I've found when going back and forth with Adobe, talking to sales is often faster than talking to tech support if the issue is about something that isn't technical. I've waited 45+ minutes to get on the line with a tech support person who barely spoke my language, and waited maybe 5-10 for a person who could clearly understand me and was willing to work with me quickly and politely.
No guarantees that it will be the same way with all companies, but I'm hypothesizing that many companies are more interested in selling you something than dealing with your problems. Therefore, getting on the line with a sales person could mean less waiting and less back-and-forth.
1. The North American school systems are garbage, they even fail at instilling basic discipline and respect.
I think the problem with many of my teachers was they thought respect was assumed because they were in a position of power. Respect is EARNED. If I think you're a jerk, no amount of saying "I'm the teacher and I'm in charge" is going to make a difference.
The teachers I respected most were passionate about their subject and were able to instill their passion in me. They were the ones who taught how THEY wanted, not how the state told them to. They rarely had to discipline their classes because the students respected them.
The school I remember wasn't the most locked down place. We used to have testing software that would quiz students on books they read. That was a mandatory grade and everyone had to do several. The application, and all the records associated with it, got deleted--twice.
I'm not trying to diminish his achievements, I think somebody should be offering him a job or a fat scholarship right now. I'm simply saying it may be more trivial to wreak havoc in a high school than it would be a business.
That said, 38 years is too harsh for playing with grades and distributing answer keys. He's not going to become a healthy contributing member of society by going to prison for 38 years, and what damage has he done? Oh yes, he's inconvenienced the teachers a lot, but that's about it.
I thought teachers were supposed to mold students into model citizens, not get stupid amounts of vengeance upon them when they break their toys.
Everyone on Slashdot already knows this, but hey staff at Tesoro High school: DON'T PUT SENSITIVE DATA ON MACHINES CONNECTED TO A NETWORK! Obviously you need to do your grades the old-fashioned way: Pen and paper.
I own a copy of Neverwinter Nights Diamond and yes, it does have DRM, though admittedly not as bad as Mass Effect. Basically you can't play a LAN or Internet game on multiple computers with one CD key. That sounds reasonable until you try to organize a LAN in which most attendants have never touched a PC RPG in their lives and aren't willing to spend the money unless they know it's worth it.
A lack of DRM doesn't just make sense, it's also a great sales opportunity. I have purchased Call of Duties 1 and 2, Dawn of War and its expansions, Starcraft, Unreal Tournament 2004, Supreme Commander, Serious Sam, the classic Half Life series, and Civilizations II, III, and IV because I've played a friend's copy of each game at a LAN. The most DRM that any of those have is a CD key. None of them check to see if the CD key's already being used.
Some of those games I wouldn't have even bothered with if left to my own devices. But when I was shown the experience as it was meant to be (over the course of several hours and with friends), I was hooked.
Suit: So Cocks called.
John: Cocks?
Suit: Yeah, Cocks. The network for the ballsiest.
Anyway, they want to be hooked up to our digital cable service. What's the capacity on our system right now?
John: Well we still have 50% of our bandwidth av--
Suit: Sweet Virgin Mary! Only 50%? Who's eating up all our bandwidth?
John: Well it's mostly HD football channels, and then peer to peer, and then Usenet.
Suit: Well, we sure as hell can't get rid of the football, and you were supposed to block peer to peer anyway! What in God's name is Usenet?
John: It's a bulletin board system where people can share files.
Suit: Well drop it! I'm not going to limit quality programming for some godless file sharing faggots.
John: But how do we explain that we're arbitrarily dropping a significant portion of our service?
Suit: What are you, stupid? Just say what we always say: we found child porn. Why do I pay you if I do all the thinking?
I can't agree enough. Why am I not allowed to download German or Japanese MP3s on Itunes just because I'm in the US store? The only way to get it is to pay 5 times its worth by importing the CD, or play some stupid game where I import a foreign iTunes gift card.
