P.S. If the time ever comes that I cannot use Bittorrent or Hulu or some other source to try the new Jurassic Crap Part 20 DVD, then I will be forced to buy the DVD.
I suspect I will be making lots of mail order returns & filing lots of chargebacks. I will not be ripped off by trashy product.
Thank you. I am tired of those who try to deny what they do.
I have been pirating games since 1987, and I'm proud of it because I feel it's justified. Why? Because any other product you buy, you can return if it turns-out to be crap, even cars (lemon law). But not media. It is wrong for companies to refuse refunds - it's poor customer service. If a company is proud of their products, then they should be willing to stand by that product, including refunds.
But the entertainment industry does not, therefore I pirate to avoid getting stuck with bad product. I try before I buy.
I don't know why this is "funny"? Ask a manager sometime how much he charges per hour for his programmers/engineers, and he'll tell you $90 or maybe even $100.
You'll often hear these companies say something like, "$100 billion is lost to piracy ever year," but when you ask for a source, then cannot provide one. Sure they might say something like "I copied it from XYZ document," but that document doesn't list a source either. It's a factoid that comes from nowhere.
A society that holds itself to embrace science, rationality, and logic should ignore numbers that have no sources. Do not accept numbers that came from no place.
>>But that doesn't mean an arbitrary line should not be drawn
Why not? We didn't it all the time. At age 17 years, 364 days, 23 hours, and 59 minutes, you are a minor. At 18, you are an adult. What changed between one minute and the next that suddenly turned you to an adult? Nothing. It's arbitrary.
Same with age 16, or age 21, or age 35. We do this ALL the time in laws. We can do exactly the same with fetuses.
Anyway, I see either cells which are about half an hour old. I see no brain, therefore no personality exists. You are killing, yes, but what you are killing is no more sentient than the 8 skin cells you killed when you cut yourself.
>>>Balders Gate was released in 1998. I still play it and enjoy it about once a year.
Well there you go. I bet if it had DRM it wouldn't even work anymore, due to the server going down, or the owner of that game simply deciding "we don't want people playing BG anymore; let's make them buy it again".
Whoever holds the key controls your access, and they can withdraw the key whenever they feel like it. It's a perpetual rental, not ownership.
No I said engineers are BILLED at $90. What we're actually paid is somewhere around $30-60.
And there are attractive women at Walmart, although you'd be better off working in a mall store like Penneys or Bon Ton, since there's a better clientele. I used to flirt with all the cute teens and 20-somethings when I was selling shoes at JCP.
As a contractor I have the option to work less. I can voluntarily choose to cut my hours to 6 hours a day (or alternatively 4 days a week) if work is slow & I have nothing to do. That saves the company's money and gives me more time to enjoy life.
The drawback is that when crunch time comes, then you're expected to put in the overtime.
That's me! I would rather work for $8 at walmart than $12 in construction. Working at walmart has all the comforts of working in an office, like A/C and heat. Minus the websurfing but plus lots of attractive women to flirt with.
"Why isn't this done yet?" "You only gave it to me four days ago." "Don't give me excuses; I would have had it done by now." (whispers quietly): "So why don't YOU do it then?"
My favorite:
"Add a voltage regulator." "Okay. Do you have a suggestion boss?" "Figure it out yourself." "Surely we've used these on other cards? Do you have a current schematic I can look at?" "I don't know. Leave." (whispers): "I thought my boss said he knew this stuff and could have it done in four days. Now he can't even provide a simple schematic."
Recently my boss reviewed my schematic and asked me to replace 1% resistors with 2 or 5% "because they are cheaper". Yes true, but I spend most of the day doing that, so he spent about $650 on the task, thereby spending MORE not less.
So yeah I agree with the article that's it's often cheaper to specify faster hardware, or more-expensive hardware, than to spend hours-and-hours on expensive engineers/programmers trying to save pennies.
Or as Benjamin Franklin said, "Some people are penny-wise, but pound foolish." You try to save pennies and waste pounds/dollars instead.
I don't understand the attitude that anything older than 5-10 years is not worthy of keeping. I still have favorite movies that are around three-quarters of a century old. "It's old" is not reason to discard good entertainment, and that applies to games as well as movies.
>>>You probably won't still want to play Spore. Honestly, I don't understand this attitude....
I still play Pirates and Red Storm Rising and Elite, and those games were released ~25 years ago. Ditto Wing Commander from ~20 years ago. So yes it's likely that, if I enjoy Spore, I will still be playing it 11 years from now in 2020.
>>>even students who don't have much of an income yet -- will happily spend the price of Spore on a night out
Fools. Although I do go out from time-to-time I still watch my expenses, typically ordering a $15 plate, eating half now and half as takeout. Back to games: I mentioned elsewhere that I cleaned-out my N64/PS1/PS2 collection and gathered about $4000 in amazon/ebay sales. These games may seem trivially small as just one purchase, but add them up and you have several thousand invested.
