These days the point of DRM seems to be more to stop video game rentals and prevent you selling the game second hand rather than stopping piracy.
These days? Virtually every PC game in the last 10 years has come with a serial #. Stores don't even bother buying or selling games second hand because there is no point.
On the plus side PC games tend to be cheaper than their console counterparts, at least when purchased through retail.
Don't feel bad, you aren't the only one getting bit in the ass by the DRM (the pirates OTOH are playing just fine) and for an example (be sure to note the HUGE pile of game boxes lining all his shelves) check out this video [metacafe.com] (warning:language NSFW but when you watch it you'll understand why he's POed).
Well they're not playing just fine. By pirating they lose out on any patches, additional content, multiplayer etc. which the legit copy supports but the pirate does not. And while piracy frees you from DRM (and some DRM is really obnoxious) it still exposes a pirate potentially greater risks such as trojans. Those nocrack / keygen executables might remove the DRM, but as equally they might really fuck up your computer, and all for the sake of a game.
I think it's not likely that DRM will ever disappear. But what it can do is strike the balance between protecting a disc / download from piracy and the user's legitimate rights. I believe Steam by default gets the balance pretty well as far as download services go. Biggest problem is they're now caving into demands from manufacturers for double dose of DRM and that IMO is not acceptable either for users or Steam's long term interests.
Sony didn't have to remove the OtherOs to protect their platform - in fact, the efforts to crack the platform intensified when they did that. I used to be a Sony customer and occasionally used the OtherOs option on my PS3 to play around with the system and that was one of the reasons that I bought a PS3. I'm now annoyed that Sony have removed an advertised feature from my console (I also use it to play games), so in future, I'm going to look to pirate PS3 games as I don't want Sony to get any more of my money
Yes they did have to remove it. Geohot demonstrated a viable attack against the hypervisor through OtherOS. The exploit was sufficient that he could run any unsigned code he liked which would have lead to custom firmware which in turn would have lead to the same situation as on the PSP. Its quite obvious the choice Sony had - either remove OtherOS now before the crack could be developed OR watch as their platform descends into rampant piracy and their 3rd party support ran a mile. With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake it was not a hard choice for them to make.
I'm sure some people such as yourself were affected. I'm also sure that most of the people kicking up a stink about it now never even bothered with the feature in the first place and most probably don't even own a PS3.
So you pick them off by going to a competitor? Genius thinking. More likely is people have some irrational hatred for Sony, conveniently ignoring that nothing they are doing is out of the ordinary or even slightly unexpected for a console maker.
I regret OtherOS disappearing but I can completely understand why it was taken away. Geohot developed a viable crack that undermined the entire platform so it was removed. People should be pissed at him rather than Sony for doing what they obviously had to do to protect their platform.
P.S. The best way to boycott Sony is not buying their stuff. Buy a Wii instead. That's what I do. I won't be turning up in a Sony store tomorrow because I haven't cared about Sony for years.
Because Nintendo and Microsoft are so inclusive and accepting of crackers and users breaking their copy protection aren't they? Oh wait, no they're not different at all. Just 3 examples of many. I am not sure at all why Sony gets singled out for the hate.
Anonymous is staging a 24-hour, in-store boycott at Sony stores around the world
Also, I'm pretty sure the Sony Stores aren't open 24 hours...
And even if they did, anyone stupid enough to move their protest from the public street into private property is goin to get their ass arrested. Criminal charges to protest a civil lawsuit. Clever.
Actually there are plenty of transitional forms, so many in fact that to deny them is absurd. Here is a link that bothers to supply more evidence than any reasonable person would require.
As for breeding, yes it's evolution. Humans have been doing it for millenia, e.g. domesticating wolves into dogs. Human beings have created new species. Human beings are in a continuing arms race with bacteria thanks to evolutionary pressure caused by antibiotics.
I have no idea what point you are making about a white man and an asian woman unless it's to demonstrate some grotesquely naive idea of how evolution manifests itself. However even in your absurd example it is self evident that two people who have survived to adulthood did not succumb to sickness, starvation, injury or predators beforehand. Therefore they get to pass on their genes unlike their more unfortunate brethren. It's survival of the fittest. Beneficial traits accumulate, harmful traits get weeded out.
