Wrong. I'm massively in favor of cutting back on military spending. However, the existence of the military and it being funded through taxes is about providing for the nation as a whole. Specifically saying "We think this group of people worked too hard and as a result earn more than $X, so we're going to punish them and take their money and give it to this other person who made bad life choices instead" is a totally different issue.
Your "argument" isn't about facts, it's about emotion. You want to use some sob story to justify theft. It doesn't matter if every bad thing in the world happened to you and your life is horrible as a result, theft is still wrong.
Taxes to fund things like roads, police, military, FDA, etc aren't stealing. Taxes to transfer wealth from one group to another are stealing. The latter is no different than you pulling a gun and robbing someone to pay for your own bills - the only difference being that people like you believe it's "good" because the government says that they have the right to do it on your behalf.
Except that I'm sure the government could have cut the bloated pay for their workers or eliminated unnecessary jobs. They screwed with the traffic lights and trash collection to fuck with the citizens and try to force them to vote for higher taxes. All the more reason to vote those people out of office and vote in someone who'll clean up the bloat.
On another note: There are places in the US where the government does garbage pickup? I've always lived in places where you pay for that directly and there's usually multiple places you can choose from so if you don't like the price at one place you can switch to another.
Taxes for Constitutionally authorized functions of the government (military, police, etc) are not theft. Taxes for the explicit purpose of transferring money from one person or group of people to another person or group of people are theft. That's the thing people like you don't grasp - there is more than one type of tax. Some are a necessary evil, others exist to punish one group and reward another - those taxes are theft.
Seriously, I'm a citizen and I was never asked my opinion about income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc. The government forces it on you - the best you can do is vote for a different person and HOPE that they will lower taxes.
Just four years ago I was an independent contractor buying my own health insurance - $80 a month. I don't know where you live, but I know poor state level laws (similar to Obamacare) in a few states caused insurance rates to go off the charts.
And when you try, because the country is going broke and about to turn into a third world country, the people living off them riot and demand that things keep going downhill. I say all the reasonable people in Greece should've just gotten the hell out of Dodge and left the others to burn in their own poor decisions.
Both political parties are primarily uneducated lunatics. Hence why the US desperately needs to break the media's attachment to the two party system and their blatant manipulation during elections to keep people from being informed about other candidates. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have the countries best interest in mind - they have their own best interest in mind.
In this they are clearly calling for a militia that is controlled by the government.
No, "regulated" back then meant "trained". Thus, in order for the militia (meaning average people who show up with a gun for a common defense) to be well trained, they need to be able to have guns.
However, outside of the "regulated" bit, you're spot on. The founding fathers also explicitly stated in other documents that one of the primary reasons for the second amendment was to keep the government in check.
Anyone who wants to own a gun is the last person who should have one.
[CITATION NEEDED]
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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Just because they haven't done it in a decade doesn't mean that they CAN'T or WON'T at some point. They openly say in the ToS that they're not required to refund you or provide you with an offline copy if they ditch a game or end up shutting down.
Can I back up my Steam games? Yes I can. Can i install them on any system i own? yes I can
As long as they continue to let you - they can revoke that privilege at any time. Also, all the backups in the world mean nothing if they turn off the activation server. Do you really think that in another 10 years they'll still have the same games that they had when they launched? No - the kids with no attention span who only care about explosions won't buy them and they'll clear them out to make room for newer things.
A normal human can't play multiple systems at the same time!
Well guess what? A normal human CAN legally own more than one computer and CAN have a friend over or, god forbid, a girlfriend who wants to play the game with them. Legally, that does NOT require a new copy because they are both YOUR computers.
So I'm sorry but if the ONLY arguments you can come up with involve doom scenarios than you are no different than all the others spreading FUD and shilling for their causes. Either back up your statements with actual current facts or quit wasting our time with FUD.
They HAVE happened. Not with Steam, but with other games using DRM - like Madden *insert year here* where less than a year after it came out they killed the server for it to force people to upgrade. Steam will do it too eventually. The fact that you have the DRM industries cock shoved so far down your throat doesn't change that they can and will do it. But hey, why look at all the people who've been harmed by DRM when you can promote destroying an entire industry and hobby?
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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All my RealID friends are around to chat with, no matter what game they are in
If you wanna chat, go on Facebook, not a single player game.
Just that they honestly want the ONLY game experience to be the one that they think is "best", and that this is the online version.
