The site states as little as 20 hours flight time required for a licence specific to this gizmo.
I don't think this will exactly hit the mass market anytime soon. But it would be bloody brilliant if it did. Living in a country that barely has a mile worth of straight road in total, it would absolutely slash travel time for longer trips.
If the vehicle itself eventually ends up priced for the average consumer, I'm sure the infrastructure and regulations would find a way to accommodate it in such a way that the entire time saved on the actual trip won't be lost in getting take off and landing permissions.
Meaningless without humans? It harbours millions of life forms. I'd say that has value in itself.
As for humans being the only ones able to define "having meaning"... Sure. But that doesn't magically make human beings have a positive impact on the planet's ecology, which was the topic at hand. It only makes us feel we have some right to be here.
We are just too far apart on this to do anything but keep parroting ourselves perpetually, I think.
I have a feeling I'm a "DRM = digital restrictions" type person while you are a "DRM = digital rights" one. That makes this akin to discussing religion. Nothing but a dead end.
If you feel the need, I'll respond to each of your points. But I think it's a bit of a waste of time for the both of us and it's better to agree to disagree.
Take your tinfoil hat of, would you? The "embedded DRM schemes" in Vista are the only way Microsoft can enable blu-ray and HD-DVD playback on Windows.
They could just bundle AnyDVD with it.
Joking aside, if Microsoft had made it clear from the start they had no intention of moulding their operating system according to the wishes of movie studios, then what? Perhaps we wouldn't have ended up with a system where the content providers get to tell you to buy a new TV. Or have the power to disable your player any time you insert a new movie.
As far as it not affecting you unless you go for Blu-ray, I disagree. You think redesigning the OS at that level was free? You think hardware support for it is free? You think doing everything they can to obfuscate and encrypt is a recipe for *less* bugs?
I'll concede that for the vast majority, the user experience will not be directly affected. But they certainly did pay good cash for that DRM. Which has only one possible noticeable effect, and that is to *prevent* you from viewing something you bought.
So WoWbabies can go play their little kiddie game all they like.
No worries. We'll be off enjoying other games while you fiddle with your MMO spreadsheet thinking it makes you somehow better than "the rest". This is a surprisingly common Eve attitude. Whereas, for the rest of us, Eve is rather transparent. The only reason there's a learning curve at all is that it's intentionally obtuse.
Saying Eve is for the intelligent is like making a VCR without a manual and no button labels and claiming intellect had anything to do with the trial and error it took to see which button does what. Perseverance, would be the word you're looking for, not intellect.
I should point out, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Eve (I have an over four year old character there myself). It is what CCP wanted it to be, a sandbox where the players create the game around themselves. But claiming Eve is some kind of "high IQ version of an MMO" is indicative of self esteem issues, not intellect.
Honestly, if you only played for "a little over two weeks" you didn't get to experience most of EVE.
That all depends on your perspective. I would say two weeks is more than enough to experience pretty much everything in Eve from a single-player point of view.
It's also enough to realize that roleplaying and taking part in the in-game politics, economics and wars is where the actual game is. Apart from a handful of missions there *is* no single-player game to speak of. What it is is a huge wonderful sandbox for the players to shape as they will.
Two weeks is plenty to realize this, and decide whether that seems like fun to you or not.
When I read someone describing Eve as "a very pretty spreadsheet", I couldn't have agreed more.
Not that I think there's anything wrong with Eve. It just isn't my cup of tea. But even so it's pretty enough that I have logged two months of subscription time since release. I'll probably make it a third month once ambulation arrives.
They went and region restricted it (at least on Steam) to ensure a large amount of people will still find it more convenient to pirate.
Some will always pirate, of course. Those are not the target audience. It's those that are on the fence about buying or not they need to provide the game to in an as easy and convenient fashion as possible. In that area... major fail.
Those terms, when first used in the context of the music industry, were much more powerful and helped the cause of those who were infringed upon.
According to wikipedia, the term was first used (in this context) in the 1600s with regards to violating a monopoly on publication of written works. Extending the term to cover unauthorized reproduction of current day media seems rather logical. If it's been used in this capacity for four hundred freakin years, it's a bit late to try to get it out of the dictionary.
My problem is that while copyright infringement is about taking something that is not yours, it is NOT about depriving someone else of something that is theirs.
