I never had a problem with Steam. I liked it. Found it very useful when I wanted to reinstall the original Half-Life. Just enter the key and it downloads etc...
But there's more and more crap like this happening. I know folk who have been falsely accused of cheating and had their accounts locked out. Now this nonsense with the Orange Box. I would recommend to anyone who bought the Orange Box and got screwed by Valve to look around online, as there are Steam free cracked versions of everything in the package out there. Obviously TFC2 is largely pointless, but Portal etc... Go forth and download the cracked version. You've already paid for it.
How is it deliberately cheating them out of money? Right now the Canadian dollar is stronger than the US dollar. However, prices are still as they were ten years ago and significantly higher in Canada. So apparently it's alright for Canadian consumers to be cheated and wind up paying over the odds, but Valve are getting pissy when people try to do the reverse.
On Amazon Canada, the price for the Orange Box works out at just over $55 Canadian right now. The regular US Amazon price works out at just over $46 Canadian. Even with shipping, the US one is still cheaper than the native Canadian release.
I paid $2. Since the stats seem indicate for a CD sale the actual artist only gets about 72 cents, I figured doubling their money was fair, especially as I'm not really a fan of the band and wanted to support the business model more than anything else.
As for people pirating... Good grief. I'd be willing to bet I have less money than 90% of the people who pirated it rather than pay a buck or two. Shame on all of them.
As a Nine Inch Nails fan, though, I am far more interested in what Trent Reznor will do now he's label free. (I admit to being slightly annoyed Radiohead beat him to the punch.)
I have always despised the iPod. Massively overpriced etc... However, with the iPod Touch, bloody Steve Jobs has finally made me want an iPod. (I have absolutely no use for an iPhone). But I have no delusions of being able to run third party apps or whatever on it. I want it for what it does out of the box. Anything else down the line is an added bonus.
As for the iPhone... The early adopters got burned with the price drop. And now the people who hacked their phones can't do what they want to do with their precious toy. I'm sorry, but I find that quite amusing. I realise this will be an unpopular opinion, but Apple is a business like any other. If they want to cripple third party apps for now, that's entirely their choice and, sadly, their right. Anyone who harbors the delusion that when they buy a device they actually own it and can do what they want has clearly not been paying attention to any technology of the last 5-10 years.
It's not like Apple didn't warn folk this was coming, which is a hell of a lot more than other companies have done.
What kind of antique system are you using? I can rip an entire album in about 5 minutes. Case in point, Nine Inch Nails "Year Zero" cost me $11. It would take me longer to buy and download it from Amazon than it did to rip it. My time buying said physical disk was not wasted because I picked it up when I was out doing something else.
You quite clearly hugely overestimate how much your time is worth.
Not only that, I find it endlessly amusing people see buying a digital replica of a song a good deal, especially when you work out the prices. I worked it out yesterday. The album I was looking at was a mere dollar cheaper in MP3 format. So that extra dollar gets you a physical disk you can make your own MP3's from, or if you want lossless, quality sound, FLAC format, (not an option when all you have is an MP3) all the packaging etc...
Yep. Sadly justice these days goes not to those who deserve it, but rather those with the best paid lawyers.
If law enforcement would quit whoring itself to corporations to inflate their statistics with bogus cases like this, and actually took the resources used on this to track down, say, serial killers, rapists etc... The world would be a much better place.
But apparently Jim Franklin at Scumbag Games wanting a slightly better Porsche is more important than anything with honest to goodness traumatized victims who have been scarred physically or mentally for the rest of their lives. No, far better to shove some software pirate in jail, rather than some criminal that would take actual police work to put behind bars.
Yeah. He was a complete cheapskate. In fact given the land he owned etc... On paper, he may very well have been a billionaire. He'd wear threadbare pants, old shoes, a coat that looked like it lived through World War 2 etc...
He was a nice enough guy, but you would have him pegged as a farm worker at best if you met him. Not the richest guy for a hundred miles in any direction.
Sad thing is, he had absolutely no family. Nobody to leave everything too. (I fully expect he would try to take it with him to be quite honest.) Meaning all those lovely bills will wind up either with the government, or in the pockets of some dishonest house clearance folk.
according to Sean Oh, a millionaire. You wouldn't be able to glean this from looking at his bedroom."
Most millionaires aren't flashy bastards though. I once had a boss who was a multi-millonaire. He looked like a hobo. In fact the only thing that gave away how rich he was was if you were allowed into his attic where he collected and framed $50 bills. Seriously, he collects and frames them. He has THOUSANDS of them.
