I think it has more to do with the fact that a lot of voters (including the black and hispanic communities) have lost all faith/trust in what politicians say, that they pay no attention to their policies.
They instead now have something else that has piqued their interest; his ethnicity.
Hey, he's the new kid on the block, of course people are going to be interested.
I'm not saying DRM is a successful method of preventing piracy, but instead that it is a typical knee jerk reaction of (as you quite accurately, if cynically called them) retarded control-freak publishers who are freaking out and losing revenue through piracy.
On the other hand, how do you go about convincing dumbass board members and investors (who often only care about the bottom line) that you're not going to do anything about piracy, and that it won't hurt the bottom line to do so?
I can understand how piracy helps companies like microsoft, as all you're doing by pirating windows is increasing their market penetration, but how about small/medium sized developers who don't have the market power of say EA? How do they remain competitive if their already meagre sales (Troika or Majesco anyone?) are hammered by piracy?
I'm not saying the situation is awesome, but neither am I agreeing that this is something that we're not responsible for (as gamers who pirated).
I dunno, i'm still yet to personally see (or hear from my gaming circles) ANY horror stories of Steam. I like the fact that I don't need to keep my CDs or CD keys around, and can just format my computer, install Steam and presto! there are all my games. I find it incredibly convenient.
I DO instead have plenty of horror stories of that bloody retarded copy protection thing that came with the Race Driver series that completely b0rked my XP installation because I happened to be using Daemontools.
I honestly think Steam is the least evil of the copy protection schemes.
Lets face it, the reason the companies are employing DRM is because (most, not all) gamers fucked them over and forced their hand by just greedily pirating everything we could get out hands on. If no-one pirated games, there would be no business case for DRM.
What about Troika? Even after they went out of business the developers kept releasing patches for VTM.
It's very easy to beat the drum of 'ZOMFG we're all fucked', but there have been examples where even in dire circumstances a company (or rather, it's staff) did the honourable thing.
Aaah yes, the xkcd that made me stop reading xkcd.
As a chemist, i felt a bit upset at the elitist attitude of the comic, and no I do not think that biology is 'merely' applied chemistry, and therefore somehow less 'pure'.
Have you read TFA? These guys seem to have done this with reasonable scientific rigor:
Dr Sabine Begall and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen looked at thousands of images of cattle on Google Earth in Britain, Ireland, India and the USA. They also studied 3,000 deer in the Czech Republic. The deer tended to face north when resting or grazing.
No, I think the point is we have an active international community now (as opposed to 50 years ago), and if Tibet was left alone, that aforementioned international community would help/prod them to modernise in a slightly less forceful way.
Think of it as mentoring someone to better themselves at their own pace and discretion, as opposed to being forcefully kept as part of an empire they have little in common with, and being forced to do it China's way, which isn't the best way to do things in the first place.
Chinese domestic politics and policies remind me too much of Soviet Russia: Russia was fine to live in IF you embraced the Party's idea of the norm, but the moment you tried to step out of that norm (wanted to practice religion, read certain western books, listen to the Beatles, wear blue denim, embrace your non-Russian cultural identity) whammo! Off to Siberia/Uzbekistan/Tajikistan for you...
China seems to be trying too hard to fit the square peg of Tibet into the round hole of 'the Chinese way'.
I just think that this may cause more harm than good if people take the FSFs suggestions a little too literally and go to the Apple stores and start abusing staff (and probably customers who will get annoyed and start sticking up for the staff).
Also, targeting the little guy (the retail monkey) is mean, as it's like swearing at the call center staff for your pizza being late; counter productive and cunty.
If you really must protest, hassle the senior people at Apple, not the little guy who's there for a paycheck and little else.
Slashdot Mirror
BEST. ASCII. ART. EVER.
You can't be serious! That's not a 'technical issue', that's simple fricking primary school arithmetic! What line of work was this client in?
O_o
Good Riddance I say.
Most young Australians too.
I think it has more to do with the fact that a lot of voters (including the black and hispanic communities) have lost all faith/trust in what politicians say, that they pay no attention to their policies.
They instead now have something else that has piqued their interest; his ethnicity.
Hey, he's the new kid on the block, of course people are going to be interested.
Proof: he only lived 2 years after getting hitched.
But you can't refund retail PC games either (at EB or Game in Australia, where I shop), so for me the inability to refund is unavoidable either way.
