That should change soon enough. Most people use Kijiji where I live (Canada) and Craigslist ads are virtually non-existent in pretty much every category. I'm not sure why that's the case, but simply having a majority of users is a temporary advantage at best - competitors with similar services will eventually be more dominant (i.e. Myspace vs Facebook)
Even so, the 0.03 second difference is tiny compared to the actual time difference observed, and makes Johnson's complaint irrelevant. His reaction time 'was 440 thousandths of a second. Normally athletes leave between 130 and 140 thousandths of a second'. So basically he left 3/10 of a second later than normally expected, whereas the difference in hearing sounds based on starting position could only make a difference of 3/100 of a second - so what about the rest of the delay, how is that explainable? The speed of sound isn't the only reason he left ~300 thousands of a second later than the competitors
Also, this is assuming that the sound is only emanating from a source directly perpendicular to where the athletes face. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the guy with the pistol used to stand directly behind the competitors? That means the athletes heard the sound at the same time. If that's based on a "beep" now instead, isn't the easy / correct solution just to place the speaker directly behind the competitors? This sounds like an overly complex solution to a simple problem
True, this is certainly helping their image, but the reasons are different that what's expected. Whoever received that cease and desist letter didn't have to post the letter from JD, but they did (I really doubt JD expected this kind of response and feedback). If it's profitable because of positive feedback from the response of this letter (because people choose to buy JD now after reading this) then it's unintentional, which is the noticeable difference here. The motives appear to be something resembling altruism in a corporation - something rarely seen. The cease and desist letter wasn't intended as a result of profit.
No One!! It's a freakin' word. Not copyrighted, trademarked by anyone. You don't have to pay Disney or the Catholic Church or the Government anything to use the word "marraige" (yet..)
Picture frames are also disassembled and other items searched as thoroughly as possible.
I'm not sure what the funniest thing about your post is quite yet. It could be
1) The above quote on picture frame dissassembly, by far the most ridiculous termination procedure I've even heard of
2) The fact that every single one of the other responses (so far) fail to see your attempt at humor
3) Some of the above angry responses are actually modded insightful, acknowledging that dozers of other modders didn't quite get it either!
Reminds me of the message in a NOFX song, Dinosaurs will Die (or maybe you were referring to it)? Some of the lyrics:
Prehistoric music industry
Three feet in la brea tar
Extinction never felt so good
If you think anyone would feel badly
You are sadly, mistaken
The time has come for evolution
Fuck collusion, kill the five
Whatever happened to the handshake?
Whatever happened to deals no-one would break?
What happened to integrity?
It's still there it always was
For playing music just because
A million reasons why
Your house is a private residence, so they can't film that and make it public. A protest generally takes place in the public, where anyone is permitted to record
We also know why - you hate DRM, you don't like how "single player" should require internet, blah blah blah.. And you're giddy with Schadenfreude that some people aren't quite satisfied with the game
But this is story is about the real money auction house, the banning of accounts, the bots being banned, perhaps false positives etc... Can we please try to keep this discussion relevant? Personally my account's not banned, and I'm seeing a lot less spam in the general forums.
Comparing the RIAA and Oatmeal isn't a terribly valid swap.. the other comments here already explain some stark differences between the two. A better comparison might be FunnyJunk and ThePirateBay - both sites contain material (pictures, movies, or music) that's copyrighted and make no or little attempt to remove infringing material. They both profit through the work of other people, and deprive the original creators of the profit. TPB gets a lot of love from slashdot and elsewhere, so why all the hate on FunnyJunk?
Well I'll try to answer that.
- Hatred for RIAA / MPAA. Music pirates don't believe the original artists are missing out on profits because the industry collects them all, therefore feel less guilt pirating music. Also, they sue people for ridiculous amounts of money
- Difficulty of acquiring material. A picture can easily be seen, so it's no inconvenience by viewing the pics on one site or the other (maybe an influx of ads). Some material can't be acquired at an affordable price (or at all - see the Game of Thrones pirating article on slashdot. Even the Oatmeal had a comic on this).
- FunnyJunk sent out a request for $20,000 - a ridiculous demand considering they're the ones infringing.
Really, the 20K demand is what started this big debacle. If FunnyJunk hadn't sent that, then I'm sure most people would be rather apathetic on the whole scenario. But we (people / slashdot) generally hates frivolous lawsuits, which is why we're reading about this today.
Facts:
FunnyJunk encourages users to upload content from elsewhere on the internet
FunnyJunk encourages users to violate the copyrights of content producers
Sorry, but can you actually verify that? Not trolling, but I can't find any sources where they "encourage" users to upload content from other sites. Are the forum admins actually telling people it's fine to upload content from elsewhere on the internet? That's a pretty bold claim that's been repeated here a few times - an example below from their TOS seems to indicate otherwise (more details if you read more at http://www.funnyjunk.com/termsofservice/ - unless this was very recently updated as a result of this fiasco)
24. User agrees to upload only Third-Party Content for which User holds intellectual property rights, including but not limited to, copyrights, trademarks, rights to the use of personal name and likeness, and rights of publicity.
