Well, when I start watching a TV series or reading a book, if it is not bad (in that case I'll stop pretty soon) I want to see/read the end of the story, so even if the series declined in quality, if the quality did not become so bad as to be unwatchable, I'll watch it.
As for SG-1, I only did not like the Ori arc, which I though was a bit too much (so, people on Atlantis have problems with the Wraith, while people on Earth are fighting beings that are quite close to being gods; also, I was thinking that when they finally beat the Ori, they will have no enemies left that are powerful enough (more powerful than the Ori) and the show will end - it turns out I was right).
I know what the trigger was for me - it happened when I realized that instead of watching TV series at the TV schedule (didn't have a VCR at the time), with commercials and being behind by a few years I could just download the TV shows I want (or was it when I found out that Stargate SG-1 had 6 or 7 seasons and the TV station stopped showing it at season 4?).
If everyone does their own work well, it turns out efficient overall, if everyone does [everything] "decently" we end up with crap.
You should be able to do your work well and things related to it decently. If your specialty is programming, you also should be able to see that the PC does not turn on because the cable is unplugged. If you drive a car, you should also know how to change a tire or a battery - you may do it slower than a professional, but it will be faster than waiting for that professional to arrive.
A SWAT team member is unlikely to need to fly a plane, however, a pilot might be shot down and land in enemy territory, knowing how to defend himself outside of a plane should help.
A dedicated graphics processor will be faster than a general purpose processor. Yes, you could use an 8 core CPU for graphics, or you could use a 4 year old VGA. Guess which one is cheaper.
I don't really care about animated gif, but I do not like flash ads, they take up more space, more CPU cycles and load slow if I have a slow connection (my mobile for example).
Why can't you do the formatting in Mediawiki and then export to PDF?
Why would I want to stop using a program I already know how to use (enough for my needs anyway) and start using a program that I don't know how to use to achieve the same result (written document) that I could do with the first progam?
Word is a good text processor, at least for me. I can do whatever I need with it and have no problems.
Software has a lifecycle...
meaning instead of MS Word 2003 I should be using some program that needs 16 CPUs and 8GB of RAM to do exactly the same thing as MS Word (since I am happy with its features)?
I have and more than once. This happened to my friend too, he wanted to play TF2 for free (during the free weekend), but couln't download it. I suggested using torrents - the torrent finished before Steam started to download.
re-image from the closest image
There are ways to remove the notifications without reimaging.
I'd install IE8 anyway -- I'm a web developer.
Good for you. I am not and I usually use Opera and Firefox. I only use IE for those sites that do not work with other browsers (and some even have checks to see what you have, that includes windows update). For them, IE6 is good enough.
Again, YMMV, but I can't always find a torrent, especially of older stuff.
That's why I archive everything locally on DVDs and (now) tapes.
I don't mind DRM much if it works and if it benefits me on some level.
DRM does not provide any benefits. It's not called Digital Restrictions Management for nothing. Also, DRM does not work.
The fact that you can download the game from Steam (as an example) many times is not a feature of DRM, it's just the service that Valve provides. Torrents provide the same service but without DRM, so this must mean that "being able to download your game many times" can be done without "DRM".
DRM only tries to limit what you can do with the game/song/movie/whatever. It does not add any value to it. While CD keys can be tolerated, they do not add anything to the game.
And torrent sites full of games that are sold with DRM should be proof enough that DRM does not work, because its only purpose is to make it so that the torrent sites do not have the game.
The fob would be very expensive (you already said that). As for the instructions - if you can analyze the program on the PC, can analyze the data path to the fob you could determine what does the fob do and implement it in software for the PC or (if not possible) software for a microcontroller which you could plug in instead of the fob. Since games with the fob would be more expensive than the microcontroller, people would still pirate them.
Yes, I won't be able to crack it, but I also can't crack any of the current DRM. Soldering a MCU and programming it (or downloading a crack) on the other hand...
System Shock 2 works only on Win9x. I don't know if Steam does. I have built a PC that can run Win98 and play SS2 (keeping sold computer pats around is always good).
But who would make that investment? Probably nobody.
Why? If there was a game I (and my friends) liked but to get it we had to buy a single copy, we would just split the costs and buy a single copy for all of us, then we would make copies for each of us. At least that is what we did before high speed internet became available (but after I bought a cd burner).
Since then he doesn't buy new CDs, he learned it's easier to copy them from the net.
It's easy to copy audio CDs, really. Though I usually just copy them to wav files on my hard drive and record to CD if I need to. I can also record the CD to a cassette to listen in my car.