I reside in the great nation of Canada, fuckwit, where downloading music is still legal due to the levies we pay on storage mediums like blank CD's which go to the CRIA. (The Canadian courts, when allowing the levies added a caveat that by charging us, the CRIA were agreeing that downloading was legal. The CRIA are now trying to rescind this so they can start suing. Which is great... Except if they do and DO start suing, folk could, technically, use the argument that they're using older media and thus already "paid" for the music.) Levies on CD's... That mean's that Celine fucking Dion gets money whenever I burn a fucking Linux distro. How great is THAT!
Rather than enter into a long diatribe about how you're a waste of space and need to shove your opinion in that gaping goatse.cx sized chasm you call an asshole, I think I'll just take the path of least resistance, and say "Fuck you" and be done with you, AC scum.
Working on the logic of some assholes on here, you just said something positive about something, ergo you must be a shill for Tool.
Anyway, Tool aren't bad. I've been a NIN fan for about 14 years now, and in 2000, I started boycotting RIAA CD releases. Trent's new album this year, "Year Zero", is the first CD I've bought in seven years. Why did I buy it? Had it been a traditional release, I would never have bought it most likely, despite being a huge fan of Trent's work. However, Trent's marketing, in particular leaking several tracks on USB drives and dumping them at various concert venues was enough to hook me (not to mention the multiple websites and the extremely elaborate back story for the whole album). Because of all that, I wound up buying the CD the week it was released.
Trent has already said that once his contract with Interscope is up (one more album) he's going to an online distribution model and not bothering with a label.
As for Trent's comments... I already knew his attitude toward the labels. On that video I'm more interested in the fact there seems to be not one for TWO security guys right in front of the person with the camera not doing anything about the dude with the camera.:)
Hate replying to my own message, but I just renamed the file saved-messages and copied it to my PINE mail folder and am reading it in PINE. (NOTE: Change the name if you already have a folder named saved-messages obviously.) Since somebody reading this will probably wonder what to do with the file.
in front of Bobby, Brad, Joe and Joe's infamous candy bucket, there are a couple dozen CDs and DVDs totally up for grabs. There's some pop, rock, rap, r&b, and more. It's totally free, so help yourselves.
Gee, I'm sure THOSE didn't come from their corporate paymasters at the RIAA...
Says the oh so brave AC hiding behind his anonymity. Grow a set, then we'll talk.
And yes, you ARE idiots if you immediately believe that because someone has something positive to say, they must work for the company.
You believe what you want. Sadly my bank account shows how very wrong you are in your accusation. But if you want to a be a typical idiotic Slashdot neanderthal who assumes "Positive comments on a commercial product = shill" you go right ahead and keep living in your brightly colored dream world.
Except for one slight flaw. I have absolutely nothing to do with Elicense except experience with using software protected by them. I also have experience of TryMedia (used to protect the great race sim rFactor. Oh wait, I just spoke positively about TryMedia and rFactor. I must work for TryMedia and ISI as well.)
The guy asked a question, I gave an answer based on years of interest in software piracy and copy protection schemes. That makes me a shill does it?
With Elicense, you get an order ID. You enter that, it contacts their server and "unlocks" the software. You can choose how many installations are allowed as well. For example I have a few games that use it that come with two licenses, so you can run it on two computers. Another title only gives you one.
The install is painless (it installs a license control service that in many years of using I've never had any sort of issue with), and it stops a LOT of piracy. It IS possible to "unwrap" the executable, but of all the Elicense protected software I've used, I've only ever seen one game cracked. (Ironically it is the most obscure of the ones I own.)
I am vehemently opposed to DRM, copy protection, call it what you will, but I find Elicense extremely inoffensive due to it's ease of use. DRM should not impact legitimate consumers, and this one is the only one I've come across that has never caused me any sort of negative experience.
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I never had a problem with Steam. I liked it. Found it very useful when I wanted to reinstall the original Half-Life. Just enter the key and it downloads etc...
But there's more and more crap like this happening. I know folk who have been falsely accused of cheating and had their accounts locked out. Now this nonsense with the Orange Box. I would recommend to anyone who bought the Orange Box and got screwed by Valve to look around online, as there are Steam free cracked versions of everything in the package out there. Obviously TFC2 is largely pointless, but Portal etc... Go forth and download the cracked version. You've already paid for it.