Do you know the reason they don't let you refund PC games? You guessed it: piracy.
Console games on the other hand, are fine O_o.
I'm not saying DRM is a successful method of preventing piracy, but instead that it is a typical knee jerk reaction of (as you quite accurately, if cynically called them) retarded control-freak publishers who are freaking out and losing revenue through piracy.
On the other hand, how do you go about convincing dumbass board members and investors (who often only care about the bottom line) that you're not going to do anything about piracy, and that it won't hurt the bottom line to do so?
I can understand how piracy helps companies like microsoft, as all you're doing by pirating windows is increasing their market penetration, but how about small/medium sized developers who don't have the market power of say EA? How do they remain competitive if their already meagre sales (Troika or Majesco anyone?) are hammered by piracy?
I'm not saying the situation is awesome, but neither am I agreeing that this is something that we're not responsible for (as gamers who pirated).
I dunno, i'm still yet to personally see (or hear from my gaming circles) ANY horror stories of Steam. I like the fact that I don't need to keep my CDs or CD keys around, and can just format my computer, install Steam and presto! there are all my games. I find it incredibly convenient.
I DO instead have plenty of horror stories of that bloody retarded copy protection thing that came with the Race Driver series that completely b0rked my XP installation because I happened to be using Daemontools.
I honestly think Steam is the least evil of the copy protection schemes.
Lets face it, the reason the companies are employing DRM is because (most, not all) gamers fucked them over and forced their hand by just greedily pirating everything we could get out hands on. If no-one pirated games, there would be no business case for DRM.
You reap what you sow.
What about Troika? Even after they went out of business the developers kept releasing patches for VTM.
It's very easy to beat the drum of 'ZOMFG we're all fucked', but there have been examples where even in dire circumstances a company (or rather, it's staff) did the honourable thing.
Gotcha, thanks!
How so? I hope I'm not misrepresenting what we've done. I'm curious, have you gone to the site?
www.insecuritymovie.com
We've independently produced, shot and released a fully CC 3.0 feature film. A jab it certainly ain't :)
Thank you sir for those kind remarks :)
*hugs*
And that's why there's people smarter than you running businesses.
this is just a case of a disgruntled customer's remarks being taken WAY out of context.
touche :)
Actually Psychological Dependence (i.e. compulsive WOW playing) is generally considered to be a type of addiction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_dependence#Psychological_dependency
so it seems Hitler had some time travellers to aid in his fight against the jews leaving the country.
Oblig:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057701/
Aaah yes, the xkcd that made me stop reading xkcd.
As a chemist, i felt a bit upset at the elitist attitude of the comic, and no I do not think that biology is 'merely' applied chemistry, and therefore somehow less 'pure'.
Have you read TFA? These guys seem to have done this with reasonable scientific rigor:
Dr Sabine Begall and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen looked at thousands of images of cattle on Google Earth in Britain, Ireland, India and the USA. They also studied 3,000 deer in the Czech Republic. The deer tended to face north when resting or grazing.
Thank you so much, I had no idea this site existed!
So much nostalgia :')
No, I think the point is we have an active international community now (as opposed to 50 years ago), and if Tibet was left alone, that aforementioned international community would help/prod them to modernise in a slightly less forceful way.
Think of it as mentoring someone to better themselves at their own pace and discretion, as opposed to being forcefully kept as part of an empire they have little in common with, and being forced to do it China's way, which isn't the best way to do things in the first place.
Chinese domestic politics and policies remind me too much of Soviet Russia: Russia was fine to live in IF you embraced the Party's idea of the norm, but the moment you tried to step out of that norm (wanted to practice religion, read certain western books, listen to the Beatles, wear blue denim, embrace your non-Russian cultural identity) whammo! Off to Siberia/Uzbekistan/Tajikistan for you...
China seems to be trying too hard to fit the square peg of Tibet into the round hole of 'the Chinese way'.
I just think that this may cause more harm than good if people take the FSFs suggestions a little too literally and go to the Apple stores and start abusing staff (and probably customers who will get annoyed and start sticking up for the staff).
Also, targeting the little guy (the retail monkey) is mean, as it's like swearing at the call center staff for your pizza being late; counter productive and cunty.
If you really must protest, hassle the senior people at Apple, not the little guy who's there for a paycheck and little else.
I like the cut of your jib sonny ;)
Internet vigilanteism FTW :)
You might want to be careful though as what goes around comes around...