There is quite difference between game that you can copy without any trouble by normal cd-copy routine of your favorite burning software. And game that you simply can not copy without some net digging and without waiting for someone to crack it.
Yes, there is. Long time ago, I with my friends added up enough money to rent a game from a pirate game shop (at that time, legal games were not really available, so if I wanted to buy a game I bought a pirated one, I still have (almost) all of them), then we bought enough blank CDs and I (having a CD burner) copied the CD for my friends. We then brought the original back. Before I got the CD burner, we just bought the pirated CDs.
Now we no longer need to rent the game, we can just download it.
All you really need is to make it difficult enough to make sure game gets week or two of shelf life before pirates start to compete and difficult enough so that timmy, the clueless, will never really be able to give copy to his friend johny the clueless.
Maybe, but everybody I know knows how to download games or has a family member who knows and can download for them. So, it would be really nice if the companies removed DRM from their games after it is cracked, since it no longer serves any purpose.
Think of it as super short copyright: It only needs to last long enough to author to make money.
With this I can agree. I can wait for that game to be cracked, I am in no hurry.
Piracy may or may not be wrong, but it is not stealing.
Piracy is rampant and the majority of applications are a few dollars or less.
Are these applications comparable to the games, or are they just something like a text editor? You probably forgot the difference. While some people do not have enough money to buy a 50EUR game, they might buy the game for 10EUR, but maight not buy a smple application for 2EUR.
stealing from an insurance company because "no one got hurt."
Actually, the insurance company had some money before you stole it, now they don't.
And in this case, we all suffer with crappy DRM because piracy is so excessive.
No, we suffer DRM because the companies, that make it, lie. DRM is not uncrackable yet all DRM makers say that it is (well, you can't say "Hi, we want to sell you our product, it is a DRM system that can be cracked in about a week. It also screws up the PCs of your legit customers, while pirates won't have any problems with it.")
Once you take piracy out of the "huge corporation" setting, people need to realize their actions are destroying small companies, musicians, and artists.
How about I only pirate games from bug corporations, while not even looking at games from small developers. In this case, the small developers won't be hurt. And with musicians, I'll only pirate (and listen to) the musicians that are either dead or no longer perform. In that case nobody will be hurt.
Also, please keep in mind, if "x" isn't worth buying then you are taking the position it has no value. If it has no value, there is no reason to pirate it. None. Zero. If you are pirating "x", the fact you have done so immediately proves "x" has some value. If "x" has value, you should pay for it.
Too bad value isn't binary (either something has value or it doesn't). For me a game definitely has value, otherwise, as you are saying, I wouldn't even download it. And I want to pay for it. So how do I send 5 Euros to the developer (for a game that costs 50)?
Taking something which has value but did not pay for, is called stealing.
Nope, stealing is when you take something and it is no longer there (ah and you have to do without permission from the owner). With piracy, the game is still there. It is possible to steal bandwidth though (download and don't seed).
You turn on the headlights before starting to drive (at least in my country headlights must be on always, even in sunlight when you can't see if they are on). If it takes you a bit of time to find the "headlights" symbol on a button/lever well, it's a minor inconvenience. You adjust mirrors only sometimes.
Radio is not important.
However, you can usually sit in a car and drive it with only a short time needed to find all the important controls. Now imagine a car that's controlled by joystick. Or a car where all pedals are in different positions. Or a car, modified for the disabled, that has buttons on the steering wheel instead of pedals. You wouldn't be able to just sit in the car and drive it.
The same with programs. If I need to press Ctrl+B to make the selected text bold on one program and click a button on the toolbar in another (example from the top of my head) I may have trouble using one of the programs after I have used the other one for some time.
That network effect alone is what keeps people on Facebook, for example.
Don't use it, don't know.
A legit copy of a game means I can walk up to any PC, download the steam client, type my password, and download the game.
I found out that if I can find the gcfs of a game on some torrent, it will download faster that with steam ("Servers are too busy to handle your request"), I then copy the files to steamapps folder and update the game (it seems that updated get higher priority than downloads).
Legit copy of windows means I can keep doing Windows Updates for as long as they exist, without having to worry about something breaking.
Actually, WGA might find your version of Windows not "genuine" just because. It has happened before. Oh, and I can update my Windows (XP/2k3) without any problems. I just make sure that I don't install WGA notifications on XP (2k3 seems to not have it).
