Which was my point exactly - you have bought the game so why should they give you anything more for free.
What I tried to say in addition to this was that if there is anything to complain about, it is that they sometimes give you the appearance of having bought an incomplete game, because they are leaving placeholders for the DLC in the original game. If anything should be changed at all, this particular practice should stop. The result of this would be that game companies can only add completely new content, not build on existing stuff. Because if they build on existing stuff, it looks like something was missing from the game before.
Personally, I am completely fine with DLC. But I agree with most people that having "half" a mage tower in oblivion only to add the rest in a DLC smells a bit fishy. I would rather have some other quest removed from the game, but have a completed mage tower instead. But the concept of DLC as such instead of expansion packs does not bother me at all.
You paid for the game with what's in it at the time of purchase. If you don't like it, don't buy it - you have plenty of opportunities to find out what is and is not included. If the developers want to sell you extra content, its still your choice to buy it or not. Whether they already had it finished earlier is of no importance.
Furthermore, even in oblivion, where they added some extra quest for the mage tower (never completed it, so don't know the details) there may have been a good reason to do as they did. What if they had already planned to add these extra quests as DLC, but they had not actually finished implementing them at time of release. If they didn't add the "locked room" in the tower at time of release, it would be very odd if it suddenly was there after installing the DLC. So they add the room in a locked state, making it possible to add the actual room in a DLC.
You may argue that they shouldn't modify existing quests in a DLC (or give the appearance of incompleteness) - but its your choice to buy it or not.
Of course, if every game developer starts doing it there is nothing left but to protest these things. But even then you should address the actual issue, not the symptoms.
Not to offend you, but I feel your view represents a wish for a nanny state, at least with regards to free speech. This view is even supported by law, as it is illegal to incite someone to commit a crime I believe. But I feel that this is wrong.
If I decide to act, either because I get paid, because I have heard a "hate speach" or for whatever reason - it is solely MY decision to break the law, and it should be solely MY responsibility if I commit a crime.
You cannot have two people responsible for the actions of one. Either the "inciter" is responsible, or we assume the "do-er" to be grown up enough to know what he is doing, and as such responsible. I can understand why one would feel that it is immoral to incite someone to commit a crime (esp. if it is murder), but still, it seems illogical to me that two people should be responsible for one crime (if they were not both performing it).*
Otherwise it is far too easy to label something as hate speech and shut people up.
* My reasoning here is similar to my reasoning as to why the RIAAs damages are excessive. They are assuming that each downloader is uploading to a lot of different people, say 100. Thus they have to pay 100 time the cost of the song. But if the RIAA were to catch ALL downloaders, they would receiver 100 time the TOTAL in damages. This is clearly unjust. Either they punish for uploading or for downloading, but they cannot punish for both.
I don't think it is right to hold the speaker responsible for other peoples actions - unless these other people are minors or mentally handicapped perhaps.
But for every grown up person we must assume that these people know the law, they know what is right and wrong, and they are capable of making their own decisions. After all, we let these people elect our government so it is clear the we have some assumptions about how much they know and how mature they are (regardless of how true this may for particular individuals).
I would therefore suggest that it is every persons own responsibility not to act against the law, even when inspired by "hate speech" and the like. You don't imprison the bartender who served you alcohol after you run somebody over while drunk-driving after all.
Free speech must be entirely unrestricted. Everybody is responsible for his own actions.
Actually, after having watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy-fD78zyvI I'm not so sure the parent is really a troll after all - although his "solution" probably isn't the right one:)
Open source website x is probably not very likely to infect my computer, especially as I run linux instead of windows. Nevertheless, a certain risk exists even then.
The main reason for being so 'paranoid' however is simply the experience of a webbrowser WITHOUT NoScript. Annoying popups and other malicious behavior more or less all the time. No thank you.
In case you didn't know, NoScript blocks ANYTHING by default, and it is up to you to decide whether you want to let the scripts on some website work or not. On todays internet that is not paranoia but common sense. And sometimes, as I pointed out in my previous post, it just won't be worth the hazzle to unblock a site. Again, this is not so much about paranoia, but about not being inconvenienced by a ton of scripts, flash and java that I didn't ask for.
... A quick glance of the source code should even fill you in.
