working or you can't play the game on occasion.
Two wrongs don't make a right. If you get screwed over by DRM, the ethical thing would be to learn your lesson, and don't buy games with DRM in the future. If someone sells you stale bread and tells you, "this bread is stale," then you don't like it because it is stale, it does not give you the right to go and steal some more bread. Toss it and buy your bread from someone who sells non-stale bread next time.
In no situation is it acceptable for the content owners to screw with something I paid for after the fact.
Ah, but you didn't pay for it. You paid for the right to very limited use of it. Seriously though, I agree with what you say.
The good thing is, customers hate piracy with a passion. One or two headlines like this will mostly go unnoticed, but it won't take much more for people to really start avoiding DRM encumbered games. It just takes one quality games producer to stop using DRM for the other producers to see a dip in their profits; and trust me, one will. They will see it as an in; a way to make their games better than the competition, by spending less no less! Amazon did it with their MP3 store, and forced a speed up of iTunes DRM-free adoption.
(Just posted above): Also, I work full-time and am in grad school, so I understand the stress issue. But to be fair to the nutritionist, I have heard many times that your psychological health (stress, depression, etc) plays an incredibly important role in your physical well being (and certainly your metabolism). It's also common knowledge for anyone who ever joined a weight-loss program (the kind that encourage proper eating, not fad diets) that eating too little will make your metabolism drop, causing you to actually gain weight. That's why they set your diet up so your caloric intake is just a little under what you need to maintain your weight. Anyways, stress aside, working full-time (programmer) and being in grad school, I still find time to work out 6-10h a week (which is also a great stress reducer by the way).
BMI basically provides a bit of context to your weight, not to your fitness level. Instead of just a singular weight measurement, it gives you a measurement that puts your weight in context with your age and height. Frankly, I'd rather someone say "my goal is to have a BMI of 25", rather than "I want to be 125lbs". Saying BMI is bad, is like saying weighing yourself is bad. Both measure the same thing, BMI just normalizes the weight among different heights/ages, which makes it a bit easier for a system like the Wii to use. Once you start really getting into fitness, then you stop measure your goals in terms of pounds or BMI, but everyone has to start somewhere.
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First of all, yes they are.
Touche. Considering the idiocy of the music industry, I suppose I really shouldn't expect much more from the movie industry.
Well, I wouldn't be surprised if MS was involved somehow, since this would certainly get Silverlight installed on a large number of systems. However, even movie execs aren't stupid enough to drop a profit generating customer.
Gamecube? Xbox? Though not released at that date but current gen wasn't all released at the same date either.
Yes, that was exactly my point. They were not released at the same time. The PS2 was released a good year before the Xbox and Gamecube (in the US). When the PS2 was released, its only competition was the Dreamcast. Obviously, I did not just completely forget about the Xbox or Gamecube...
They followed a similar strategy with the PS2 and are likely trying to recreate it. However, PS2's only competitor was the Dreamcast (which was no 360 in terms of sales), this time Sony came into a market with a clear leader already. Nonetheless, I still want one.
They did this same strategy with the PS2 and its emotion engine or whatever. I remember after about a year, hearing about how these first gen games still hadn't even used a good hunk of the PS2's power. Well, if you look at some of the games that came out over the next few years, I'd say they were right! And he is right, you are not really going to see a vast improvement in the games on the Xbox over the next years. Developers are already trying to max out the hardware. The PS3 may be tricky, but there is still huge room for improvement in games (and its not like they look bad already).
I agree. On a smaller scale, I had a roommate a while back who would download music through bittorrent non-stop. I mean, she was downloading faster than she could possibly listen to it. Because of this, I could never play multi-player games. We had an argument, and she felt justified because she was paying her part. In the end, we just got 2 internet connections (one through the phone, other through cable). But there is the problem. We were all paying less by sharing 1 line (split by 3), but she was using most of the bandwidth. Some people just can't share, I suppose, so we had to force her to get her own connection and pay more. How do you do that on a scale as large as an ISP without traffic shaping?
Well, at least MS is sending a clear message. If you want to interop with Windows in any way, you'll be violating a few patents. That's probably the main reason they provide no extra support for other file systems, or (historically) office formats. However, the fact that they're finally starting to act on this, really shows they're worried. Unfortunately, this lawsuit will probably go, mostly, undetected by the public. TomTom and MS will probably settle, resulting in TomTom paying some small licensing cost for 1 or 2 of the patents. I'm not really sure that MS would want this to actually go to court, since I think they just want to spread some fear about Linux, rather than risk losing. IMHO, I think MS should go after all the other software that supports MS Office documents next. That'll get the public's attention and hopefully speed up adoption of open formats.
Also TF2 runs just fine under current wine, in DX9 mode, if you disable GLSL.
I'll give it another go, but my last couple of experiences getting HL2 or any other source games installed, and Steam itself, on Wine was not spectacular. It also took a long time, just for it not to work. I just don't have the free time I once did a couple years ago =[
But... Q3A IS multiplayer.
Have you tried to play multiplayer Q3A recently? Not a lot of servers out there.
Luckily Id has a long history of Linux support and have stated that they are developing both Mac and Linux versions of Quake Live. They've even GPL'd the Quake III engine. It's why I buy every game they make.
Which is fantastic, by the way. I booted into Windows and tried to play TF2 the other day, after not playing or booting into Windows for several months. Between Windows updates, Steam updates, and then actually finding a server that would let me in, I was playing in about 1h 30m. I only wanted to play for 1h and it was now passed my bed time. My most played game is still Quake III Arena (Linux). Takes about 20 seconds from "hmm, I feel like playing a game for 20 minutes" to actually playing said game. If this can make that just as fast, but multiplayer, I'm sold.