Add up the amount of time wasted by a pirate copy of Windows, multiply by your hourly rate, and compare to the price of a legit copy.
Let's see... Download doesn't count, since I would have to go to the store otherwise. Install is the same on both. Cracking is done by inserting a floppy (I don't use USB flash sticks, I do have a USB floppy drive though) and launching one file. It takes about 30 seconds including me having to find where did I put that USB floppy drive. The result - not much. Next is going to windowsupdate and disabling WGA and IE8 updates, since I would still have to go there to disable IE8, checking an additional checkbox takes about 10 seconds (I ave to find it first). The result - not much
Sum: not much + not much = way less that Windows cost.
A pirate copy means I can more easily play offline. That's it.
On the other hand, I helped my friend to hack his xbox360 (to do that he needed a special sata chip that one of my PCs had). When I said that this will void the warranty, he told me how much games cost and how much does the console cost. I realized then that if he plays about 10 pirated games, he will have saved enough money to buy a new xbox360 if this one breaks.
Actually, if they were selling a good and new game for $1 (old games do not count because I might have a pirated copy already) I would buy it, provided there is no DRM.
Also, I bought Audiosurf, but only after I downloaded and tried it out, so there.
There is. Put the only copy of in a safe and have armed security guard it. If you make the area secure enough, nobody will be able to copy whatever you have put in the safe.
I actually connected my CD drive to SCSI using a IDE-SCSI adapter. No, that was not to break Starforce, it's just that a single IDE port was used to connect a hard drive and a LS120 drive. But as I understand it, my setup would allow me to break Starforce without disconnecting the CD drive.
However, they are the same. The biggest difference in car controls that I have seen is automatic transmission vs manual. Everything else is the same, you can just get in the car and drive it.
Now compare KDE, Gnome, (whatever other GUI for Linux), Windows, MacOS. You can't just sit at the computer and start using it, you need to find how to use that GUI first (or if you want to compare command lines, compare Linux and DOS).
It would be nice if Linux had the same GUI as Windows (I don't care who made it, just that it looks almost the same).
Slashdot Mirror
And in my country (which is in the EU) we use L/100km.
No, in my country they did stop showing it. When I found out about SG-1 on the net, it was already a few years after I have seen the "last" episode.
Well, when I start watching a TV series or reading a book, if it is not bad (in that case I'll stop pretty soon) I want to see/read the end of the story, so even if the series declined in quality, if the quality did not become so bad as to be unwatchable, I'll watch it.
As for SG-1, I only did not like the Ori arc, which I though was a bit too much (so, people on Atlantis have problems with the Wraith, while people on Earth are fighting beings that are quite close to being gods; also, I was thinking that when they finally beat the Ori, they will have no enemies left that are powerful enough (more powerful than the Ori) and the show will end - it turns out I was right).
I don't remember what the trigger was
I know what the trigger was for me - it happened when I realized that instead of watching TV series at the TV schedule (didn't have a VCR at the time), with commercials and being behind by a few years I could just download the TV shows I want (or was it when I found out that Stargate SG-1 had 6 or 7 seasons and the TV station stopped showing it at season 4?).
If everyone does their own work well, it turns out efficient overall, if everyone does [everything] "decently" we end up with crap.
You should be able to do your work well and things related to it decently. If your specialty is programming, you also should be able to see that the PC does not turn on because the cable is unplugged. If you drive a car, you should also know how to change a tire or a battery - you may do it slower than a professional, but it will be faster than waiting for that professional to arrive.
A SWAT team member is unlikely to need to fly a plane, however, a pilot might be shot down and land in enemy territory, knowing how to defend himself outside of a plane should help.
A dedicated graphics processor will be faster than a general purpose processor. Yes, you could use an 8 core CPU for graphics, or you could use a 4 year old VGA. Guess which one is cheaper.
I don't really care about animated gif, but I do not like flash ads, they take up more space, more CPU cycles and load slow if I have a slow connection (my mobile for example).
But I really HATE ads with sound.
Why can't you do the formatting in Mediawiki and then export to PDF?
Why would I want to stop using a program I already know how to use (enough for my needs anyway) and start using a program that I don't know how to use to achieve the same result (written document) that I could do with the first progam?
Word is a good text processor, at least for me. I can do whatever I need with it and have no problems.
Software has a lifecycle...
meaning instead of MS Word 2003 I should be using some program that needs 16 CPUs and 8GB of RAM to do exactly the same thing as MS Word (since I am happy with its features)?
All that expensive equipment and then the result is compressed into a "near cd quality" 128kbps mp3 file...