This is slashdot. Trying to find out answers for yourself is forbidden;) Anyway, thank you for the explanation, I had considered that sourceforge could be a problem, I just didn't see how.
There is a difference between using JavaScript to enable spiffy features and having a website that won't even show the main content unless you enable JavaScript. As such the GPs opinion remains completely valid, if somewhat offensive.
And even on slashdot, I expect I can turn off JavaScript and mostly everything will keep working, only somewhat less convenient. In fact I will try that out in a moment.
The GPs insults notwithstanding, he does have a point. A web page as simple as yours does not require JavaScript. There are times when I decide that I just won't unblock a given website because it's not worth the hazzle and security risk. This is especially true if I'm not even allowed to get even a glimpse of the websites content before turning on JavaScript.
Of course, people like me and the GP are probably a minority, but still...
I would appreciate an explanation of how your site came about to require JavaScript, but I don't want to waste your time if you are as busy as you say you are.
In the end that doesn't change a thing. Sure you may have these resources a bit longer than you would otherwise, but at some point you are going to run dry. And then recycling is the only way to get more, which probably is going to cost a lot of energy.
Personally I believe the only way out is a situation where our energy demand has come down far enough to allow us to live only on renewable energy, and with enough energy to spare so that we can recycle rare materials as needed.
The biggest obstacle to that is the current population count on the globe. What we need is skynet. (Ok that last line was a joke, but still, one wonders...)
But if these people are wrong about a source and either falsely omit or falsely include one or more, you are just as screwed. If not even more.
I think on the whole you are no better off using wikipedia, unless you really trust the editors to know their stuff and not to be biased. And the way I know human nature, that's likely not the case for many of them (how many - I don't know).
To me wikipedia is a quick means to gather some info on a subject. If it's a slightly controversial subject I won't rely on it alone, but if it's trivial stuff, I don't care.
I sort of agree with your general message, but I would recommend not to write in such a hostile tone if you want people to listen. And you may think that your tone was not hostile, but thats the way it comes across.
Furthermore, you may want to think about whether most people really DO care about it as much as you think - they might not. Personally it bothers me as well, because as you said, the entire thing looks/feels artificial. But I still use ubuntu for its own merits.
Ok, so I reply to myself, but I am ill right now and find it hard to think properly.
Anyway, what I mean is that the last time I compared distros, ubuntu was the only one that tried not to get in the way. Ubuntu does not provide you a path to ALL the things you might want to do or configure, but instead it focuses on the most important core tasks and makes it straight-forward to do them.
SUSE/KDE try to give the user EVERYTHING they might ever want in the name of configurability, but they don't do it well. The 5 features I do want to configure drown in the sea of other useless junk that is also enabled or has some obscure default setting.
I find it far easier to start with an almost clean slate and add-in those five things myself instead of filtering out all the junk I don't need. Even if that means I have to install gnome-do myself, it ensures that I get exactly what I want.
As someone who has been switching distros like their underwear (i.e. regularly) because they each sucked, I beg to differ. Even now, SUSE Linux remains unusable to me due to their arcane menu and configuration systems. I far prefer ubuntus simplicitly - even though it is lacking in configurability in some areas, but that is nothing I can't do myself in the command line. (It sounds like a contradiction, I know. But this is how it appears to me)
For sheer "get-stuff-done" I still think ubuntu is King. But I must admit that I have not checked any other distro for more than a year, simply because I am satisfied with ubuntu.
That list shows a whole bunch of relatively trivial user interface changes, many of which could easily be achieved by third party add-ons for XP already e.g. launchy instead of new start menu).
Many of the changes are just arbitrary, and many are completely irrelevant to me - new media player (don't use it) etc... They complete whacked up the configuration part (LAN/IP settings), at least before SP1. Haven't tried it since.
At a quick glance I can find no major "killer" feature - just a bunch of minor changes. Out of these:
- 25% are nice and useful
- 25% I hate
- 25% Are complete useless to me (new fonts, media player, language support etc...)
- 25% are arbitrary interface changes
Wow, how awesome. Coupled with worse performance than XP, I think it is fair to say that, for me, Vista blows.
ahhh - here goes my eating-breakfast-and-relaxing time answering another huge post.
First I want to say thanks for actually answering in a reasonable fashion and not being above an indirect apology, or whatever it was.