I'm not trying to defend FJ here, they're clearly the assholes for attempting to sue for $20k here. But there's a big difference between actively encouraging users to pirate material (something you could argue that The Pirate Bay does, given their tongue-in-cheek name and history of mocking DMCA take-down notices) - and simply not removing copyrighted material fast enough (apathy, or negligence).
"Information wants to be free!" My favorite stupid colloquialism. I wasn't aware that non-living entities, objects or concepts were capable of expressing the emotion of desire!
Also, money wants to be spent, my car wants to break down, justice wants to be served, and my toaster wants to burn bread. All of those statements want to be related somehow as well, but transitive logic doesn't want to co-operate.
To be fair, democrats have been getting the vast majority of the black vote for at least 30 years now, somewhere around 90%. Clinton had the lowest percentage at "only" 83-85%. Sure, we can recognize that some percentage of the black population purely voted for Obama because he is also black, (thereby ignoring policy) - but it's probably around the same percentage of people not voting for him for the exact same reason. 96-98% of black americans didn't "ignore all policy, all politics, all qualifications" etc.. when they voted for Obama, they did because republican policies fuck them over a hell of a lot more than democrat policies (wasn't always this way, but it has been for at least for a few decades now).
In some alternate universe, Hillary Clinton is running against Herman Cain for the 2012 election. Herman Cain is not getting 90%+ of the black vote - doubtful that it would be even be 50%.
Exactly the problem here. Until digital distribution was available, most of the music being purchased prior to that came from a select few artists. The record store would carry material from maybe 100 artists or so (rough estimate). They simply couldn't carry music from 10,000 different bands there, due to size constraints. 1% of the artists making 99% of the money.
The amount people spend on music hasn't really changes by that much of a factor - it's just that there's more available artists now. The other 9900 artists that weren't popular enough to get in the record industry are now getting heard. They're just starting to get a cut now, via spotify or whatever
If the concern is "taken out of context", then equip every officer with video cameras - record as much as possible. They already do this (or should) with the dashboard cams - if there's a discrepancy in the videos and worried about people trying to pull a James O'Keefe style stunt on ACORN by editing videos, then surely the video showing the real story eliminates that chance.
But we know that's a bullshit excuse. Dashboard cams "mysteriously" have malfunctions, or they're forgotten to be turned on. Other video recordings from bystanders are confiscated or destroyed. It's not because of "context", it's because the cops know damn well they're about to do something that they're not supposed to. Yes, I'd be annoyed too if someone set up a camera in my cubicle to record me too, and the "if i'm doing nothing wrong" argument wouldn't be any consolation. But if my co-workers were stealing supplies, vandalizing equipment and randomly shitting on other people's desks, you can be your ass that the management would put install some video cameras to figure out how to weed out the culprits. If bad cops shit on your freedoms, and even the good cops won't rat them out (blue shield), then it's time to install some video cameras. Anyway, I know you're not in disagreement here on overall recording of cops, but the "videos could be used out of context" doesn't weigh in as strong as "cops have been abusing their power for too long" in my opinion.
Better yet, eliminate the subsidies on food we have now. There's no good reason why a big mac meal should cost as much as a rice / noodle bowl, or a large salad or a much healthier equivalent. There's virtually no subsidies for veggies and healthy food - the majority of the subsidy share goes towards feed grains (resulting in cheaper prices in beef, not including actual cattle subsidies, which were about $227 Million in 2010), and corn (where a huge chunk goes towards HFCS, arguably worse than sugar).
The beef subsidies irk me the most - if there's an obesity 'epidemic' in the United States, then why the hell is the government artificially lowering the price of one of the most unhealthy meats there is? Fatty foods don't have to cost less than healthy foods here, and they shouldn't. Put all beef subsidies towards broccoli farming and we'll see a lot less obesity.
Fair enough - single player seems like it shouldn't be required. But from what I read about it, your single player character is tied into your account (same char when switching between multi player and single player). Sort of like an MMO - maybe done for hacking / cheat prevention - if all your character data is saved online on Blizzard's servers, then it makes hacking your character a lot harder, or near impossible.
I'm not saying the DRM isn't annoying for single player, but a 10-second check from my stable internet connection before playing a marathon session isn't going to make me stop purchasing the game, and neither is a few hours of downtime on launch day. But that's the alarmist reaction I'm seeing in "insightful" comments peppered on this thread.
Yes, it sucks if you have little or no internet, and I sympathize with you then. 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
Really mods? Not seeing anything terribly insightful here...