They are already making huge amounts of profits. I think the music industry just feels that that is all the game is; music. For example, a warner exec said, "the amount being paid to the industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content that we own and control, is far too small." They don't want to just license their music to the game companies, they're pissed they're not producing and making the games themselves.
Of course it's different if you are one of those users that installs an operating system just for the purpose of playing with themes, etc but not doing any significant work.
However, you're a bit of a condescending prick.
Well, at least sh -c 'rm -rf /*' wouldn't kill most installs, as most people don't run as root. Would still be super annoying to reload user files from a back up though.
FTA: Only half the kids had representation. An appeal likely would've taken about as long as their sentences, but cost the parents a significant amount of money.
Prison is about more than just keeping threats away. They also act as deterrents for people not in prison, a source of retribution for the victims, and rehabilitation for the inmates. What he did was utterly despicable. The article said the average rate of sending youths to juvie was 1/10, and the judge was sending them at a rate of 2.5/10. That means approx. 3000 youths were sent to prison that should not have been. 3000 people had their lives affected by this. What's 3+ months of your childhood worth to you? Multiply that by 3000. The judges should be locked away for life.
What reasons did you have for choosing MS Silverlight over Adobe Flash? (I'm in a similar situation and would honestly like some help)
Really? Ubuntu out-of-the-box has, basically, drop shadows, support for alpha channels in X, and some fancier close/open/minimize animations. I think what you are seeing is people who have went the whole way an enabled all the various plug-ins available. Most people don't actually do this. Even Vista really doesn't have much. Drop shadows, support for transparency, and some fancier animations on standard operations (close, min, etc.). The only really flashy thing it has is the side bar. I'm pretty sure that OS X is the same way. At the very least, they're close enough that "a lot less eye candy" must be hyperbole. Don't include people who add all the bells and whistles afterward, you can do that with a mac too.
I didn't realize we were a bunch of robots looking purely to optimize our efficiency. I like wobbly windows. Why? Because it looks cool. It's the same reason I pay more for clothes and my car. Now, I would still like to mention that Ubuntu does not come with wobbly Windows on by default. That is a feature you have to enable, which, judging from your post, I guess you did.
With the bread analogy, the other bakeries would sell their own bread (games), not the stale one. I'm saying don't buy Spore, not buy it from somewhere else. Use games in the Debian repository instead :) The only game I really play on my PC still is Neverwinter Nights (1). It just requires a CD key, has a native linux client, and is a lot of fun. The reason I get so worked up over people "cracking" their games, is that it makes the game seem better than it is. If someone is playing a DRM-laced game and it stops working, I don't want them to be like, "oh, I'll just apply this patch, et voila!" That masks the problem that the game is shit and is unplayable as it is. People should be getting pissed that they can't play their game, not annoyed that they have to crack it to play it.
But that's my point. Only EA sells Spore, so you have to decide if the DRM is worth playing Spore. EA is selling you Spore with DRM. They are not selling you Spore without DRM, so when you remove that DRM you are in fact violating the spirit of the agreement between you and EA. And it is an agreement, EA sold you the right to play Spore as they say, they did NOT sell you a copy of the game to do whatever you want with. Yes, DRM is shitty and it sucks you have to resort to stealing to play your game, but you should be insulted that EA has made you resort to stealing to play Spore, not mad at me for saying you stole.
You know you are getting DRM, and when has that ever been remotely unobtrusive. You know you are getting into something that will limit your use of the product in the future, sometimes severely, so you should not be suprised when it stops working or you can't play the game on occasion.
Two wrongs don't make a right. If you get screwed over by DRM, the ethical thing would be to learn your lesson, and don't buy games with DRM in the future. If someone sells you stale bread and tells you, "this bread is stale," then you don't like it because it is stale, it does not give you the right to go and steal some more bread. Toss it and buy your bread from someone who sells non-stale bread next time.
In no situation is it acceptable for the content owners to screw with something I paid for after the fact.
Ah, but you didn't pay for it. You paid for the right to very limited use of it. Seriously though, I agree with what you say.
The good thing is, customers hate piracy with a passion. One or two headlines like this will mostly go unnoticed, but it won't take much more for people to really start avoiding DRM encumbered games. It just takes one quality games producer to stop using DRM for the other producers to see a dip in their profits; and trust me, one will. They will see it as an in; a way to make their games better than the competition, by spending less no less! Amazon did it with their MP3 store, and forced a speed up of iTunes DRM-free adoption.
(Just posted above): Also, I work full-time and am in grad school, so I understand the stress issue. But to be fair to the nutritionist, I have heard many times that your psychological health (stress, depression, etc) plays an incredibly important role in your physical well being (and certainly your metabolism). It's also common knowledge for anyone who ever joined a weight-loss program (the kind that encourage proper eating, not fad diets) that eating too little will make your metabolism drop, causing you to actually gain weight. That's why they set your diet up so your caloric intake is just a little under what you need to maintain your weight. Anyways, stress aside, working full-time (programmer) and being in grad school, I still find time to work out 6-10h a week (which is also a great stress reducer by the way).
BMI basically provides a bit of context to your weight, not to your fitness level. Instead of just a singular weight measurement, it gives you a measurement that puts your weight in context with your age and height. Frankly, I'd rather someone say "my goal is to have a BMI of 25", rather than "I want to be 125lbs". Saying BMI is bad, is like saying weighing yourself is bad. Both measure the same thing, BMI just normalizes the weight among different heights/ages, which makes it a bit easier for a system like the Wii to use. Once you start really getting into fitness, then you stop measure your goals in terms of pounds or BMI, but everyone has to start somewhere.