1) Downloading is quite possible and easy as it is - even the majority of computer laymen can do it. Nevertheless the various artistic industries thrive. I think I have made my case quite clear, while I still don't see your arguments to support the idea that people aren't or won't be charitable enough.
2) You might be sort-of right about this point, yes. Given that your first statement is correct and people are "less charitable" than I think (or will become so) there may actually be some artists dropping out. But:
2.1) I still think people are charitable enough to prevent this for at least the majority of the best (or most popular) artists (see above point)
2.2) People just _might_ do something about it anyway - see all these "save my favorite TV-Show xyz" fundraisers.
2.3) Even IF this happens, after a couple of years (and this could be many years) people will notice and some compensation scheme will be worked out
3) I disagree - to be considered art it must have some intrinsic value (a certain quality if you want). Banging two rocks together for example is not art, anybody can do it. TO be art, it must be more than that.
3.2) Nevertheless , I think it is fair to say that whatever art is, if there is something only ten people in the entire world are willing to pay for, the artist should seek another occupation. I certainly don't intend to pay for it.
4) This would be too long a discussion, I don't want to touch this point in too great a detail. People already can download a lot, and they do indeed download a lot. Yes - the artists might actually get less money, but it would be a more fair amount of money. More fair because the money I don't have to spend on mainstream music which enough people are paying for already, I can instead spend on the more "indy" music and thus promote and encourage them to further success. I simply cannot pay for EVERYTHING that is out there - the alternative would be that I would only have access to the stuff I care absolutely most about. I don't think that that would be a better world.
I am not who/what you think I am, but yes, I do download. When I download something I like, I usually end up buying it sooner or later. And my threshold for buying is even lower if the product is "indy" rather than mainstream.
You never presented any counter-arguments to my statements, but merely dismissed them out of hand, sort of accusing me of being a pirate and just not wanting to pay for what I get.
I still remain convinced that if somebody really likes a given product, they will reward the artist. If there are not enough people there that do care, then I see little reason that the artist should be supported through marketing power, inflated prices and the likes. Why you think this is unfair, I don't understand.
About copyright: it was invented because people THINK that it encourages creativity. Nobody has ever proven that idea, AFAIK. I think these people are sorely mistaken, and the world would be far better off without copyright.
If there really is demand for the music, the artists will get their fair share of money for it.
If the artist would not get any money, he would stop making music and people would complain. Eventually they will figure out that there is no such thing as a free lunch and the artist should get some money, and everyone can be happy again.
If the artist produces only crap, he won't get any money, and thankfully he will stop making any more.
Now, will the (good) artist get as much money as he does nowadays? Most probably not. But he would get the exact market value of his music - and not be overpaid. This system would be far more fair to everyone.
Because it is completely impossible to have the dev-team crank out the demo AFTER the game has gone gold and the entire world is waiting for presses to finish and the CD's to be shipped?
Plenty of games have proven that it is possible to have a good demo that gives a good/correct/hones feel of the game and still keeps the player wanting more.
Oh my fucking god - it's people in the game industry thinking like you that get us these generic fucking bullshit games.
Several games have already proven that it can indeed be different. The best example I can think of right now is the old half-life, though there are others as well. I enjoyed half-life as much as I did, because it was so varied. There was a lot of variance in the enemies to fight, and the marines were really great to fight against. Sometimes you were mostly "exploring" this awesome and big scientific complex, with all sorts of odd machinery and stuff. And sometimes you had to solve neat puzzles that were not too contrived but still got you thinking (a bit). The weapons also were very varied and generally extremely "satisfying" to use.
Yes, there is the better weapon/harder enemies progression as well, but that is absolutely fucking not the only thing you can do to make a game fun. I enjoyed every single minute of the original half-life because it got me so immersed as there was always something new and fresh to it. The developers really did everything they could to keep the players interest focused.
It's possible, the developers just need to be aware of the fact that there ARE ways to keep the players interest, instead of stringing one section of bland hallway after another (I'm looking at you, F.E.A.R.)
Slashdot Mirror
Which was my point exactly - you have bought the game so why should they give you anything more for free.
What I tried to say in addition to this was that if there is anything to complain about, it is that they sometimes give you the appearance of having bought an incomplete game, because they are leaving placeholders for the DLC in the original game. If anything should be changed at all, this particular practice should stop. The result of this would be that game companies can only add completely new content, not build on existing stuff. Because if they build on existing stuff, it looks like something was missing from the game before.