I don't buy that for a second. This is a continuation of the (not quite as bad) always online DRM from Starcraft 2. Ever since the Activision merger Blizzard has gone downhill - fast. I used to buy every game they made for 18 years until they started spitting in their customers faces with with this DRM crap. The company I once held up as the having the best customer service in the industry has now lost my business forever and I will continue to recommend to others that they don't buy from Blizzard.
but I'll grant that it probably isn't motivated by piracy concerns.
Game companies have openly admitted in interviews that DRM is about killing the used game market and destroying your ability to resell your game, not about piracy.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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"Respectfully", it was a discussion about the evils of DRM. I pointed out that buying a game with DRM is wasting your money because they WILL turn off that server and destroy your copy of the game - and you have no idea when that will be. It could be the day after you buy the game or one to two years later. It's not about choice of product, it's about buying a product that is supposed to have an eternal shelf life but the company built in a self destruct button just to force you to upgrade. Would you be saying the same stuff if we were talking about Ford putting a self destruct "feature" in their new cars that allows them to destroy your car and force you to buy a new one? I highly doubt it.
They do not have the right to code a self destruct feature into a product. Even the government has discussed banning DRM because it exists purely to harm consumers. The companies themselves have openly admitted that this is NOT about piracy or any other red herring, it's about trying to force people to buy more copies of a game so that they make higher profits.
Your analogy is horribly flawed. Phones need a network because it needs a way to route calls to each person (just like you need a server for online games - you need to route each persons data appropriately). There is no need whatsoever for connecting to a server for a SINGLE PLAYER game because there is no information to be routed.
Phone companies don't violate the First Sale doctrine because you can resell your goddamn phone. You cannot resell a game with DRM.
Again, your battery example doesn't make sense because Sony doesn't get to flip a switch and force your batteries to die. There's also a HUGE difference between "a physical product is no longer made" and a company intentionally destroying your existing property to force you to upgrade. Why is this too complicated for you to understand?
Yes, it IS a violation of your rights if they destroy your property that you paid for! If anyone else destroyed it, it would be arson. Yet people like you insist that it's OK for software companies to pull this shit.
Well as I said with phone companies, people are OK with it more often than you think.
No, you didn't. You rambled about something completely different that doesn't involve destroying someone's property and then claimed that they were the same.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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For stuff that's reallt important to me, I'm happy to pay more to get somehting that I can pass on to my children. Games simply aren't that important, nor IMO should they be.
You're not paying MORE for a game without DRM. It's about not throwing your money away on something that will be useless in a couple of years.
When you buy it, there's a risk it will be lost. When you buy a game online, there's a risk the hosting company will shut down. Which risk is worse?
Seeing how no one will live long enough for a CD to die without someone intentionally destroying it and yet in the last few years we've seen games become non-functional due to asshole companies turning off servers, we already know the answer to that question. If you're responsible, your game on CD will outlive you. If you buy a DRM'd game, it very likely won't exist in a decade.
I'm still astounded that so many/.er see DRM for games as some sort of moral wrong. A practical consideration when buying a game? Sure. But morally? The game's creators have rights too.
They have the right to sell a game. That's it. They do NOT have the right to violate the Doctrine of First Sale and tell you that you cannot resell your game. They do NOT have the right to punish paying customers by installing malware on their systems. They have openly stated multiple times that DRM has NOTHING to do with piracy and everything to do with preventing reselling games and forcing users to buy the next game in the series because they deactivate the older games.
Would you be OK with any other company telling you that they have control over how / when / if you can use your property and having the ability to destroy your property at will? I highly doubt it, so why put up with that garbage from a game company?
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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It's ironic because you rant against DRM and then say "Hey, go use this DRM service that requires online activations and has full control over your ability to install the games you own!". Steam is far worse than a simple disc check. A disc check merely meant having to put in the key from the manual / case and have the disc in the drive - you could install the game 5 billion times and never had to worry about activation servers being turned off or the company going out of business. With Steam, you rely on them to even be able to install your game (let alone activate it) and if they ever go bust or decide certain older games aren't selling and they want to use the server resourced for other things *poof* your games that you paid for are GONE without you being paid a single cent for the destruction of your property.
I'll never use Steam because it's DRM. I have no problem with digital only distribution and I buy a metric ton of games from GOG.com - even ones I'll probably never finish because I want to support them for being the one company who gets it and treats their gaming customers with respect. I can make as many backups as I want of my GOG.com games so that if they ever go bust, I'll still have my games because there's no activation required.
Can YOU say the same about D3? or Origin? or any other system currently employed on AAA gaming?