How about anime series and films that just don't get picked up by a licensing company? Just because I watch fansubs doesn't mean I'm not willing to pay for the series--QUITE the opposite in fact. And seriously, I'm sick of anime licensing companies packing DVDs with figures and other collectibles to jack up the price. I pick up a box thinking I found a box set of a series, only to find out that there's only one DVD and a bunch of fluff.
Putting aside foreign stuff for a second. I want all of the Dexter's Lab episodes and Courage the Cowardly Dog episodes on DVD or mp4. I can't get them in this fashion unless I get some burned bootleg DVD on eBay. Why? The series "Reboot" only offered the first and third seasons on DVD. How does that make ANY sense?
Or how about old Lucasarts adventure games? They aren't exactly rushing to put them out for digital distribution. Id, Epic, Eidos, Take Two, and other companies are offering their back catalog on steam, yet I have to rummage through garage sales to find Maniac Mansion.
I pretty much have my pick of music that was made in my country, and even some of the more popular foreign stuff. But I want access to EVERYTHING I'm interested in, not just what business deals and International Copyright Law say I can buy.
I don't pirate because I'm "sticking it to the man." I pirate because I tell the man "Let me give you money!" and he says "No."
Peter Molyneux is infamous for promising gamers the moon. Fable 2 will likely be fun, but take everything P. Molyneux here says with a grain of salt. He said similarly boastful things with Fable... and pretty much every other game he's ever had a hand in.
The most effectively encrypted message is the one nobody suspects is encrypted. If, to a government agent, your message suggests you are as stupid and banal as he wants you to be, and to your recipient, your message's underlying content is understandable, this encryption has done its job.
We'd either need a brilliant algorithm or, more simply, friends working together to make their messages hazy.
Is it apathy or despair? Many people would love to see change, but how many can devote the time and money it would take to make that change happen? Most people in America are busy with full-time jobs and kids and finances that they don't have the energy to keep the government in check.
The government would have its watchmen if Americans weren't so BUSY all the time! But then maybe that was their goal all along.
I don't see why this is so hard, all you have to do is take down 4chan. And 7chan and 711chan and 420chan and 12chan and...
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Chan
I don't see what all the negativity is about ads. Advertisements have introduced me to some bands and singers I wouldn't have otherwise noticed. For example, I learned about Royksopp from Geico commercials, Regina Spektor from XM radio spots, and Sara Bareilles from Rhapsody ads. I don't use ANY of those services, but I thank them for informing me about some good music.
It's a much better way to learn about music than commercial radio.
If I have a passenger in the car, we talk all the time. However, the passenger must understand they are on back-up navigation duty. Almost every time I approach a crossroad or turn, I say "is this the one?" just to keep the directions fresh in both minds. If we both are at least partially devoted to the task of find our way there, then we are more likely to have get there swimmingly.
It wasn't just people who formatted their hard drive that had a pain in the ass with Bioshock. I tried the demo and it kept BSODing on me. I couldn't even get past the elevator with the "Sweat of his brow" speech like, 5 minutes in. That's why I didn't bother with it altogether.
As of yet Corel Painter X does not run or even install on Wine. I'm glad to see many of my games will run on Wine to some degree, but since I've been gaming less and drawing with a tablet more, this doesn't help me. Sadly, GIMP and other OSS applications are not suitable replacements. Still, I eagerly follow Wine's development because I hope for a day when I can run Linux.
I don't download games on P2P clients, but at LANs my friends and I will install each other's games and play. More often then not I've purchased games that I've "pirated" at these LANs, and the ones that I didn't buy I deleted and don't play anymore anyway.
Here's an interesting idea for handling piracy: If your game has online stats, delete the stats of users who have played for a while on a pirated copy. My friend is obsessed with Call of Duty 4, but he didn't want to pay for a copy. He unlocked all sorts of stuff by playing online, and then found out one day that he was back at square one. He was furious, but he begrudgingly bought a copy and even bought a used copy for someone else to coerce them into trying it. Whether Infinity Ward did that on purpose or not, that was an amazing anti-piracy feat.