Seriously though you need to read talkorigins.org. Start by reading what evolution is and if necessary read through the FAQs as every single creationist talking point is methodically destroyed.
What is funny, is that people really believe that evolution is a sole indicator of intelligence. As if in the course of one's life, that evolution is such a profound influence that if you cannot or do not believe in it, you cannot ever be a productive member of society.
I doubt that to be the case at all. However people could rightly question a person's critical thinking or judgement skills if they discount an overwhelmingly supported scientific theory for a faith based assertion.
Creationism is mocked because it is an assertion that is not backed by any evidence. One may as well say we were all shat out of the ass of a space goat and with as much evidence - zero. If we're going to discuss all possibilities of creation or subsequent forms / development of life I suggest we give equal time to the space goat ass theory as traditional creationism. And to an infinite number of other unsupported assertions one could concoct.
Evolution on the other hand is a theory in the true scientific sense. It is copiously supported by evidence from multiple branches of science - paleontology, biology, taxonomy, genetics etc., is falsifiable and can be used to make predictions that are subsequently confirmed by evidence, e.g. Darwin predicting that humans and other simians evolved from ape-like creatures and this being confirmed in the genetic record. It is also a fact, since evolution is used right now to breed better livestock, crops, genetic engineering, horticulture etc.
There really is no comparison. So yes creationism deserves to be mocked. It's not a theory. It's a cop out. How did we get here? Dunno, god did it. It's a non answer and deserves to be mocked.
It's not the same. Microsoft licensed Java from Sun and agreed to abide whatever terms and conditions such licensing came with, e.g. compatibility, passing the compliance tests etc. Then they systematically set about trying to undermine the platform.
Google didn't licence anything, have never claimed compatibility and don't even use Sun / Oracle code. They use Java as the development language and a subset of the same APIs but the runtime is completely different.
The weird part is why they didn't go with it in the end. They could have skinned Android, dropped in a Symbian runtime so their apps still worked, customised the UI anyway they felt, dumped in an Ovi store and married the lot to their hardware. Now they have to take the Windows Phone OS and like it. I'm sure MS will give them token ways to modify the experience, but it won't be anything like what they could have done.
It's Nokia's code, and they can do what they want; but it is rather hard to see this as anything other than the spasmodic flailing of a dying platform, rather reminiscent of the bipolar behavior Sun was exhibiting shortly before their demise(only more serious, since the odds of Symbian related techologies being installed by the end user on a phone sold as non-Symbian are basically zero, while absolute fuckloads of non-Sun servers and desktops end up running JVMs...)
I dunno. If someone wrote a decent Symbian / QT layer for Android it might prove useful if only for all those app developers with swathes of Symbian code looking it to migrate it somewhere.
You know, despite all the "Oracle boo, Google yay" fanboyism we see here at/. I still haven't heard anybody give a reasonable answer as to why this isn't the exact same as the MS Java mess which everyone was cheering when Sun shut it down?
Because Google never claimed Android or Dalvik was compatible with Java, and hasn't used the term Java except in context of the language both VMs share. Indeed they take great pains in technical documentation to explain how Dalvik is not the same as Java and incompatible.
Microsoft basically tried to co-opt the Java brand, the trademark & logo, extended the system in some ways (delegates, CAB files) and omitting other parts (JNI, Jar files etc.) and palmed it off as Java / J++ even though it was not compatible.
And who the hell would dig for copper wires that are currently USED TO TRANSPORT ELECTRICITY? Someone who doesn't know what survival of the fittest means. Was she even near a city or something?
It's not as dumb as collecting petrol from broken pipelines which happens frequently in Africa with entirely predictable results. Don't care how poor you are, doing that is tantamount to Darwinising yourself.
CaCERT is a brave attempt to free up the web, but it's constrained by it's need to be seen as trustworthy in order to bestow trust. And in order to do that it has to force registrants to jump through hoops. In CaCERT's case if I want a cert I have to present my government papers to somebody in their web of trust. And I have to do it every 2 years. For what purpose?