Personally, I am completely fine with DLC. But I agree with most people that having "half" a mage tower in oblivion only to add the rest in a DLC smells a bit fishy. I would rather have some other quest removed from the game, but have a completed mage tower instead. But the concept of DLC as such instead of expansion packs does not bother me at all.
I disagree.
You paid for the game with what's in it at the time of purchase. If you don't like it, don't buy it - you have plenty of opportunities to find out what is and is not included. If the developers want to sell you extra content, its still your choice to buy it or not. Whether they already had it finished earlier is of no importance.
Furthermore, even in oblivion, where they added some extra quest for the mage tower (never completed it, so don't know the details) there may have been a good reason to do as they did. What if they had already planned to add these extra quests as DLC, but they had not actually finished implementing them at time of release. If they didn't add the "locked room" in the tower at time of release, it would be very odd if it suddenly was there after installing the DLC. So they add the room in a locked state, making it possible to add the actual room in a DLC.
You may argue that they shouldn't modify existing quests in a DLC (or give the appearance of incompleteness) - but its your choice to buy it or not.
Of course, if every game developer starts doing it there is nothing left but to protest these things. But even then you should address the actual issue, not the symptoms.
Not to offend you, but I feel your view represents a wish for a nanny state, at least with regards to free speech. This view is even supported by law, as it is illegal to incite someone to commit a crime I believe. But I feel that this is wrong.
If I decide to act, either because I get paid, because I have heard a "hate speach" or for whatever reason - it is solely MY decision to break the law, and it should be solely MY responsibility if I commit a crime.
You cannot have two people responsible for the actions of one. Either the "inciter" is responsible, or we assume the "do-er" to be grown up enough to know what he is doing, and as such responsible. I can understand why one would feel that it is immoral to incite someone to commit a crime (esp. if it is murder), but still, it seems illogical to me that two people should be responsible for one crime (if they were not both performing it).*
Otherwise it is far too easy to label something as hate speech and shut people up.
* My reasoning here is similar to my reasoning as to why the RIAAs damages are excessive. They are assuming that each downloader is uploading to a lot of different people, say 100. Thus they have to pay 100 time the cost of the song. But if the RIAA were to catch ALL downloaders, they would receiver 100 time the TOTAL in damages. This is clearly unjust. Either they punish for uploading or for downloading, but they cannot punish for both.
I don't think it is right to hold the speaker responsible for other peoples actions - unless these other people are minors or mentally handicapped perhaps.
But for every grown up person we must assume that these people know the law, they know what is right and wrong, and they are capable of making their own decisions. After all, we let these people elect our government so it is clear the we have some assumptions about how much they know and how mature they are (regardless of how true this may for particular individuals).
I would therefore suggest that it is every persons own responsibility not to act against the law, even when inspired by "hate speech" and the like. You don't imprison the bartender who served you alcohol after you run somebody over while drunk-driving after all.
Free speech must be entirely unrestricted. Everybody is responsible for his own actions.
Actually, after having watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy-fD78zyvI I'm not so sure the parent is really a troll after all - although his "solution" probably isn't the right one :)
Thank you. It is for well reasoned out comments like this that I do read slashdot. I think you are spot on. Too bad I don't have mod-points right now.
Open source website x is probably not very likely to infect my computer, especially as I run linux instead of windows. Nevertheless, a certain risk exists even then.
The main reason for being so 'paranoid' however is simply the experience of a webbrowser WITHOUT NoScript. Annoying popups and other malicious behavior more or less all the time. No thank you.
In case you didn't know, NoScript blocks ANYTHING by default, and it is up to you to decide whether you want to let the scripts on some website work or not. On todays internet that is not paranoia but common sense. And sometimes, as I pointed out in my previous post, it just won't be worth the hazzle to unblock a site. Again, this is not so much about paranoia, but about not being inconvenienced by a ton of scripts, flash and java that I didn't ask for.
... A quick glance of the source code should even fill you in.
This is slashdot. Trying to find out answers for yourself is forbidden ;) Anyway, thank you for the explanation, I had considered that sourceforge could be a problem, I just didn't see how.