Slashdot Mirror
I've found when going back and forth with Adobe, talking to sales is often faster than talking to tech support if the issue is about something that isn't technical. I've waited 45+ minutes to get on the line with a tech support person who barely spoke my language, and waited maybe 5-10 for a person who could clearly understand me and was willing to work with me quickly and politely.
No guarantees that it will be the same way with all companies, but I'm hypothesizing that many companies are more interested in selling you something than dealing with your problems. Therefore, getting on the line with a sales person could mean less waiting and less back-and-forth.
1. The North American school systems are garbage, they even fail at instilling basic discipline and respect.
I think the problem with many of my teachers was they thought respect was assumed because they were in a position of power. Respect is EARNED. If I think you're a jerk, no amount of saying "I'm the teacher and I'm in charge" is going to make a difference. The teachers I respected most were passionate about their subject and were able to instill their passion in me. They were the ones who taught how THEY wanted, not how the state told them to. They rarely had to discipline their classes because the students respected them.
The school I remember wasn't the most locked down place. We used to have testing software that would quiz students on books they read. That was a mandatory grade and everyone had to do several. The application, and all the records associated with it, got deleted--twice.
I'm not trying to diminish his achievements, I think somebody should be offering him a job or a fat scholarship right now. I'm simply saying it may be more trivial to wreak havoc in a high school than it would be a business.
That said, 38 years is too harsh for playing with grades and distributing answer keys. He's not going to become a healthy contributing member of society by going to prison for 38 years, and what damage has he done? Oh yes, he's inconvenienced the teachers a lot, but that's about it.
I thought teachers were supposed to mold students into model citizens, not get stupid amounts of vengeance upon them when they break their toys.
Everyone on Slashdot already knows this, but hey staff at Tesoro High school: DON'T PUT SENSITIVE DATA ON MACHINES CONNECTED TO A NETWORK! Obviously you need to do your grades the old-fashioned way: Pen and paper.
I own a copy of Neverwinter Nights Diamond and yes, it does have DRM, though admittedly not as bad as Mass Effect. Basically you can't play a LAN or Internet game on multiple computers with one CD key. That sounds reasonable until you try to organize a LAN in which most attendants have never touched a PC RPG in their lives and aren't willing to spend the money unless they know it's worth it.
A lack of DRM doesn't just make sense, it's also a great sales opportunity. I have purchased Call of Duties 1 and 2, Dawn of War and its expansions, Starcraft, Unreal Tournament 2004, Supreme Commander, Serious Sam, the classic Half Life series, and Civilizations II, III, and IV because I've played a friend's copy of each game at a LAN. The most DRM that any of those have is a CD key. None of them check to see if the CD key's already being used.
Some of those games I wouldn't have even bothered with if left to my own devices. But when I was shown the experience as it was meant to be (over the course of several hours and with friends), I was hooked.
Suit: So Cocks called.
John: Cocks?
Suit: Yeah, Cocks. The network for the ballsiest.
Anyway, they want to be hooked up to our digital cable service. What's the capacity on our system right now?
John: Well we still have 50% of our bandwidth av--
Suit: Sweet Virgin Mary! Only 50%? Who's eating up all our bandwidth?
John: Well it's mostly HD football channels, and then peer to peer, and then Usenet.
Suit: Well, we sure as hell can't get rid of the football, and you were supposed to block peer to peer anyway! What in God's name is Usenet?
John: It's a bulletin board system where people can share files.
Suit: Well drop it! I'm not going to limit quality programming for some godless file sharing faggots.
John: But how do we explain that we're arbitrarily dropping a significant portion of our service?
Suit: What are you, stupid? Just say what we always say: we found child porn. Why do I pay you if I do all the thinking?
I can't agree enough. Why am I not allowed to download German or Japanese MP3s on Itunes just because I'm in the US store? The only way to get it is to pay 5 times its worth by importing the CD, or play some stupid game where I import a foreign iTunes gift card.