I don't care too much to the DRM myself, but if it's part of the requirements - then meh, i'll install it. And so will the other 2 million people that ordered this game. Some other possibly relevant details:
- non invasive DRM / tied to the client. You're logged in but it doesn't seem like an additional program is running. Integrated better than steam, or origin (which stay active when you exit the game, somewhat annoying)
- Almost always works. I'm not sure how many "9s" I can say that it's constantly up or working, but from experience with SC2, Diablo 2 and other other games, battle.net is almost always up. Not working on launch day? Well I'll cut them some slack on the release day of the product, with 2 million or so people trying to play. The track record at Blizzard is pretty good, and i'm sure that after another 24 hours or so, all issues there will be resolved (if they aren't already). Compare that with Assassin's Creed 2 - didn't they have like 3 consecutive weeks of login / drm issues?
- Single player tied into the multiplayer. I haven't played this game yet, but I'm pretty sure that when you're playing single player, your character information and leveling and whatnot is tied into multiplayer. If that's the case, it's not truly "single player" in the sense that you're constantly progressing more like an MMO, where your data isn't kept on client side.
- Hacks / cheats. Remember the old diablo, when everyone had their "whale armor of the gods +99" and hacks ran rampant? Same for starcraft, and most multiplayer games. If DRM helps reducing hacking (or eliminate it altogether, then bring it on.
I'm not sure why slashdot hates the DRM here so much. There's a very absolutist position stance taken by many... that *all* DRM is inherently evil and they'll never buy any game with DRM. I can perhaps sympathize with those that don't have steady or constant internet connections - maybe if you're living in the country or with 3rd world infrastructure you can't play this game as a result. But if you have a steady internet connection, then quit whining about *all* DRM. Some is bad (Ubisoft), and some is barely noticable (Blizzard), it's not so black & white.
And every 2 months for the last 10 years or so, someone always has to reassure that "Hey piracy isn't technically theft - theft only occurs when the owner is deprived of their possessions - this is copyright infringement". Perhaps in an attempt to justify or rationalize piracy, though that may not be your intention.
Yes yes... we *know* it's not stealing or theft already. That doesn't make it ok or justify this by any means whatsoever.
Saying theft is not the same as piracy, is like saying lying is not the same as telling a story and omitting important details - it's a feeble attempt to make your actions seem less immoral even though you know what you're doing is wrong. If your wife asks you what you did last night, and you only say "went to the movies", and later she finds out you did some blow and went to the strippers well I bet she won't be happy with that. Oh but hey, you weren't *technically* lying because you didn't say you didn't go - you just omitted that detail in your story- so that makes it all better right?
Yes, copyright infringement technically isn't theft. But it might as well be, and it should carry the same penalty and weight because it's close enough to theft - and it's exactly the same for the person doing the stealing (only the owner is affected more through theft than through piracy). Pirating a $10 movie should carry roughly the same penalty as stealing $10 worth of goods from a convenience store. And don't give me that "but you're not depriving the owner of anything!" argument either, else I might have to rant again.
Nah, trust me, move as soon as you can, it's not nearly as bad as it seems here. We certainly don't like Harper & the conservative government - but the level of crazy in the conservatives here doesn't even come close to a Bachman / Santorum level.
There have been numerous conservative scandals in the news in the last year or so, but I've still yet to hear a fellow Canuck say "That's it! I'm sick of this country - I'm moving to America!"
Speaking of reacting to situations, what if a nearby driver cuts you off or makes a bonehead move that almost results in an accident with your vehicle? Can we expect some sort of autonomous honking combined with some robotic middle finger deployment? It would be nice if I didn't have to express my own road rage - that would look a little silly coming from the passenger or back seat.
"In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of magical xylophone? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder. "
If you're anything like comic book guy, (and I am myself a bit) then that could also be one of the big peeves you have with the show. Every 5 minutes in the show I could/facepalm about something that doesn't make sense, or some poor decision made by one of the main characters. But my wife loves the show, so I'll continue to watch it for a while. I find the premise doesn't make a lot of sense, the technical accuracy is off, and the characters seem to continue to make poor decisions. But maybe the show is more fantasy than science fiction and geared towards a female audience (as suggested earlier in this thread) - The show seems to be more based on character relationships and the ongoing sexual tension between the doctor and the companion and philosophical / ethical conundrums. Perhaps it really shouldn't be classified as a sci-fi show then, despite seeming to be like one (along the same principle of how some people might classify Star Wars as sci-fi just because it's in space with lasers and aliens, though it's not sci-fi at all).
"I'm sorry, you cannot continue watching your regularly scheduled programming until you view the following message from our sponsors / message from our government"
How long before this is implemented? With PVR now, you can skip through ads, much to the disdain of advertisers. If you don't have that right now, at least you can change the channel or leave the room or something during a commercial. With this technology, maybe you'll be forced to actually watch the commercials now...