There is a difference between using JavaScript to enable spiffy features and having a website that won't even show the main content unless you enable JavaScript. As such the GPs opinion remains completely valid, if somewhat offensive.
And even on slashdot, I expect I can turn off JavaScript and mostly everything will keep working, only somewhat less convenient. In fact I will try that out in a moment.
The GPs insults notwithstanding, he does have a point. A web page as simple as yours does not require JavaScript. There are times when I decide that I just won't unblock a given website because it's not worth the hazzle and security risk. This is especially true if I'm not even allowed to get even a glimpse of the websites content before turning on JavaScript.
Of course, people like me and the GP are probably a minority, but still...
I would appreciate an explanation of how your site came about to require JavaScript, but I don't want to waste your time if you are as busy as you say you are.
In the end that doesn't change a thing. Sure you may have these resources a bit longer than you would otherwise, but at some point you are going to run dry. And then recycling is the only way to get more, which probably is going to cost a lot of energy.
Personally I believe the only way out is a situation where our energy demand has come down far enough to allow us to live only on renewable energy, and with enough energy to spare so that we can recycle rare materials as needed.
The biggest obstacle to that is the current population count on the globe. What we need is skynet. (Ok that last line was a joke, but still, one wonders...)
But if these people are wrong about a source and either falsely omit or falsely include one or more, you are just as screwed. If not even more.
I think on the whole you are no better off using wikipedia, unless you really trust the editors to know their stuff and not to be biased. And the way I know human nature, that's likely not the case for many of them (how many - I don't know).
To me wikipedia is a quick means to gather some info on a subject. If it's a slightly controversial subject I won't rely on it alone, but if it's trivial stuff, I don't care.
I sort of agree with your general message, but I would recommend not to write in such a hostile tone if you want people to listen. And you may think that your tone was not hostile, but thats the way it comes across.
Furthermore, you may want to think about whether most people really DO care about it as much as you think - they might not. Personally it bothers me as well, because as you said, the entire thing looks/feels artificial. But I still use ubuntu for its own merits.
Best comment ever :D
(yeah yeah, it's offtopic, but I thoroughly enjoyed it)
Ok, so I reply to myself, but I am ill right now and find it hard to think properly.
Anyway, what I mean is that the last time I compared distros, ubuntu was the only one that tried not to get in the way. Ubuntu does not provide you a path to ALL the things you might want to do or configure, but instead it focuses on the most important core tasks and makes it straight-forward to do them.
SUSE/KDE try to give the user EVERYTHING they might ever want in the name of configurability, but they don't do it well. The 5 features I do want to configure drown in the sea of other useless junk that is also enabled or has some obscure default setting.
I find it far easier to start with an almost clean slate and add-in those five things myself instead of filtering out all the junk I don't need. Even if that means I have to install gnome-do myself, it ensures that I get exactly what I want.
As someone who has been switching distros like their underwear (i.e. regularly) because they each sucked, I beg to differ. Even now, SUSE Linux remains unusable to me due to their arcane menu and configuration systems. I far prefer ubuntus simplicitly - even though it is lacking in configurability in some areas, but that is nothing I can't do myself in the command line. (It sounds like a contradiction, I know. But this is how it appears to me)
For sheer "get-stuff-done" I still think ubuntu is King. But I must admit that I have not checked any other distro for more than a year, simply because I am satisfied with ubuntu.
Just because someone is a hypocrite doesn't mean they aren't right. Just thought I'd throw that out there...
That list shows a whole bunch of relatively trivial user interface changes, many of which could easily be achieved by third party add-ons for XP already e.g. launchy instead of new start menu).
Many of the changes are just arbitrary, and many are completely irrelevant to me - new media player (don't use it) etc... They complete whacked up the configuration part (LAN/IP settings), at least before SP1. Haven't tried it since.
At a quick glance I can find no major "killer" feature - just a bunch of minor changes. Out of these:
- 25% are nice and useful
- 25% I hate
- 25% Are complete useless to me (new fonts, media player, language support etc...)
- 25% are arbitrary interface changes
Wow, how awesome. Coupled with worse performance than XP, I think it is fair to say that, for me, Vista blows.
ahhh - here goes my eating-breakfast-and-relaxing time answering another huge post.