I agree. Which is why calling it theft, or stealing, is wrong. Those words, by definition, requires the owner to be deprived of their property, and that is not an accurate description of downloading a piece of music or what have you. Which is why we point and laugh at the "you wouldn't steal a car" type propaganda on MTV and such.
However, calling it piracy is well within the established meaning of the word. Just like a fake Prada bag is called a knock-off in some areas, and a pirate-product elsewhere. Piracy does not imply "involving boats".
You're derailing from the point. Please explain to me how "Somali pirate attack on ship foiled" could be confused with software piracy.
As others have pointed out "piracy" has been used to describe copyright infringement like offences since before copyright was invented. There's virtually zero risk of ever getting the different usage areas of the term mixed up, so why the big controversy in geek-land? Absolutely everybody knows that when you pirate a song, you're making an illegal copy of it. You're not killing a hundred people and stealing their CD. Claiming the term vilifies computer users into something equivalent of mass murderers is ludicrous.
I dunno about the news around your parts, but I've never seen "piracy" used in the context of murder except when combined with boats on the other side of the planet.
Would I agree a greater degree of separation would be warranted if I lived in, say, Somalia? Yes. But I don't. Around here piracy = copying software or peddling in items with faked brands, unless accompanied by a picture of a boat and the name of another country in the headline.
There really isn't any possibility of getting the two confused. So I don't see the problem. I do see a problem using "theft" or "stealing", since those words do mean something else here.
It's time to stop fighting this. Nobody I know associates "pirating a game" with hijacking a boat. Besides, it's gone colloquial and is making it into the dictionaries.
piâ...raâ...cy â"noun, plural -cies.
1. practice of a pirate; robbery or illegal violence at sea.
2. the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.: The record industry is beset with piracy.
The "making illegal copies" definition is already in dictionaries. In many parts of the world, probably most, there's a much larger odds people will associate "pirates" with pimple faced teenagers than unwashed men with parrots on their shoulders.
Not to mention, it's a damn hassle typing "copyright infringer".
It's a matter of preference I guess. It's not small to me.
You have to manually type that password. The password field in Steam does not accept pasting. I found that out when I tried to use KeePass to fill it in for me in the past. I contacted support about it and it's as designed.
To be honest, I'd rather not play any Steam games at all if I had to jump through hoops like that, keeping track of dozens of login names. Just wouldn't be worth it.
But, yes, it should sort the danger of losing access to all games in one fell swoop. So for those that think it sounds like no chore at all, go for it:)
Note that I did say "apparently". That was meant to imply "someone said", not "I know for a fact". I saw it mentioned in a forum post relating to Left 4 Dead I believe.
I couldn't find the original forum post I read it in, but found this moderator comment related to GTA:
I don't see why you draw a comparison to MMOs. It's not in the same ballpark.
It is understood that no MMO will keep running forever. Those servers aren't an activation scheme. They are *the game*.
It is not understood that a single player game will refuse to run in ten years time (assuming you have the antiquated hardware and OS to run it still).
Anyways, I totally agree. I never buy an application anymore without first contacting the developers and asking them whether it has any kind of online activation scheme. It helps me avoid the trap, and it serves the dual purpose of informing them it cost them a sale.
Good luck re-using a serial for a different Steam account.
Sure, you could hunt around and find a physical copy and pray that serial isn't Steam-specific and actually works. But I guarantee you that even if it should work for COD4, the same will not be true for every title you have in Steam. If Valve cuts you off, you *will* be screwed.
If you think otherwise you don't grasp the DRM in Steam very well.
If you charge back you risk Valve shutting down your Steam account, apparently. The joys of someone else controlling access to games you've bought I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
The site states as little as 20 hours flight time required for a licence specific to this gizmo.
I don't think this will exactly hit the mass market anytime soon. But it would be bloody brilliant if it did. Living in a country that barely has a mile worth of straight road in total, it would absolutely slash travel time for longer trips.
If the vehicle itself eventually ends up priced for the average consumer, I'm sure the infrastructure and regulations would find a way to accommodate it in such a way that the entire time saved on the actual trip won't be lost in getting take off and landing permissions.
Considering the only ones caring about "the things humans do" are humans, we can pretty much rule any value in that out of the equation.
Nature, as we observe it, is a balancing act. A global civilization, by its very nature, cannot abide to this sense of equilibrium.
As I said elsewhere, that doesn't mean I vote for mass suicide. :P It's merely an observation.