How about anime series and films that just don't get picked up by a licensing company? Just because I watch fansubs doesn't mean I'm not willing to pay for the series--QUITE the opposite in fact. And seriously, I'm sick of anime licensing companies packing DVDs with figures and other collectibles to jack up the price. I pick up a box thinking I found a box set of a series, only to find out that there's only one DVD and a bunch of fluff.
Putting aside foreign stuff for a second. I want all of the Dexter's Lab episodes and Courage the Cowardly Dog episodes on DVD or mp4. I can't get them in this fashion unless I get some burned bootleg DVD on eBay. Why? The series "Reboot" only offered the first and third seasons on DVD. How does that make ANY sense?
Or how about old Lucasarts adventure games? They aren't exactly rushing to put them out for digital distribution. Id, Epic, Eidos, Take Two, and other companies are offering their back catalog on steam, yet I have to rummage through garage sales to find Maniac Mansion.
I pretty much have my pick of music that was made in my country, and even some of the more popular foreign stuff. But I want access to EVERYTHING I'm interested in, not just what business deals and International Copyright Law say I can buy.
I don't pirate because I'm "sticking it to the man." I pirate because I tell the man "Let me give you money!" and he says "No."
Peter Molyneux is infamous for promising gamers the moon. Fable 2 will likely be fun, but take everything P. Molyneux here says with a grain of salt. He said similarly boastful things with Fable... and pretty much every other game he's ever had a hand in.
The most effectively encrypted message is the one nobody suspects is encrypted. If, to a government agent, your message suggests you are as stupid and banal as he wants you to be, and to your recipient, your message's underlying content is understandable, this encryption has done its job.
We'd either need a brilliant algorithm or, more simply, friends working together to make their messages hazy.
Is it apathy or despair? Many people would love to see change, but how many can devote the time and money it would take to make that change happen? Most people in America are busy with full-time jobs and kids and finances that they don't have the energy to keep the government in check. The government would have its watchmen if Americans weren't so BUSY all the time! But then maybe that was their goal all along.
I don't see what all the negativity is about ads. Advertisements have introduced me to some bands and singers I wouldn't have otherwise noticed. For example, I learned about Royksopp from Geico commercials, Regina Spektor from XM radio spots, and Sara Bareilles from Rhapsody ads. I don't use ANY of those services, but I thank them for informing me about some good music. It's a much better way to learn about music than commercial radio.
If I have a passenger in the car, we talk all the time. However, the passenger must understand they are on back-up navigation duty. Almost every time I approach a crossroad or turn, I say "is this the one?" just to keep the directions fresh in both minds. If we both are at least partially devoted to the task of find our way there, then we are more likely to have get there swimmingly.
It wasn't just people who formatted their hard drive that had a pain in the ass with Bioshock. I tried the demo and it kept BSODing on me. I couldn't even get past the elevator with the "Sweat of his brow" speech like, 5 minutes in. That's why I didn't bother with it altogether.
As of yet Corel Painter X does not run or even install on Wine. I'm glad to see many of my games will run on Wine to some degree, but since I've been gaming less and drawing with a tablet more, this doesn't help me. Sadly, GIMP and other OSS applications are not suitable replacements. Still, I eagerly follow Wine's development because I hope for a day when I can run Linux.
I don't download games on P2P clients, but at LANs my friends and I will install each other's games and play. More often then not I've purchased games that I've "pirated" at these LANs, and the ones that I didn't buy I deleted and don't play anymore anyway. Here's an interesting idea for handling piracy: If your game has online stats, delete the stats of users who have played for a while on a pirated copy. My friend is obsessed with Call of Duty 4, but he didn't want to pay for a copy. He unlocked all sorts of stuff by playing online, and then found out one day that he was back at square one. He was furious, but he begrudgingly bought a copy and even bought a used copy for someone else to coerce them into trying it. Whether Infinity Ward did that on purpose or not, that was an amazing anti-piracy feat.