I research every game before I buy it - if it has DRM, I don't buy it. It doesn't matter if it's a game I waited 12 years for (like Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2) and I've been a loyal fan of the franchise / company for two decades, if they put DRM on it to punish me for buying their game, then they don't get my money. It's THAT simple. I have zero tolerance for DRM and I will not reward any company that uses it. It doesn't matter if cracks are available, you're still paying them and saying "Good job on using DRM - keep adding more DRM to your games!"
I don't know how old you are, but sadly, people like you are killing my favorite hobby for the last 20-something years. Other than GOG.com, in the near future I probably won't be able to buy any games without DRM, which means I simply won't buy anything that's not on GOG.com.
But I'd willing to bet 95%+ of the posters here have DSL / cable / better and just like to bitch about any and all DRM
Right, because being annoyed with companies punishing their paying customers to try to screw over people who buy used games just like to whine. You're just a troll and one of these days when you go to play your favorite game and the company says "Sorry, the $60 you spent on that game is flushed down the toilet - we turned off the servers. Go fuck yourself." you'll finally learn why DRM is bad.
Queuing for single player would be bad. But right now, Diablo 3 is in the extremely embarrassing position of not even letting you play single player AT ALL.
Good. They deserve the bad press, game returns, lost sales, and hopefully class action lawsuit for being scum enough to use always on DRM (or any DRM).
Not true - they can ship before the release date as long as it doesn't ARRIVE before the release date. Amazon does this all the time with pre-orders - they send them 2 Day shipping so that they arrive on the release date.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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You don't consider forcefully taking away someone's property that they paid for to be harm? In that case, you'd better not be locking your doors or calling the police when you've been robbed or you're a hypocrite.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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Most things I have bought have broken or failed in some way within 15 years
Stop buying shit and start buying quality products. That includes not buying DRM-laden games.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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Heh, you rant about DRM and then say you encourage people to buy from Steam. [DarthVader_Voice]The irony is strong with this one[/DarthVader_Voice].
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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Prepare to see that change if they decide too many people are still playing Diablo II and not enough are playing Diablo III.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
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This means I've missed out on every Assassin's Creed game since the original and a few other titles to boot.
FYI, Good Old Games (gog.com) has the Directors Cut of Assassin's Creed for $19.99 - no DRM. That's where I've been buying most of my games lately, because I refuse to pay to be ass-raped with DRM. I got burned by Apple when iTunes first came out - never again will I touch anything with DRM.
Slashdot Mirror
Your "argument" isn't about facts, it's about emotion. You want to use some sob story to justify theft. It doesn't matter if every bad thing in the world happened to you and your life is horrible as a result, theft is still wrong.
Taxes to fund things like roads, police, military, FDA, etc aren't stealing. Taxes to transfer wealth from one group to another are stealing. The latter is no different than you pulling a gun and robbing someone to pay for your own bills - the only difference being that people like you believe it's "good" because the government says that they have the right to do it on your behalf.
I pay $40 for software and do my own taxes in about 15 minutes. I don't know WTF your mom is doing....
Except that I'm sure the government could have cut the bloated pay for their workers or eliminated unnecessary jobs. They screwed with the traffic lights and trash collection to fuck with the citizens and try to force them to vote for higher taxes. All the more reason to vote those people out of office and vote in someone who'll clean up the bloat.
On another note: There are places in the US where the government does garbage pickup? I've always lived in places where you pay for that directly and there's usually multiple places you can choose from so if you don't like the price at one place you can switch to another.
Taxes for Constitutionally authorized functions of the government (military, police, etc) are not theft. Taxes for the explicit purpose of transferring money from one person or group of people to another person or group of people are theft. That's the thing people like you don't grasp - there is more than one type of tax. Some are a necessary evil, others exist to punish one group and reward another - those taxes are theft.
its citizens have have collectively decided
[CITATION NEEDED]
Seriously, I'm a citizen and I was never asked my opinion about income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc. The government forces it on you - the best you can do is vote for a different person and HOPE that they will lower taxes.
^ someone got it - either sideslash didn't or he made a joke that failed.
Just four years ago I was an independent contractor buying my own health insurance - $80 a month. I don't know where you live, but I know poor state level laws (similar to Obamacare) in a few states caused insurance rates to go off the charts.
It's a lot harder to turn off entitlements.
And when you try, because the country is going broke and about to turn into a third world country, the people living off them riot and demand that things keep going downhill. I say all the reasonable people in Greece should've just gotten the hell out of Dodge and left the others to burn in their own poor decisions.
Both political parties are primarily uneducated lunatics. Hence why the US desperately needs to break the media's attachment to the two party system and their blatant manipulation during elections to keep people from being informed about other candidates. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have the countries best interest in mind - they have their own best interest in mind.
