We almost certainly would have had World War III by now if not for the existence of nuclear weapons. So the question isn't how much they have cost, but whether that cost has been worth it.
There was a booming market in VCDs with camera-recorded movies back in the last 90s. Low quality, low price, so ubiquitous that people didn't even know they were illegal. I don't see why they wouldn't just go back to that, China's too big to effectively police physically.
Dragon Age is only supposed to require a connection once, right after you bought the DLC. Once it has that confirmation you're supposed to able to play offline all you want. If that's not happening then you have a problem, it's not intended behavior. This FAQ might help.
I think the opposite is true; you need a quality game for this to work. There is a class of pirate who isn't going to buy anything, no matter what. He can be ignored for the purposes of this conversation. There is another class of pirate who regards torrents as a sort of extended demo program. These guys either buy games that turn out to be good, or at least they wouldn't object to that behavior even if they often never seem to get around to buying the game. That's the target here.
If you put out a game that is good enough right out of the box (or the original torrent in this case), and then issue compelling DLC they might well go ahead and purchase the DLC if that's easier than (or just as easy as) getting a torrent. A lot of these people aren't stealing for financial reasons; they're stealing because the pirated version of most games is actually superior in some way(s) to the retail version. DRM is removed, you don't need the CD in the drive, and it's convenient to acquire. If the DLC doesn't introduce any of those inconveniences, and if the button to buy it is right there on the launcher or even in-game (like in Dragon Age,) I bet there are in fact some pirates who are stealing the game but then buying DLC.
I don't think it's a solution; there is no solution to piracy unless your game was free of charge to begin with. However, I think it's a healthy attitude and I think it's a step in the right direction; instead of seeing piracy as this holy war to fight, approach it as a sales problem.
Anybody who responds with a LMGTFY link comes across as a smug douche. How about you just provide some relevant links on the nation instead?
Didn't he just provide you with an entire page of relevant links? If you're not willing to Google it yourself before asking, and you're not willing to click on a lmgtf link, what motivation could he possibly have to provide you more links to not click on?
The CIA has shown pretty conclusively over the last ten years or so that their intelligence presence on the ground in the Middle East is virtually nil. The facts that we didn't know conclusively about the WMDs in Iraq, don't know anything conclusive about a WMD program in Iran, haven't killed Osama bin Ladin, and most of the time have only a vague idea where he is all comes together to paint a pretty bleak picture from the CIA's point of view. Not only do they apparently not have journalists posing as spies, they don't appear to have spies at all. This hasn't stopped Iran worrying about it, though.
What war in the last 50 years has been worth dying in? In which conflict in the last 50 years has the existence of the US been utterly threatened?
What war has ever been, in and of itself, worth dying in? You're asking the wrong question. The question is whether there have been any causes worth dying for in the last 50 years, and that answer is always, always "yes" to someone. War is rarely fought for clearcut reasons such as survival. You haven't read your history very closely if you think relative security has a direct relation to peace.
Fallacious reasoning. We can do both. Do we want to pay for both? I think we should, given that the shitty little conflicts we've been in are largely driven by politicians attempting to appear as though they're hardasses at the expense of the working class.
That's only practical because we enjoy a significant technological edge over our enemies, mostly because we employ a far larger budget. I'm not sure it's safe to assume that will always be the case, though. The last part of your statement (about the politicians) is true, but that's always been the case. The vast majority of wars are not fought for objectively noble reasons; most of them are at some level affairs of vanity.
Blaming the soldiers for destructive and unconstitutional imperial military adventures is pretty misplaced. Quite a few people are in the military because they are poor and no other real reason, they didn't sign up specifically to be misused.
Re:People of ill repute diong thingfs of ill reput
on
Hackers vs. Phishers
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
People of ill repute do things of ill repute. Even to each other. Is anyone really surprised?
This is no different from a car thief stealing cars from another car thief, aside from it involving the internet (therefore probably making it newly patentable!) and perhaps a matter of scale.
I think the subtext here is that hackers aren't necessarily bad guys and so it's more like repo men stealing from car thieves, still not completely shocking but somewhat more interesting.
Here in the US, at least, folks seem pretty risk-averse.
I think here in the US, it is fashionable to appear risk-averse. People will say they worry about cancer from their cell phones but we have a nationwide obesity problem; since heart disease kills more Americans than cancer, and given that drugs are a multi-billion dollar industry, I'd say that's strong evidence that the stated concern is lip service.