Why would I want that several thousand thrown-away when the Authentication servers stop working?
>>> This is an organization that has a tendency to mispeak
"RIAA is an organization that has a tendency to [lie, intimidate citizens, and extort money] a lot, even when under oath." There. Fixed that for ya.;-)
Wow that was an obscure reference. I remember hearing the word "Osbourne" but didn't recall what it was (24 pounds): http://oldcomputers.net/osborne.html - Now if you had said "Commodore 64 portable" then I could relate (23 pounds): http://oldcomputers.net/sx64.html ----- The heaviest portable ever made was the IBM PC at over 30 pounds!!! Ouch.
And finally the first laptop PC (12 pounds). It ran over 10 hours! Why don't today's laptops run ten hours? http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5140.html ----- And the Macintosh laptop. I like the image of a beautiful woman doing computer work *in her pool*. Yeah that would happen. Beautiful women don't use computers (ducks a spitball). http://oldcomputers.net/pics/macuser1189.jpg
The point is that if you are like my boss, you are literally never at your desk. He's always traveling somewhere and he carries a laptop with a 17(?) inch screen. It's huge. He'd probably love to replace it with a dual screen that increased his workspace 1.5 times its present size.
Will the server still be up-and-running to "authorize" my playing of Spore? I doubt it. And even if it is still operational there's a possibility a new EA CEO decides to "change strategy" and revoke all licenses to the Steam corporation, thereby deauthorizing all Steam users from playing EA games.
That was my initial guess. Electrical circuits include a lot of "glue logic" like resistors, caps, and inductors which burn-off energy as heat. Find a way to eliminate those items (i.e. connect the antenna wirelessly) and you eliminate waste.
If your friends are like my friends they'll just say: "Leave me alone! Everybody uses Microsoft so that's why I will use it too!" or something similar. That line of thinking is what killed off mid-1990s alternatives like OS/2, and that same thinking will repeat today.
We've already been down this road, and even though I'd like to see Microsoft drop to 50% or lower, I know no other way to predict the future than to look to the past, and the past shows that alternatives OSes were rejected.
Slashdot Mirror
P.S. If the time ever comes that I cannot use Bittorrent or Hulu or some other source to try the new Jurassic Crap Part 20 DVD, then I will be forced to buy the DVD.
I suspect I will be making lots of mail order returns & filing lots of chargebacks. I will not be ripped off by trashy product.
Thank you. I am tired of those who try to deny what they do.
I have been pirating games since 1987, and I'm proud of it because I feel it's justified. Why? Because any other product you buy, you can return if it turns-out to be crap, even cars (lemon law). But not media. It is wrong for companies to refuse refunds - it's poor customer service. If a company is proud of their products, then they should be willing to stand by that product, including refunds.
But the entertainment industry does not, therefore I pirate to avoid getting stuck with bad product. I try before I buy.
I don't know why this is "funny"? Ask a manager sometime how much he charges per hour for his programmers/engineers, and he'll tell you $90 or maybe even $100.
What we actually get PAID is far below that. ;-)
P.S.
Read more about these unsourced numbers (no origination point) here: http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/dodgy-digits-behind-the-war-on-piracy.ars
You'll often hear these companies say something like, "$100 billion is lost to piracy ever year," but when you ask for a source, then cannot provide one. Sure they might say something like "I copied it from XYZ document," but that document doesn't list a source either. It's a factoid that comes from nowhere.
A society that holds itself to embrace science, rationality, and logic should ignore numbers that have no sources. Do not accept numbers that came from no place.
>>But that doesn't mean an arbitrary line should not be drawn
Why not? We didn't it all the time. At age 17 years, 364 days, 23 hours, and 59 minutes, you are a minor. At 18, you are an adult. What changed between one minute and the next that suddenly turned you to an adult? Nothing. It's arbitrary.
Same with age 16, or age 21, or age 35. We do this ALL the time in laws. We can do exactly the same with fetuses.
Anyway, I see either cells which are about half an hour old. I see no brain, therefore no personality exists. You are killing, yes, but what you are killing is no more sentient than the 8 skin cells you killed when you cut yourself.
>>>Balders Gate was released in 1998. I still play it and enjoy it about once a year.
Well there you go. I bet if it had DRM it wouldn't even work anymore, due to the server going down, or the owner of that game simply deciding "we don't want people playing BG anymore; let's make them buy it again".
Whoever holds the key controls your access, and they can withdraw the key whenever they feel like it. It's a perpetual rental, not ownership.
No I said engineers are BILLED at $90. What we're actually paid is somewhere around $30-60.
And there are attractive women at Walmart, although you'd be better off working in a mall store like Penneys or Bon Ton, since there's a better clientele. I used to flirt with all the cute teens and 20-somethings when I was selling shoes at JCP.
As a contractor I have the option to work less. I can voluntarily choose to cut my hours to 6 hours a day (or alternatively 4 days a week) if work is slow & I have nothing to do. That saves the company's money and gives me more time to enjoy life.