The whole system also has a chilling effect on private communication with sites not using a cert who potentially could and should. I believe the easiest way to open up certification to all is to produce a class of certs between self signed and CA signed where the signature is a PGP web of trust. Nothing to stop CAs being signatories either (probably they sell such a service already), but in the absence of CAs my web of trust can be anyone I like and it's up to the visitor to decide if they consider the signatories trustworthy.
I'd like to see self generated certs where the signature is a PGP key. Want to know if you can trust the cert? Look at the PGP web of trust. It should be quite feasible.
These kinds of certs would be more than adequate for individuals, small orgs and whatnot who want the security of a cert without paying a tax to a CA just so they can bless the cert with virtually worthless "trust".
I don't understand why the likes of Firefox / OpenSSL / GnuPG and other vested interests in the open source movement aren't pushing for a free model for certification which cuts the CAs out of the loop, at least for some kinds of certs.
3 million tablets from the #2 book seller in a single country is pretty bloody impressive sales by anyone's measure. I think it's fairly obvious that Amazon will go there next - their app store makes zero sense in any other context.
I doubt Android will outsell iPad for a while, but given the amount of tablets that are launching (including Nook and Kindle NG) I wouldn't be surprised if it happens within 12 or 18 months. It will be like what happened with the smart phone in an even shorter time span.
I expect just forcing the company to bag up each "serving" would have an effect. People would not feel obliged to scarf down the whole pack in one sitting, and it might motivate / shame companies into producing smaller bags or foods with less fat content.
I do agree that smaller packets of a reasonable size that stated their entire nutritional content would help too. Food labelling in the EU tends to list per packet and per 100g serving sizes. Biggest issue is sometimes it's hard to tell on packet soup, rice, cereals if that's the dry weight nutritional content, or after milk / water is added.
I remember buying a TGI Friday's back of chips from a vending machine. The ingredients claimed it contained 6 servings. Why are they allowed to get away with shit like this? If the fat / sugar / calories sounds too high they increase the number of servings in a packet.
If retailers were forced to separately package each serving (or perhaps be liable for a serving tax), it might make them think a bit harder about the packet size and calorie content in the first place.
They provide a copy of your games now. Who's to say they won't change the terms on the deal? Maybe they'll say up to 5 free downloads and they cost a dollar after that? Maybe they'll sell gaming tiers like XBL where free downloads only happen if you pay a sub. Maybe they'll spin a sob story how most users are good but a few nasty users are forcing to do this by downloading their games too much.
I agree Steam can be convenient, but it is a service and if they change the terms, guess what, you get to like it or fuck off. Problem is soon there may be very few other places to fuck off to. I guess Impulse was the main competitor and if Gamestop buy it out it might provide some level of competition, but how much remains to be seen.
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These days the point of DRM seems to be more to stop video game rentals and prevent you selling the game second hand rather than stopping piracy.
These days? Virtually every PC game in the last 10 years has come with a serial #. Stores don't even bother buying or selling games second hand because there is no point. On the plus side PC games tend to be cheaper than their console counterparts, at least when purchased through retail.
Don't feel bad, you aren't the only one getting bit in the ass by the DRM (the pirates OTOH are playing just fine) and for an example (be sure to note the HUGE pile of game boxes lining all his shelves) check out this video [metacafe.com] (warning:language NSFW but when you watch it you'll understand why he's POed).
Well they're not playing just fine. By pirating they lose out on any patches, additional content, multiplayer etc. which the legit copy supports but the pirate does not. And while piracy frees you from DRM (and some DRM is really obnoxious) it still exposes a pirate potentially greater risks such as trojans. Those nocrack / keygen executables might remove the DRM, but as equally they might really fuck up your computer, and all for the sake of a game.
I think it's not likely that DRM will ever disappear. But what it can do is strike the balance between protecting a disc / download from piracy and the user's legitimate rights. I believe Steam by default gets the balance pretty well as far as download services go. Biggest problem is they're now caving into demands from manufacturers for double dose of DRM and that IMO is not acceptable either for users or Steam's long term interests.