Also, how an "audio quality hard disk" is different from a standard desktop or server HDD?
I can honestly say I've never seen that.
I have and more than once. This happened to my friend too, he wanted to play TF2 for free (during the free weekend), but couln't download it. I suggested using torrents - the torrent finished before Steam started to download.
re-image from the closest image
There are ways to remove the notifications without reimaging.
I'd install IE8 anyway -- I'm a web developer.
Good for you. I am not and I usually use Opera and Firefox. I only use IE for those sites that do not work with other browsers (and some even have checks to see what you have, that includes windows update). For them, IE6 is good enough.
Again, YMMV, but I can't always find a torrent, especially of older stuff.
That's why I archive everything locally on DVDs and (now) tapes.
I don't mind DRM much if it works and if it benefits me on some level.
DRM does not provide any benefits. It's not called Digital Restrictions Management for nothing.
Also, DRM does not work.
The fact that you can download the game from Steam (as an example) many times is not a feature of DRM, it's just the service that Valve provides. Torrents provide the same service but without DRM, so this must mean that "being able to download your game many times" can be done without "DRM".
DRM only tries to limit what you can do with the game/song/movie/whatever. It does not add any value to it. While CD keys can be tolerated, they do not add anything to the game.
And torrent sites full of games that are sold with DRM should be proof enough that DRM does not work, because its only purpose is to make it so that the torrent sites do not have the game.
The fob would be very expensive (you already said that). As for the instructions - if you can analyze the program on the PC, can analyze the data path to the fob you could determine what does the fob do and implement it in software for the PC or (if not possible) software for a microcontroller which you could plug in instead of the fob. Since games with the fob would be more expensive than the microcontroller, people would still pirate them.
Yes, I won't be able to crack it, but I also can't crack any of the current DRM. Soldering a MCU and programming it (or downloading a crack) on the other hand...
System Shock 2 works only on Win9x. I don't know if Steam does. I have built a PC that can run Win98 and play SS2 (keeping sold computer pats around is always good).
But who would make that investment? Probably nobody.
Why? If there was a game I (and my friends) liked but to get it we had to buy a single copy, we would just split the costs and buy a single copy for all of us, then we would make copies for each of us. At least that is what we did before high speed internet became available (but after I bought a cd burner).
Since then he doesn't buy new CDs, he learned it's easier to copy them from the net.
It's easy to copy audio CDs, really. Though I usually just copy them to wav files on my hard drive and record to CD if I need to. I can also record the CD to a cassette to listen in my car.
There is quite difference between game that you can copy without any trouble by normal cd-copy routine of your favorite burning software. And game that you simply can not copy without some net digging and without waiting for someone to crack it.
Yes, there is. Long time ago, I with my friends added up enough money to rent a game from a pirate game shop (at that time, legal games were not really available, so if I wanted to buy a game I bought a pirated one, I still have (almost) all of them), then we bought enough blank CDs and I (having a CD burner) copied the CD for my friends. We then brought the original back. Before I got the CD burner, we just bought the pirated CDs.
Now we no longer need to rent the game, we can just download it.
All you really need is to make it difficult enough to make sure game gets week or two of shelf life before pirates start to compete and difficult enough so that timmy, the clueless, will never really be able to give copy to his friend johny the clueless.
Maybe, but everybody I know knows how to download games or has a family member who knows and can download for them.
So, it would be really nice if the companies removed DRM from their games after it is cracked, since it no longer serves any purpose.
Think of it as super short copyright: It only needs to last long enough to author to make money.
With this I can agree. I can wait for that game to be cracked, I am in no hurry.
Piracy may or may not be wrong, but it is not stealing.
Piracy is rampant and the majority of applications are a few dollars or less.
Are these applications comparable to the games, or are they just something like a text editor? You probably forgot the difference. While some people do not have enough money to buy a 50EUR game, they might buy the game for 10EUR, but maight not buy a smple application for 2EUR.
stealing from an insurance company because "no one got hurt."
Actually, the insurance company had some money before you stole it, now they don't.
And in this case, we all suffer with crappy DRM because piracy is so excessive.
No, we suffer DRM because the companies, that make it, lie. DRM is not uncrackable yet all DRM makers say that it is (well, you can't say "Hi, we want to sell you our product, it is a DRM system that can be cracked in about a week. It also screws up the PCs of your legit customers, while pirates won't have any problems with it.")
Once you take piracy out of the "huge corporation" setting, people need to realize their actions are destroying small companies, musicians, and artists.