First I want to say thanks for actually answering in a reasonable fashion and not being above an indirect apology, or whatever it was.
1) Downloading is quite possible and easy as it is - even the majority of computer laymen can do it. Nevertheless the various artistic industries thrive. I think I have made my case quite clear, while I still don't see your arguments to support the idea that people aren't or won't be charitable enough.
2) You might be sort-of right about this point, yes. Given that your first statement is correct and people are "less charitable" than I think (or will become so) there may actually be some artists dropping out. But:
2.1) I still think people are charitable enough to prevent this for at least the majority of the best (or most popular) artists (see above point)
2.2) People just _might_ do something about it anyway - see all these "save my favorite TV-Show xyz" fundraisers.
2.3) Even IF this happens, after a couple of years (and this could be many years) people will notice and some compensation scheme will be worked out
3) I disagree - to be considered art it must have some intrinsic value (a certain quality if you want). Banging two rocks together for example is not art, anybody can do it. TO be art, it must be more than that.
3.2) Nevertheless , I think it is fair to say that whatever art is, if there is something only ten people in the entire world are willing to pay for, the artist should seek another occupation. I certainly don't intend to pay for it.
4) This would be too long a discussion, I don't want to touch this point in too great a detail. People already can download a lot, and they do indeed download a lot. Yes - the artists might actually get less money, but it would be a more fair amount of money. More fair because the money I don't have to spend on mainstream music which enough people are paying for already, I can instead spend on the more "indy" music and thus promote and encourage them to further success. I simply cannot pay for EVERYTHING that is out there - the alternative would be that I would only have access to the stuff I care absolutely most about. I don't think that that would be a better world.
Sorry, no time to respond to the rest.
I am not who/what you think I am, but yes, I do download. When I download something I like, I usually end up buying it sooner or later. And my threshold for buying is even lower if the product is "indy" rather than mainstream.
You never presented any counter-arguments to my statements, but merely dismissed them out of hand, sort of accusing me of being a pirate and just not wanting to pay for what I get.
I still remain convinced that if somebody really likes a given product, they will reward the artist. If there are not enough people there that do care, then I see little reason that the artist should be supported through marketing power, inflated prices and the likes. Why you think this is unfair, I don't understand.
About copyright: it was invented because people THINK that it encourages creativity. Nobody has ever proven that idea, AFAIK. I think these people are sorely mistaken, and the world would be far better off without copyright.
As a matter of fact, yes!
If there really is demand for the music, the artists will get their fair share of money for it.
If the artist would not get any money, he would stop making music and people would complain. Eventually they will figure out that there is no such thing as a free lunch and the artist should get some money, and everyone can be happy again.
If the artist produces only crap, he won't get any money, and thankfully he will stop making any more.
Now, will the (good) artist get as much money as he does nowadays? Most probably not. But he would get the exact market value of his music - and not be overpaid. This system would be far more fair to everyone.
Because it is completely impossible to have the dev-team crank out the demo AFTER the game has gone gold and the entire world is waiting for presses to finish and the CD's to be shipped? Plenty of games have proven that it is possible to have a good demo that gives a good/correct/hones feel of the game and still keeps the player wanting more.
Oh my fucking god - it's people in the game industry thinking like you that get us these generic fucking bullshit games.
Several games have already proven that it can indeed be different. The best example I can think of right now is the old half-life, though there are others as well. I enjoyed half-life as much as I did, because it was so varied. There was a lot of variance in the enemies to fight, and the marines were really great to fight against. Sometimes you were mostly "exploring" this awesome and big scientific complex, with all sorts of odd machinery and stuff. And sometimes you had to solve neat puzzles that were not too contrived but still got you thinking (a bit). The weapons also were very varied and generally extremely "satisfying" to use.
Yes, there is the better weapon/harder enemies progression as well, but that is absolutely fucking not the only thing you can do to make a game fun. I enjoyed every single minute of the original half-life because it got me so immersed as there was always something new and fresh to it. The developers really did everything they could to keep the players interest focused.
It's possible, the developers just need to be aware of the fact that there ARE ways to keep the players interest, instead of stringing one section of bland hallway after another (I'm looking at you, F.E.A.R.)
Not every one, but there's definitely too many of them.
I'm hoping they will get something done before christmas. Then I can get the shiny new toy and give mine away as a gift :D