And the amazing thing is Alex Jones is the curator for most of them.
Sony didn't have to remove the OtherOs to protect their platform - in fact, the efforts to crack the platform intensified when they did that. I used to be a Sony customer and occasionally used the OtherOs option on my PS3 to play around with the system and that was one of the reasons that I bought a PS3. I'm now annoyed that Sony have removed an advertised feature from my console (I also use it to play games), so in future, I'm going to look to pirate PS3 games as I don't want Sony to get any more of my money
Yes they did have to remove it. Geohot demonstrated a viable attack against the hypervisor through OtherOS. The exploit was sufficient that he could run any unsigned code he liked which would have lead to custom firmware which in turn would have lead to the same situation as on the PSP. Its quite obvious the choice Sony had - either remove OtherOS now before the crack could be developed OR watch as their platform descends into rampant piracy and their 3rd party support ran a mile. With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake it was not a hard choice for them to make.
I'm sure some people such as yourself were affected. I'm also sure that most of the people kicking up a stink about it now never even bothered with the feature in the first place and most probably don't even own a PS3.
So you pick them off by going to a competitor? Genius thinking. More likely is people have some irrational hatred for Sony, conveniently ignoring that nothing they are doing is out of the ordinary or even slightly unexpected for a console maker.
I regret OtherOS disappearing but I can completely understand why it was taken away. Geohot developed a viable crack that undermined the entire platform so it was removed. People should be pissed at him rather than Sony for doing what they obviously had to do to protect their platform.
You sound like a shill because the PS3 is not open. Not anymore, if you're running PSN that means you have upgraded and lost the OtherOS feature.
3D? seriously? 'Sony has delivered'?
Do you work for NMS?
Yeah someone must be a shill for being perfectly satisfied that their games console works as intended.
P.S. The best way to boycott Sony is not buying their stuff. Buy a Wii instead. That's what I do. I won't be turning up in a Sony store tomorrow because I haven't cared about Sony for years.
Because Nintendo and Microsoft are so inclusive and accepting of crackers and users breaking their copy protection aren't they? Oh wait, no they're not different at all. Just 3 examples of many. I am not sure at all why Sony gets singled out for the hate.
Are you seriously comparing the actions of a religious cult to Sony suing some cracker?
Anonymous is staging a 24-hour, in-store boycott at Sony stores around the world
Also, I'm pretty sure the Sony Stores aren't open 24 hours...
And even if they did, anyone stupid enough to move their protest from the public street into private property is goin to get their ass arrested. Criminal charges to protest a civil lawsuit. Clever.
As for breeding, yes it's evolution. Humans have been doing it for millenia, e.g. domesticating wolves into dogs. Human beings have created new species. Human beings are in a continuing arms race with bacteria thanks to evolutionary pressure caused by antibiotics.
I have no idea what point you are making about a white man and an asian woman unless it's to demonstrate some grotesquely naive idea of how evolution manifests itself. However even in your absurd example it is self evident that two people who have survived to adulthood did not succumb to sickness, starvation, injury or predators beforehand. Therefore they get to pass on their genes unlike their more unfortunate brethren. It's survival of the fittest. Beneficial traits accumulate, harmful traits get weeded out.
Seriously though you need to read talkorigins.org. Start by reading what evolution is and if necessary read through the FAQs as every single creationist talking point is methodically destroyed.
People who say "sheep" / "sheeple" instantly lose whatever point they were trying to make. Think of it like a wooly Godwin's law.
What is funny, is that people really believe that evolution is a sole indicator of intelligence. As if in the course of one's life, that evolution is such a profound influence that if you cannot or do not believe in it, you cannot ever be a productive member of society.
I doubt that to be the case at all. However people could rightly question a person's critical thinking or judgement skills if they discount an overwhelmingly supported scientific theory for a faith based assertion.
Evolution on the other hand is a theory in the true scientific sense. It is copiously supported by evidence from multiple branches of science - paleontology, biology, taxonomy, genetics etc., is falsifiable and can be used to make predictions that are subsequently confirmed by evidence, e.g. Darwin predicting that humans and other simians evolved from ape-like creatures and this being confirmed in the genetic record. It is also a fact, since evolution is used right now to breed better livestock, crops, genetic engineering, horticulture etc.