In this they are clearly calling for a militia that is controlled by the government.
No, "regulated" back then meant "trained". Thus, in order for the militia (meaning average people who show up with a gun for a common defense) to be well trained, they need to be able to have guns.
However, outside of the "regulated" bit, you're spot on. The founding fathers also explicitly stated in other documents that one of the primary reasons for the second amendment was to keep the government in check.
Anyone who wants to own a gun is the last person who should have one.
[CITATION NEEDED]
Just because they haven't done it in a decade doesn't mean that they CAN'T or WON'T at some point. They openly say in the ToS that they're not required to refund you or provide you with an offline copy if they ditch a game or end up shutting down.
Can I back up my Steam games? Yes I can. Can i install them on any system i own? yes I can
As long as they continue to let you - they can revoke that privilege at any time. Also, all the backups in the world mean nothing if they turn off the activation server. Do you really think that in another 10 years they'll still have the same games that they had when they launched? No - the kids with no attention span who only care about explosions won't buy them and they'll clear them out to make room for newer things.
A normal human can't play multiple systems at the same time!
Well guess what? A normal human CAN legally own more than one computer and CAN have a friend over or, god forbid, a girlfriend who wants to play the game with them. Legally, that does NOT require a new copy because they are both YOUR computers.
So I'm sorry but if the ONLY arguments you can come up with involve doom scenarios than you are no different than all the others spreading FUD and shilling for their causes. Either back up your statements with actual current facts or quit wasting our time with FUD.
They HAVE happened. Not with Steam, but with other games using DRM - like Madden *insert year here* where less than a year after it came out they killed the server for it to force people to upgrade. Steam will do it too eventually. The fact that you have the DRM industries cock shoved so far down your throat doesn't change that they can and will do it. But hey, why look at all the people who've been harmed by DRM when you can promote destroying an entire industry and hobby?
All my RealID friends are around to chat with, no matter what game they are in
If you wanna chat, go on Facebook, not a single player game.
Just that they honestly want the ONLY game experience to be the one that they think is "best", and that this is the online version.
I don't buy that for a second. This is a continuation of the (not quite as bad) always online DRM from Starcraft 2. Ever since the Activision merger Blizzard has gone downhill - fast. I used to buy every game they made for 18 years until they started spitting in their customers faces with with this DRM crap. The company I once held up as the having the best customer service in the industry has now lost my business forever and I will continue to recommend to others that they don't buy from Blizzard.
but I'll grant that it probably isn't motivated by piracy concerns.
Game companies have openly admitted in interviews that DRM is about killing the used game market and destroying your ability to resell your game, not about piracy.
"Respectfully", it was a discussion about the evils of DRM. I pointed out that buying a game with DRM is wasting your money because they WILL turn off that server and destroy your copy of the game - and you have no idea when that will be. It could be the day after you buy the game or one to two years later. It's not about choice of product, it's about buying a product that is supposed to have an eternal shelf life but the company built in a self destruct button just to force you to upgrade. Would you be saying the same stuff if we were talking about Ford putting a self destruct "feature" in their new cars that allows them to destroy your car and force you to buy a new one? I highly doubt it.
They do not have the right to code a self destruct feature into a product. Even the government has discussed banning DRM because it exists purely to harm consumers. The companies themselves have openly admitted that this is NOT about piracy or any other red herring, it's about trying to force people to buy more copies of a game so that they make higher profits.
Your analogy is horribly flawed. Phones need a network because it needs a way to route calls to each person (just like you need a server for online games - you need to route each persons data appropriately). There is no need whatsoever for connecting to a server for a SINGLE PLAYER game because there is no information to be routed.
Phone companies don't violate the First Sale doctrine because you can resell your goddamn phone. You cannot resell a game with DRM.
Again, your battery example doesn't make sense because Sony doesn't get to flip a switch and force your batteries to die. There's also a HUGE difference between "a physical product is no longer made" and a company intentionally destroying your existing property to force you to upgrade. Why is this too complicated for you to understand?
Yes, it IS a violation of your rights if they destroy your property that you paid for! If anyone else destroyed it, it would be arson. Yet people like you insist that it's OK for software companies to pull this shit.
Well as I said with phone companies, people are OK with it more often than you think.
No, you didn't. You rambled about something completely different that doesn't involve destroying someone's property and then claimed that they were the same.
For stuff that's reallt important to me, I'm happy to pay more to get somehting that I can pass on to my children. Games simply aren't that important, nor IMO should they be.