How is it deliberately cheating them out of money? Right now the Canadian dollar is stronger than the US dollar. However, prices are still as they were ten years ago and significantly higher in Canada. So apparently it's alright for Canadian consumers to be cheated and wind up paying over the odds, but Valve are getting pissy when people try to do the reverse.
On Amazon Canada, the price for the Orange Box works out at just over $55 Canadian right now. The regular US Amazon price works out at just over $46 Canadian. Even with shipping, the US one is still cheaper than the native Canadian release.
I misread it as "Let's Lamers Take a Hit"... I was looking forward to pounding some...
I paid $2. Since the stats seem indicate for a CD sale the actual artist only gets about 72 cents, I figured doubling their money was fair, especially as I'm not really a fan of the band and wanted to support the business model more than anything else.
As for people pirating... Good grief. I'd be willing to bet I have less money than 90% of the people who pirated it rather than pay a buck or two. Shame on all of them.
As a Nine Inch Nails fan, though, I am far more interested in what Trent Reznor will do now he's label free. (I admit to being slightly annoyed Radiohead beat him to the punch.)
Never fails. Anti-Microsoft story... Ridiculous porn troll in first few comments.
Bet the IP address resolves to the Redmond area.
If that's true, it's failing miserably as I quite often see games online before they're released. The full release version, not a leaked beta.
Did you not read the post? It clearly says that at the end!
I'm more amused that someone has tagged this story "linuxsucks". Kudos mystery tagger.
I have always despised the iPod. Massively overpriced etc... However, with the iPod Touch, bloody Steve Jobs has finally made me want an iPod. (I have absolutely no use for an iPhone). But I have no delusions of being able to run third party apps or whatever on it. I want it for what it does out of the box. Anything else down the line is an added bonus.
As for the iPhone... The early adopters got burned with the price drop. And now the people who hacked their phones can't do what they want to do with their precious toy. I'm sorry, but I find that quite amusing. I realise this will be an unpopular opinion, but Apple is a business like any other. If they want to cripple third party apps for now, that's entirely their choice and, sadly, their right. Anyone who harbors the delusion that when they buy a device they actually own it and can do what they want has clearly not been paying attention to any technology of the last 5-10 years.
It's not like Apple didn't warn folk this was coming, which is a hell of a lot more than other companies have done.
What kind of antique system are you using? I can rip an entire album in about 5 minutes. Case in point, Nine Inch Nails "Year Zero" cost me $11. It would take me longer to buy and download it from Amazon than it did to rip it. My time buying said physical disk was not wasted because I picked it up when I was out doing something else.
You quite clearly hugely overestimate how much your time is worth.
Not only that, I find it endlessly amusing people see buying a digital replica of a song a good deal, especially when you work out the prices. I worked it out yesterday. The album I was looking at was a mere dollar cheaper in MP3 format. So that extra dollar gets you a physical disk you can make your own MP3's from, or if you want lossless, quality sound, FLAC format, (not an option when all you have is an MP3) all the packaging etc...
It's like settling for a JPG of the Mona Lisa.
Yep. Sadly justice these days goes not to those who deserve it, but rather those with the best paid lawyers.
If law enforcement would quit whoring itself to corporations to inflate their statistics with bogus cases like this, and actually took the resources used on this to track down, say, serial killers, rapists etc... The world would be a much better place.
But apparently Jim Franklin at Scumbag Games wanting a slightly better Porsche is more important than anything with honest to goodness traumatized victims who have been scarred physically or mentally for the rest of their lives. No, far better to shove some software pirate in jail, rather than some criminal that would take actual police work to put behind bars.
God knows that's preferable to actually READING something of Doctrow's...
Shit! Wish I'd thought of that when I worked for him!
Yeah. He was a complete cheapskate. In fact given the land he owned etc... On paper, he may very well have been a billionaire. He'd wear threadbare pants, old shoes, a coat that looked like it lived through World War 2 etc...
He was a nice enough guy, but you would have him pegged as a farm worker at best if you met him. Not the richest guy for a hundred miles in any direction.
Sad thing is, he had absolutely no family. Nobody to leave everything too. (I fully expect he would try to take it with him to be quite honest.) Meaning all those lovely bills will wind up either with the government, or in the pockets of some dishonest house clearance folk.
Ah well.
according to Sean Oh, a millionaire. You wouldn't be able to glean this from looking at his bedroom."