There really is no comparison. So yes creationism deserves to be mocked. It's not a theory. It's a cop out. How did we get here? Dunno, god did it. It's a non answer and deserves to be mocked.
Google didn't licence anything, have never claimed compatibility and don't even use Sun / Oracle code. They use Java as the development language and a subset of the same APIs but the runtime is completely different.
The weird part is why they didn't go with it in the end. They could have skinned Android, dropped in a Symbian runtime so their apps still worked, customised the UI anyway they felt, dumped in an Ovi store and married the lot to their hardware. Now they have to take the Windows Phone OS and like it. I'm sure MS will give them token ways to modify the experience, but it won't be anything like what they could have done.
It's Nokia's code, and they can do what they want; but it is rather hard to see this as anything other than the spasmodic flailing of a dying platform, rather reminiscent of the bipolar behavior Sun was exhibiting shortly before their demise(only more serious, since the odds of Symbian related techologies being installed by the end user on a phone sold as non-Symbian are basically zero, while absolute fuckloads of non-Sun servers and desktops end up running JVMs...)
I dunno. If someone wrote a decent Symbian / QT layer for Android it might prove useful if only for all those app developers with swathes of Symbian code looking it to migrate it somewhere.
You know, despite all the "Oracle boo, Google yay" fanboyism we see here at /. I still haven't heard anybody give a reasonable answer as to why this isn't the exact same as the MS Java mess which everyone was cheering when Sun shut it down?
Because Google never claimed Android or Dalvik was compatible with Java, and hasn't used the term Java except in context of the language both VMs share. Indeed they take great pains in technical documentation to explain how Dalvik is not the same as Java and incompatible.
Microsoft basically tried to co-opt the Java brand, the trademark & logo, extended the system in some ways (delegates, CAB files) and omitting other parts (JNI, Jar files etc.) and palmed it off as Java / J++ even though it was not compatible.
And who the hell would dig for copper wires that are currently USED TO TRANSPORT ELECTRICITY? Someone who doesn't know what survival of the fittest means. Was she even near a city or something?
It's not as dumb as collecting petrol from broken pipelines which happens frequently in Africa with entirely predictable results. Don't care how poor you are, doing that is tantamount to Darwinising yourself.
The whole system also has a chilling effect on private communication with sites not using a cert who potentially could and should. I believe the easiest way to open up certification to all is to produce a class of certs between self signed and CA signed where the signature is a PGP web of trust. Nothing to stop CAs being signatories either (probably they sell such a service already), but in the absence of CAs my web of trust can be anyone I like and it's up to the visitor to decide if they consider the signatories trustworthy.
These kinds of certs would be more than adequate for individuals, small orgs and whatnot who want the security of a cert without paying a tax to a CA just so they can bless the cert with virtually worthless "trust".
I don't understand why the likes of Firefox / OpenSSL / GnuPG and other vested interests in the open source movement aren't pushing for a free model for certification which cuts the CAs out of the loop, at least for some kinds of certs.
I doubt Android will outsell iPad for a while, but given the amount of tablets that are launching (including Nook and Kindle NG) I wouldn't be surprised if it happens within 12 or 18 months. It will be like what happened with the smart phone in an even shorter time span.
I do agree that smaller packets of a reasonable size that stated their entire nutritional content would help too. Food labelling in the EU tends to list per packet and per 100g serving sizes. Biggest issue is sometimes it's hard to tell on packet soup, rice, cereals if that's the dry weight nutritional content, or after milk / water is added.
If retailers were forced to separately package each serving (or perhaps be liable for a serving tax), it might make them think a bit harder about the packet size and calorie content in the first place.
I agree Steam can be convenient, but it is a service and if they change the terms, guess what, you get to like it or fuck off. Problem is soon there may be very few other places to fuck off to. I guess Impulse was the main competitor and if Gamestop buy it out it might provide some level of competition, but how much remains to be seen.