You're not paying MORE for a game without DRM. It's about not throwing your money away on something that will be useless in a couple of years.
When you buy it, there's a risk it will be lost. When you buy a game online, there's a risk the hosting company will shut down. Which risk is worse?
Seeing how no one will live long enough for a CD to die without someone intentionally destroying it and yet in the last few years we've seen games become non-functional due to asshole companies turning off servers, we already know the answer to that question. If you're responsible, your game on CD will outlive you. If you buy a DRM'd game, it very likely won't exist in a decade.
I'm still astounded that so many /.er see DRM for games as some sort of moral wrong. A practical consideration when buying a game? Sure. But morally? The game's creators have rights too.
They have the right to sell a game. That's it. They do NOT have the right to violate the Doctrine of First Sale and tell you that you cannot resell your game. They do NOT have the right to punish paying customers by installing malware on their systems. They have openly stated multiple times that DRM has NOTHING to do with piracy and everything to do with preventing reselling games and forcing users to buy the next game in the series because they deactivate the older games.
Would you be OK with any other company telling you that they have control over how / when / if you can use your property and having the ability to destroy your property at will? I highly doubt it, so why put up with that garbage from a game company?
It's ironic because you rant against DRM and then say "Hey, go use this DRM service that requires online activations and has full control over your ability to install the games you own!". Steam is far worse than a simple disc check. A disc check merely meant having to put in the key from the manual / case and have the disc in the drive - you could install the game 5 billion times and never had to worry about activation servers being turned off or the company going out of business. With Steam, you rely on them to even be able to install your game (let alone activate it) and if they ever go bust or decide certain older games aren't selling and they want to use the server resourced for other things *poof* your games that you paid for are GONE without you being paid a single cent for the destruction of your property.
I'll never use Steam because it's DRM. I have no problem with digital only distribution and I buy a metric ton of games from GOG.com - even ones I'll probably never finish because I want to support them for being the one company who gets it and treats their gaming customers with respect. I can make as many backups as I want of my GOG.com games so that if they ever go bust, I'll still have my games because there's no activation required.
Can YOU say the same about D3? or Origin? or any other system currently employed on AAA gaming?
I research every game before I buy it - if it has DRM, I don't buy it. It doesn't matter if it's a game I waited 12 years for (like Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2) and I've been a loyal fan of the franchise / company for two decades, if they put DRM on it to punish me for buying their game, then they don't get my money. It's THAT simple. I have zero tolerance for DRM and I will not reward any company that uses it. It doesn't matter if cracks are available, you're still paying them and saying "Good job on using DRM - keep adding more DRM to your games!"
I don't know how old you are, but sadly, people like you are killing my favorite hobby for the last 20-something years. Other than GOG.com, in the near future I probably won't be able to buy any games without DRM, which means I simply won't buy anything that's not on GOG.com.
But I'd willing to bet 95%+ of the posters here have DSL / cable / better and just like to bitch about any and all DRM
Right, because being annoyed with companies punishing their paying customers to try to screw over people who buy used games just like to whine. You're just a troll and one of these days when you go to play your favorite game and the company says "Sorry, the $60 you spent on that game is flushed down the toilet - we turned off the servers. Go fuck yourself." you'll finally learn why DRM is bad.
Queuing for single player would be bad. But right now, Diablo 3 is in the extremely embarrassing position of not even letting you play single player AT ALL.
Good. They deserve the bad press, game returns, lost sales, and hopefully class action lawsuit for being scum enough to use always on DRM (or any DRM).
Not true - they can ship before the release date as long as it doesn't ARRIVE before the release date. Amazon does this all the time with pre-orders - they send them 2 Day shipping so that they arrive on the release date.
You don't consider forcefully taking away someone's property that they paid for to be harm? In that case, you'd better not be locking your doors or calling the police when you've been robbed or you're a hypocrite.
Most things I have bought have broken or failed in some way within 15 years
Stop buying shit and start buying quality products. That includes not buying DRM-laden games.
Heh, you rant about DRM and then say you encourage people to buy from Steam. [DarthVader_Voice]The irony is strong with this one[/DarthVader_Voice].
Prepare to see that change if they decide too many people are still playing Diablo II and not enough are playing Diablo III.
This means I've missed out on every Assassin's Creed game since the original and a few other titles to boot.
FYI, Good Old Games (gog.com) has the Directors Cut of Assassin's Creed for $19.99 - no DRM. That's where I've been buying most of my games lately, because I refuse to pay to be ass-raped with DRM. I got burned by Apple when iTunes first came out - never again will I touch anything with DRM.