How about I only pirate games from bug corporations, while not even looking at games from small developers. In this case, the small developers won't be hurt. And with musicians, I'll only pirate (and listen to) the musicians that are either dead or no longer perform. In that case nobody will be hurt.
Also, please keep in mind, if "x" isn't worth buying then you are taking the position it has no value. If it has no value, there is no reason to pirate it. None. Zero. If you are pirating "x", the fact you have done so immediately proves "x" has some value. If "x" has value, you should pay for it.
Too bad value isn't binary (either something has value or it doesn't). For me a game definitely has value, otherwise, as you are saying, I wouldn't even download it. And I want to pay for it. So how do I send 5 Euros to the developer (for a game that costs 50)?
Taking something which has value but did not pay for, is called stealing.
Nope, stealing is when you take something and it is no longer there (ah and you have to do without permission from the owner). With piracy, the game is still there. It is possible to steal bandwidth though (download and don't seed).
You turn on the headlights before starting to drive (at least in my country headlights must be on always, even in sunlight when you can't see if they are on). If it takes you a bit of time to find the "headlights" symbol on a button/lever well, it's a minor inconvenience. You adjust mirrors only sometimes.
Radio is not important.
However, you can usually sit in a car and drive it with only a short time needed to find all the important controls.
Now imagine a car that's controlled by joystick. Or a car where all pedals are in different positions. Or a car, modified for the disabled, that has buttons on the steering wheel instead of pedals. You wouldn't be able to just sit in the car and drive it.
The same with programs. If I need to press Ctrl+B to make the selected text bold on one program and click a button on the toolbar in another (example from the top of my head) I may have trouble using one of the programs after I have used the other one for some time.
That network effect alone is what keeps people on Facebook, for example.
Don't use it, don't know.
A legit copy of a game means I can walk up to any PC, download the steam client, type my password, and download the game.
I found out that if I can find the gcfs of a game on some torrent, it will download faster that with steam ("Servers are too busy to handle your request"), I then copy the files to steamapps folder and update the game (it seems that updated get higher priority than downloads).
Legit copy of windows means I can keep doing Windows Updates for as long as they exist, without having to worry about something breaking.
Actually, WGA might find your version of Windows not "genuine" just because. It has happened before. Oh, and I can update my Windows (XP/2k3) without any problems. I just make sure that I don't install WGA notifications on XP (2k3 seems to not have it).
Add up the amount of time wasted by a pirate copy of Windows, multiply by your hourly rate, and compare to the price of a legit copy.
Let's see... Download doesn't count, since I would have to go to the store otherwise. Install is the same on both. Cracking is done by inserting a floppy (I don't use USB flash sticks, I do have a USB floppy drive though) and launching one file. It takes about 30 seconds including me having to find where did I put that USB floppy drive.
The result - not much.
Next is going to windowsupdate and disabling WGA and IE8 updates, since I would still have to go there to disable IE8, checking an additional checkbox takes about 10 seconds (I ave to find it first).
The result - not much
Sum: not much + not much = way less that Windows cost.
A pirate copy means I can more easily play offline. That's it.
For single player games this is desirable.
On the other hand, I helped my friend to hack his xbox360 (to do that he needed a special sata chip that one of my PCs had). When I said that this will void the warranty, he told me how much games cost and how much does the console cost. I realized then that if he plays about 10 pirated games, he will have saved enough money to buy a new xbox360 if this one breaks.
Actually, if they were selling a good and new game for $1 (old games do not count because I might have a pirated copy already) I would buy it, provided there is no DRM.
Also, I bought Audiosurf, but only after I downloaded and tried it out, so there.
There is. Put the only copy of in a safe and have armed security guard it. If you make the area secure enough, nobody will be able to copy whatever you have put in the safe.
I actually connected my CD drive to SCSI using a IDE-SCSI adapter. No, that was not to break Starforce, it's just that a single IDE port was used to connect a hard drive and a LS120 drive. But as I understand it, my setup would allow me to break Starforce without disconnecting the CD drive.
However, they are the same. The biggest difference in car controls that I have seen is automatic transmission vs manual. Everything else is the same, you can just get in the car and drive it.
Now compare KDE, Gnome, (whatever other GUI for Linux), Windows, MacOS. You can't just sit at the computer and start using it, you need to find how to use that GUI first (or if you want to compare command lines, compare Linux and DOS).
It would be nice if Linux had the same GUI as Windows (I don't care who made it, just that it looks almost the same).