The drawback is that when crunch time comes, then you're expected to put in the overtime.
That's me! I would rather work for $8 at walmart than $12 in construction. Working at walmart has all the comforts of working in an office, like A/C and heat. Minus the websurfing but plus lots of attractive women to flirt with.
You've met my boss?
"Why isn't this done yet?" "You only gave it to me four days ago." "Don't give me excuses; I would have had it done by now." (whispers quietly): "So why don't YOU do it then?"
My favorite:
"Add a voltage regulator." "Okay. Do you have a suggestion boss?" "Figure it out yourself." "Surely we've used these on other cards? Do you have a current schematic I can look at?" "I don't know. Leave." (whispers): "I thought my boss said he knew this stuff and could have it done in four days. Now he can't even provide a simple schematic."
Engineers are billed at about $90 an hour. That includes wages, health benefits, rental for the cubicle space, and heating.
Say that again, but this time not as an "anonymous coward".
Recently my boss reviewed my schematic and asked me to replace 1% resistors with 2 or 5% "because they are cheaper". Yes true, but I spend most of the day doing that, so he spent about $650 on the task, thereby spending MORE not less.
So yeah I agree with the article that's it's often cheaper to specify faster hardware, or more-expensive hardware, than to spend hours-and-hours on expensive engineers/programmers trying to save pennies.
Or as Benjamin Franklin said, "Some people are penny-wise, but pound foolish." You try to save pennies and waste pounds/dollars instead.
P.S.
>>>Honestly, I don't understand this attitude
I don't understand the attitude that anything older than 5-10 years is not worthy of keeping. I still have favorite movies that are around three-quarters of a century old. "It's old" is not reason to discard good entertainment, and that applies to games as well as movies.
>>>You probably won't still want to play Spore. Honestly, I don't understand this attitude....
I still play Pirates and Red Storm Rising and Elite, and those games were released ~25 years ago. Ditto Wing Commander from ~20 years ago. So yes it's likely that, if I enjoy Spore, I will still be playing it 11 years from now in 2020.
>>>even students who don't have much of an income yet -- will happily spend the price of Spore on a night out
Fools. Although I do go out from time-to-time I still watch my expenses, typically ordering a $15 plate, eating half now and half as takeout. Back to games: I mentioned elsewhere that I cleaned-out my N64/PS1/PS2 collection and gathered about $4000 in amazon/ebay sales. These games may seem trivially small as just one purchase, but add them up and you have several thousand invested.
Why would I want that several thousand thrown-away when the Authentication servers stop working?
>>> This is an organization that has a tendency to mispeak
"RIAA is an organization that has a tendency to [lie, intimidate citizens, and extort money] a lot, even when under oath." There. Fixed that for ya. ;-)
Wow that was an obscure reference. I remember hearing the word "Osbourne" but didn't recall what it was (24 pounds): http://oldcomputers.net/osborne.html - Now if you had said "Commodore 64 portable" then I could relate (23 pounds): http://oldcomputers.net/sx64.html ----- The heaviest portable ever made was the IBM PC at over 30 pounds!!! Ouch.
And finally the first laptop PC (12 pounds). It ran over 10 hours! Why don't today's laptops run ten hours? http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5140.html ----- And the Macintosh laptop. I like the image of a beautiful woman doing computer work *in her pool*. Yeah that would happen. Beautiful women don't use computers (ducks a spitball). http://oldcomputers.net/pics/macuser1189.jpg
P.S.
Free games: http://oldcomputers.net/games.html
Unfortunately the agencies discriminate against single dads.
The point is that if you are like my boss, you are literally never at your desk. He's always traveling somewhere and he carries a laptop with a 17(?) inch screen. It's huge. He'd probably love to replace it with a dual screen that increased his workspace 1.5 times its present size.
What happens in the year 2020?
Will the server still be up-and-running to "authorize" my playing of Spore? I doubt it. And even if it is still operational there's a possibility a new EA CEO decides to "change strategy" and revoke all licenses to the Steam corporation, thereby deauthorizing all Steam users from playing EA games.
I sell PC games all the time. I just sold off Star Trek Dominion War for $40 via amazon.com
>>>Less components = Less power?
That was my initial guess. Electrical circuits include a lot of "glue logic" like resistors, caps, and inductors which burn-off energy as heat. Find a way to eliminate those items (i.e. connect the antenna wirelessly) and you eliminate waste.
"Thief! You can't have television unless you pay Comcast $50 a month. You can't just pull television off the air!"
So said my clueless neighbor when I said I get TV for free.
(shaking head)
If your friends are like my friends they'll just say: "Leave me alone! Everybody uses Microsoft so that's why I will use it too!" or something similar. That line of thinking is what killed off mid-1990s alternatives like OS/2, and that same thinking will repeat today.
We've already been down this road, and even though I'd like to see Microsoft drop to 50% or lower, I know no other way to predict the future than to look to the past, and the past shows that alternatives OSes were rejected.