I'll assume you're not familiar with WoW. A lot of his achievements and Feats of Strengths are dated 10/23/2008, which is the day that achievements went live. That means he was a completionist well before there were any achievements guiding him. He's also a very good player in a very good guild - a lot of those achievements are unreachable if you're not at least decent in PvP, and his raiding achievements are impossible without a world-class guild. Getting these achievements was something to do and he was dedicated about it, but that's not all he was playing for.
You're assuming the average voter would be aware of the situation. With the number of people who suddenly think that universal health care is Marxist simply because someone on TV said so, I have very little faith in people doing their own research. The vote could easily carry DRM if that's what the media wanted.
Isn't this inherent in the system? If you take x number of days to approve a patent and get another identical patent application in that same timeframe then decline both of them; problem solved. The only variable is an appropriate value for x. If nobody else tries to patent it, then perhaps it's not as obvious as you're saying.
I think a lot of people are confusing "hey I could have thought of that - if I had bothered - and put my money and time into it - and was maybe a little smarter," with "that's completely obvious."
I don't follow you. Your scenario sounds good for the few groundbreaking inventions out there, we get to see what he did and he gets to profit from it for a while, but what would the impetus be to develop innovations on existing inventions? Like the GP stated, the current patent system gives you a chance to recoup the cost of development before everyone swipes your "obvious" idea and puts it out at the same price, only without the pesky overhead of having actually thought of it themselves. A lot of things will seem obvious once I do all the engineering and testing and release the product, so why should I do that if my only guarantee is that you will follow my blueprint and profit off my work - not in addition to, but instead of, me?
What diagnosis is happening here? He didn't say anything about data interpretation, he's talking about data collection. Unless patients are changing their stories between interviews, there is no benefit to asking them where it hurts four times. Certainly if you have different clarifying questions so that you can make a diagnosis, ask away, but gathering the basic complaint four times does not sound useful to me, and likely doesn't inspire confidence in your patient at the very moment that they are putting all their trust in you.
There's even more to be said for well-written software. What your post boils down to is, "poorly written software will not work as advertised." You're not going to get much argument on that here. The problem with the article (and your conclusion) is that they implicitly assume that all computer-based solutions are equal in quality. Since that isn't true, the analysis is ignoring a crucial component.
Slashdot Mirror
We almost certainly would have had World War III by now if not for the existence of nuclear weapons. So the question isn't how much they have cost, but whether that cost has been worth it.
There was a booming market in VCDs with camera-recorded movies back in the last 90s. Low quality, low price, so ubiquitous that people didn't even know they were illegal. I don't see why they wouldn't just go back to that, China's too big to effectively police physically.
And where China goes, the West follows.
[Citation Needed]
Disregard above post. I am out of date. Sorry.
Dragon Age is only supposed to require a connection once, right after you bought the DLC. Once it has that confirmation you're supposed to able to play offline all you want. If that's not happening then you have a problem, it's not intended behavior. This FAQ might help.
I think the opposite is true; you need a quality game for this to work. There is a class of pirate who isn't going to buy anything, no matter what. He can be ignored for the purposes of this conversation. There is another class of pirate who regards torrents as a sort of extended demo program. These guys either buy games that turn out to be good, or at least they wouldn't object to that behavior even if they often never seem to get around to buying the game. That's the target here.
If you put out a game that is good enough right out of the box (or the original torrent in this case), and then issue compelling DLC they might well go ahead and purchase the DLC if that's easier than (or just as easy as) getting a torrent. A lot of these people aren't stealing for financial reasons; they're stealing because the pirated version of most games is actually superior in some way(s) to the retail version. DRM is removed, you don't need the CD in the drive, and it's convenient to acquire. If the DLC doesn't introduce any of those inconveniences, and if the button to buy it is right there on the launcher or even in-game (like in Dragon Age,) I bet there are in fact some pirates who are stealing the game but then buying DLC.
I don't think it's a solution; there is no solution to piracy unless your game was free of charge to begin with. However, I think it's a healthy attitude and I think it's a step in the right direction; instead of seeing piracy as this holy war to fight, approach it as a sales problem.
Eritrea
Anybody who responds with a LMGTFY link comes across as a smug douche. How about you just provide some relevant links on the nation instead?
Didn't he just provide you with an entire page of relevant links? If you're not willing to Google it yourself before asking, and you're not willing to click on a lmgtf link, what motivation could he possibly have to provide you more links to not click on?
The CIA has shown pretty conclusively over the last ten years or so that their intelligence presence on the ground in the Middle East is virtually nil. The facts that we didn't know conclusively about the WMDs in Iraq, don't know anything conclusive about a WMD program in Iran, haven't killed Osama bin Ladin, and most of the time have only a vague idea where he is all comes together to paint a pretty bleak picture from the CIA's point of view. Not only do they apparently not have journalists posing as spies, they don't appear to have spies at all. This hasn't stopped Iran worrying about it, though.