Most millionaires aren't flashy bastards though. I once had a boss who was a multi-millonaire. He looked like a hobo. In fact the only thing that gave away how rich he was was if you were allowed into his attic where he collected and framed $50 bills. Seriously, he collects and frames them. He has THOUSANDS of them.
I reside in the great nation of Canada, fuckwit, where downloading music is still legal due to the levies we pay on storage mediums like blank CD's which go to the CRIA. (The Canadian courts, when allowing the levies added a caveat that by charging us, the CRIA were agreeing that downloading was legal. The CRIA are now trying to rescind this so they can start suing. Which is great... Except if they do and DO start suing, folk could, technically, use the argument that they're using older media and thus already "paid" for the music.) Levies on CD's... That mean's that Celine fucking Dion gets money whenever I burn a fucking Linux distro. How great is THAT!
Rather than enter into a long diatribe about how you're a waste of space and need to shove your opinion in that gaping goatse.cx sized chasm you call an asshole, I think I'll just take the path of least resistance, and say "Fuck you" and be done with you, AC scum.
Working on the logic of some assholes on here, you just said something positive about something, ergo you must be a shill for Tool.
Anyway, Tool aren't bad. I've been a NIN fan for about 14 years now, and in 2000, I started boycotting RIAA CD releases. Trent's new album this year, "Year Zero", is the first CD I've bought in seven years. Why did I buy it? Had it been a traditional release, I would never have bought it most likely, despite being a huge fan of Trent's work. However, Trent's marketing, in particular leaking several tracks on USB drives and dumping them at various concert venues was enough to hook me (not to mention the multiple websites and the extremely elaborate back story for the whole album). Because of all that, I wound up buying the CD the week it was released.
Trent has already said that once his contract with Interscope is up (one more album) he's going to an online distribution model and not bothering with a label.
As for Trent's comments... I already knew his attitude toward the labels. On that video I'm more interested in the fact there seems to be not one for TWO security guys right in front of the person with the camera not doing anything about the dude with the camera.:)
No, that's not what I said at all, troll.
This place gets more like Digg every day.
Hate replying to my own message, but I just renamed the file saved-messages and copied it to my PINE mail folder and am reading it in PINE. (NOTE: Change the name if you already have a folder named saved-messages obviously.) Since somebody reading this will probably wonder what to do with the file.
Some interesting stuff in these emails.
in front of Bobby, Brad, Joe and Joe's infamous candy
bucket, there are a couple dozen CDs and DVDs totally up for grabs.
There's some pop, rock, rap, r&b, and more. It's totally free, so
help yourselves.
Gee, I'm sure THOSE didn't come from their corporate paymasters at the RIAA...
Read the story yesterday. Downloaded the emails. Not had a look yet, but the more I hear about them, the more I laugh.
Do not try and entrap the torrent community, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
Says the oh so brave AC hiding behind his anonymity. Grow a set, then we'll talk.
And yes, you ARE idiots if you immediately believe that because someone has something positive to say, they must work for the company.
You believe what you want. Sadly my bank account shows how very wrong you are in your accusation. But if you want to a be a typical idiotic Slashdot neanderthal who assumes "Positive comments on a commercial product = shill" you go right ahead and keep living in your brightly colored dream world.
Or just turn Windows Update off entirely, at the services level. First thing I do on any Windows box. Just checked my event logs. Nothing happened.
Except for one slight flaw. I have absolutely nothing to do with Elicense except experience with using software protected by them. I also have experience of TryMedia (used to protect the great race sim rFactor. Oh wait, I just spoke positively about TryMedia and rFactor. I must work for TryMedia and ISI as well.)
The guy asked a question, I gave an answer based on years of interest in software piracy and copy protection schemes. That makes me a shill does it?
You people are fucking idiots.
My recommendation would be Elicense or similar.
With Elicense, you get an order ID. You enter that, it contacts their server and "unlocks" the software. You can choose how many installations are allowed as well. For example I have a few games that use it that come with two licenses, so you can run it on two computers. Another title only gives you one.
The install is painless (it installs a license control service that in many years of using I've never had any sort of issue with), and it stops a LOT of piracy. It IS possible to "unwrap" the executable, but of all the Elicense protected software I've used, I've only ever seen one game cracked. (Ironically it is the most obscure of the ones I own.)
I am vehemently opposed to DRM, copy protection, call it what you will, but I find Elicense extremely inoffensive due to it's ease of use. DRM should not impact legitimate consumers, and this one is the only one I've come across that has never caused me any sort of negative experience.