That sounds an awful lot like religion.
Meaningless without humans? It harbours millions of life forms. I'd say that has value in itself.
As for humans being the only ones able to define "having meaning"... Sure. But that doesn't magically make human beings have a positive impact on the planet's ecology, which was the topic at hand. It only makes us feel we have some right to be here.
In fact, there are environmentalists who do claim they think the world would be better off without people
I don't see how anybody could seriously dispute that. And I'm not exactly an environmentalist.
We are just too far apart on this to do anything but keep parroting ourselves perpetually, I think.
I have a feeling I'm a "DRM = digital restrictions" type person while you are a "DRM = digital rights" one. That makes this akin to discussing religion. Nothing but a dead end.
If you feel the need, I'll respond to each of your points. But I think it's a bit of a waste of time for the both of us and it's better to agree to disagree.
Take your tinfoil hat of, would you? The "embedded DRM schemes" in Vista are the only way Microsoft can enable blu-ray and HD-DVD playback on Windows.
They could just bundle AnyDVD with it.
Joking aside, if Microsoft had made it clear from the start they had no intention of moulding their operating system according to the wishes of movie studios, then what? Perhaps we wouldn't have ended up with a system where the content providers get to tell you to buy a new TV. Or have the power to disable your player any time you insert a new movie.
As far as it not affecting you unless you go for Blu-ray, I disagree. You think redesigning the OS at that level was free? You think hardware support for it is free? You think doing everything they can to obfuscate and encrypt is a recipe for *less* bugs?
I'll concede that for the vast majority, the user experience will not be directly affected. But they certainly did pay good cash for that DRM. Which has only one possible noticeable effect, and that is to *prevent* you from viewing something you bought.
Cripes, it's as bad as DEFCON being held in fuck-me-its-hot August, where the traditional attire is all black.
Indeed. DEFCON is well known for having attendees that love the outdoors and are unable to operate AC units.
So WoWbabies can go play their little kiddie game all they like.
No worries. We'll be off enjoying other games while you fiddle with your MMO spreadsheet thinking it makes you somehow better than "the rest". This is a surprisingly common Eve attitude. Whereas, for the rest of us, Eve is rather transparent. The only reason there's a learning curve at all is that it's intentionally obtuse.
Saying Eve is for the intelligent is like making a VCR without a manual and no button labels and claiming intellect had anything to do with the trial and error it took to see which button does what. Perseverance, would be the word you're looking for, not intellect.
I should point out, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Eve (I have an over four year old character there myself). It is what CCP wanted it to be, a sandbox where the players create the game around themselves. But claiming Eve is some kind of "high IQ version of an MMO" is indicative of self esteem issues, not intellect.
Honestly, if you only played for "a little over two weeks" you didn't get to experience most of EVE.
That all depends on your perspective. I would say two weeks is more than enough to experience pretty much everything in Eve from a single-player point of view.
It's also enough to realize that roleplaying and taking part in the in-game politics, economics and wars is where the actual game is. Apart from a handful of missions there *is* no single-player game to speak of. What it is is a huge wonderful sandbox for the players to shape as they will.
Two weeks is plenty to realize this, and decide whether that seems like fun to you or not.
If only I had mod points.. Anyways.
When I read someone describing Eve as "a very pretty spreadsheet", I couldn't have agreed more.
Not that I think there's anything wrong with Eve. It just isn't my cup of tea. But even so it's pretty enough that I have logged two months of subscription time since release. I'll probably make it a third month once ambulation arrives.
No worries, they already thought of it.
They went and region restricted it (at least on Steam) to ensure a large amount of people will still find it more convenient to pirate.
Some will always pirate, of course. Those are not the target audience. It's those that are on the fence about buying or not they need to provide the game to in an as easy and convenient fashion as possible. In that area... major fail.
It's only a matter of time before this judge goes after Groenig for the murder of Itchy and Scratchy.
I've read that twice. And, if I were modding, I can't decide between funny and something less flattering. So I can't really respond.
But if funny was the intent, I like you.
If not, then apparently there are not one but two words you need to work on getting redefined in the dictionaries. Go lead!
Those terms, when first used in the context of the music industry, were much more powerful and helped the cause of those who were infringed upon.