Protip: If a soldier sits up and says, "my turn," GET OUT OF THE WAY.
What war in the last 50 years has been worth dying in? In which conflict in the last 50 years has the existence of the US been utterly threatened?
What war has ever been, in and of itself, worth dying in? You're asking the wrong question. The question is whether there have been any causes worth dying for in the last 50 years, and that answer is always, always "yes" to someone. War is rarely fought for clearcut reasons such as survival. You haven't read your history very closely if you think relative security has a direct relation to peace.
Fallacious reasoning. We can do both. Do we want to pay for both? I think we should, given that the shitty little conflicts we've been in are largely driven by politicians attempting to appear as though they're hardasses at the expense of the working class.
That's only practical because we enjoy a significant technological edge over our enemies, mostly because we employ a far larger budget. I'm not sure it's safe to assume that will always be the case, though. The last part of your statement (about the politicians) is true, but that's always been the case. The vast majority of wars are not fought for objectively noble reasons; most of them are at some level affairs of vanity.
Blaming the soldiers for destructive and unconstitutional imperial military adventures is pretty misplaced. Quite a few people are in the military because they are poor and no other real reason, they didn't sign up specifically to be misused.
People of ill repute do things of ill repute. Even to each other. Is anyone really surprised?
This is no different from a car thief stealing cars from another car thief, aside from it involving the internet (therefore probably making it newly patentable!) and perhaps a matter of scale.
I think the subtext here is that hackers aren't necessarily bad guys and so it's more like repo men stealing from car thieves, still not completely shocking but somewhat more interesting.
Yes.
Here in the US, at least, folks seem pretty risk-averse.
I think here in the US, it is fashionable to appear risk-averse. People will say they worry about cancer from their cell phones but we have a nationwide obesity problem; since heart disease kills more Americans than cancer, and given that drugs are a multi-billion dollar industry, I'd say that's strong evidence that the stated concern is lip service.
I'll assume you're not familiar with WoW. A lot of his achievements and Feats of Strengths are dated 10/23/2008, which is the day that achievements went live. That means he was a completionist well before there were any achievements guiding him. He's also a very good player in a very good guild - a lot of those achievements are unreachable if you're not at least decent in PvP, and his raiding achievements are impossible without a world-class guild. Getting these achievements was something to do and he was dedicated about it, but that's not all he was playing for.
Perhaps he owns a company that sells blank DVDs.
Is making a backup merely legal, or is it expressed as a right? If the former, you're correct, but if it's the latter then DRM conflicts.
You're assuming the average voter would be aware of the situation. With the number of people who suddenly think that universal health care is Marxist simply because someone on TV said so, I have very little faith in people doing their own research. The vote could easily carry DRM if that's what the media wanted.
Isn't that what we said about Pirate Bay? Didn't those guys end up in jail without breaking any laws in their country?
Why not? The very first subway sign probably would have been.
Isn't this inherent in the system? If you take x number of days to approve a patent and get another identical patent application in that same timeframe then decline both of them; problem solved. The only variable is an appropriate value for x. If nobody else tries to patent it, then perhaps it's not as obvious as you're saying.
I think a lot of people are confusing "hey I could have thought of that - if I had bothered - and put my money and time into it - and was maybe a little smarter," with "that's completely obvious."
I don't follow you. Your scenario sounds good for the few groundbreaking inventions out there, we get to see what he did and he gets to profit from it for a while, but what would the impetus be to develop innovations on existing inventions? Like the GP stated, the current patent system gives you a chance to recoup the cost of development before everyone swipes your "obvious" idea and puts it out at the same price, only without the pesky overhead of having actually thought of it themselves. A lot of things will seem obvious once I do all the engineering and testing and release the product, so why should I do that if my only guarantee is that you will follow my blueprint and profit off my work - not in addition to, but instead of, me?
What diagnosis is happening here? He didn't say anything about data interpretation, he's talking about data collection. Unless patients are changing their stories between interviews, there is no benefit to asking them where it hurts four times. Certainly if you have different clarifying questions so that you can make a diagnosis, ask away, but gathering the basic complaint four times does not sound useful to me, and likely doesn't inspire confidence in your patient at the very moment that they are putting all their trust in you.
There's even more to be said for well-written software. What your post boils down to is, "poorly written software will not work as advertised." You're not going to get much argument on that here. The problem with the article (and your conclusion) is that they implicitly assume that all computer-based solutions are equal in quality. Since that isn't true, the analysis is ignoring a crucial component.
Short fight; the Crips are fantastic DPS but have terrible healers.