According to wikipedia, the term was first used (in this context) in the 1600s with regards to violating a monopoly on publication of written works. Extending the term to cover unauthorized reproduction of current day media seems rather logical. If it's been used in this capacity for four hundred freakin years, it's a bit late to try to get it out of the dictionary.
My problem is that while copyright infringement is about taking something that is not yours, it is NOT about depriving someone else of something that is theirs.
I agree. Which is why calling it theft, or stealing, is wrong. Those words, by definition, requires the owner to be deprived of their property, and that is not an accurate description of downloading a piece of music or what have you. Which is why we point and laugh at the "you wouldn't steal a car" type propaganda on MTV and such.
However, calling it piracy is well within the established meaning of the word. Just like a fake Prada bag is called a knock-off in some areas, and a pirate-product elsewhere. Piracy does not imply "involving boats".
You're derailing from the point. Please explain to me how "Somali pirate attack on ship foiled" could be confused with software piracy.
As others have pointed out "piracy" has been used to describe copyright infringement like offences since before copyright was invented. There's virtually zero risk of ever getting the different usage areas of the term mixed up, so why the big controversy in geek-land? Absolutely everybody knows that when you pirate a song, you're making an illegal copy of it. You're not killing a hundred people and stealing their CD. Claiming the term vilifies computer users into something equivalent of mass murderers is ludicrous.
I dunno about the news around your parts, but I've never seen "piracy" used in the context of murder except when combined with boats on the other side of the planet.
Would I agree a greater degree of separation would be warranted if I lived in, say, Somalia? Yes. But I don't. Around here piracy = copying software or peddling in items with faked brands, unless accompanied by a picture of a boat and the name of another country in the headline.
There really isn't any possibility of getting the two confused. So I don't see the problem. I do see a problem using "theft" or "stealing", since those words do mean something else here.
It's time to stop fighting this. Nobody I know associates "pirating a game" with hijacking a boat. Besides, it's gone colloquial and is making it into the dictionaries.
piâ...raâ...cy
â"noun, plural -cies.
1. practice of a pirate; robbery or illegal violence at sea.
2. the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.: The record industry is beset with piracy.
The "making illegal copies" definition is already in dictionaries. In many parts of the world, probably most, there's a much larger odds people will associate "pirates" with pimple faced teenagers than unwashed men with parrots on their shoulders.
Not to mention, it's a damn hassle typing "copyright infringer".
They do it. It's confirmed several places in forums, including from moderators. Charge back = disabled SteamID.
I'm not about to move to the US and spend thousands of dollars to test the hypothesis that the courts would disapprove.
It's a matter of preference I guess. It's not small to me.
You have to manually type that password. The password field in Steam does not accept pasting. I found that out when I tried to use KeePass to fill it in for me in the past. I contacted support about it and it's as designed.
To be honest, I'd rather not play any Steam games at all if I had to jump through hoops like that, keeping track of dozens of login names. Just wouldn't be worth it.
But, yes, it should sort the danger of losing access to all games in one fell swoop. So for those that think it sounds like no chore at all, go for it :)
Note that I did say "apparently". That was meant to imply "someone said", not "I know for a fact". I saw it mentioned in a forum post relating to Left 4 Dead I believe.
I couldn't find the original forum post I read it in, but found this moderator comment related to GTA:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8603413&postcount=22
That would rather effectively undermine the whole convenience aspect that's the big selling point for accepting Steam's DRM in the first place though.
50+ games on 50+ separate logins? Sure, you could use the same password for all of them, but it'd still be an unbelievable hassle.
I don't see why you draw a comparison to MMOs. It's not in the same ballpark.
It is understood that no MMO will keep running forever. Those servers aren't an activation scheme. They are *the game*.
It is not understood that a single player game will refuse to run in ten years time (assuming you have the antiquated hardware and OS to run it still).
Anyways, I totally agree. I never buy an application anymore without first contacting the developers and asking them whether it has any kind of online activation scheme. It helps me avoid the trap, and it serves the dual purpose of informing them it cost them a sale.
Good luck re-using a serial for a different Steam account.
Sure, you could hunt around and find a physical copy and pray that serial isn't Steam-specific and actually works. But I guarantee you that even if it should work for COD4, the same will not be true for every title you have in Steam. If Valve cuts you off, you *will* be screwed.
If you think otherwise you don't grasp the DRM in Steam very well.
If you charge back you risk Valve shutting down your Steam account, apparently. The joys of someone else controlling access to games you've bought I guess.