Except that if you don't watch those mandatory commercials (which will eventually be integrated with this technology somehow), you won't be able to watch TV.
Piecework works for a few industries here and there - but mostly manual labor or tedious repetitive work where it's easy to set a quota. I used to be a treeplanter and I had no problem with the payment system there - you work harder, you get paid more (paid per tree). Seems pretty fair to me.
Piecework would be a nightmare for any sort of IT work. Most projects run over budget, and take much longer than expected, and there's all sorts of problems that happen. This would be true for most industries or jobs where there's really no easily measurable quantity based system. On top of that, most people would prefer a more consistent salary every months. Most north americans have lots of things purchased on credit (mortgage, car lease, TVs etc..) - they can't risk having some months where they get paid significantly less than others (even if it might mean more payment in other months that equate to the same annual salary)
Slashdot Mirror
That should change soon enough. Most people use Kijiji where I live (Canada) and Craigslist ads are virtually non-existent in pretty much every category. I'm not sure why that's the case, but simply having a majority of users is a temporary advantage at best - competitors with similar services will eventually be more dominant (i.e. Myspace vs Facebook)
Even so, the 0.03 second difference is tiny compared to the actual time difference observed, and makes Johnson's complaint irrelevant. His reaction time 'was 440 thousandths of a second. Normally athletes leave between 130 and 140 thousandths of a second'. So basically he left 3/10 of a second later than normally expected, whereas the difference in hearing sounds based on starting position could only make a difference of 3/100 of a second - so what about the rest of the delay, how is that explainable? The speed of sound isn't the only reason he left ~300 thousands of a second later than the competitors
Also, this is assuming that the sound is only emanating from a source directly perpendicular to where the athletes face. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the guy with the pistol used to stand directly behind the competitors? That means the athletes heard the sound at the same time. If that's based on a "beep" now instead, isn't the easy / correct solution just to place the speaker directly behind the competitors? This sounds like an overly complex solution to a simple problem
True, this is certainly helping their image, but the reasons are different that what's expected. Whoever received that cease and desist letter didn't have to post the letter from JD, but they did (I really doubt JD expected this kind of response and feedback). If it's profitable because of positive feedback from the response of this letter (because people choose to buy JD now after reading this) then it's unintentional, which is the noticeable difference here. The motives appear to be something resembling altruism in a corporation - something rarely seen. The cease and desist letter wasn't intended as a result of profit.
No One!! It's a freakin' word. Not copyrighted, trademarked by anyone. You don't have to pay Disney or the Catholic Church or the Government anything to use the word "marraige" (yet..)
Picture frames are also disassembled and other items searched as thoroughly as possible.
I'm not sure what the funniest thing about your post is quite yet. It could be
1) The above quote on picture frame dissassembly, by far the most ridiculous termination procedure I've even heard of
2) The fact that every single one of the other responses (so far) fail to see your attempt at humor
3) Some of the above angry responses are actually modded insightful, acknowledging that dozers of other modders didn't quite get it either!
Props to you AC
Reminds me of the message in a NOFX song, Dinosaurs will Die (or maybe you were referring to it)? Some of the lyrics :
Prehistoric music industry Three feet in la brea tar Extinction never felt so good
If you think anyone would feel badly You are sadly, mistaken The time has come for evolution Fuck collusion, kill the five
Whatever happened to the handshake? Whatever happened to deals no-one would break? What happened to integrity? It's still there it always was For playing music just because A million reasons why
(All) dinosaurs will die
Well, you could always use paypal!
/ducks
Your house is a private residence, so they can't film that and make it public. A protest generally takes place in the public, where anyone is permitted to record
We also know why - you hate DRM, you don't like how "single player" should require internet, blah blah blah.. And you're giddy with Schadenfreude that some people aren't quite satisfied with the game
But this is story is about the real money auction house, the banning of accounts, the bots being banned, perhaps false positives etc... Can we please try to keep this discussion relevant? Personally my account's not banned, and I'm seeing a lot less spam in the general forums.
Comparing the RIAA and Oatmeal isn't a terribly valid swap.. the other comments here already explain some stark differences between the two. A better comparison might be FunnyJunk and ThePirateBay - both sites contain material (pictures, movies, or music) that's copyrighted and make no or little attempt to remove infringing material. They both profit through the work of other people, and deprive the original creators of the profit. TPB gets a lot of love from slashdot and elsewhere, so why all the hate on FunnyJunk?
Well I'll try to answer that.
- Hatred for RIAA / MPAA. Music pirates don't believe the original artists are missing out on profits because the industry collects them all, therefore feel less guilt pirating music. Also, they sue people for ridiculous amounts of money
- Difficulty of acquiring material. A picture can easily be seen, so it's no inconvenience by viewing the pics on one site or the other (maybe an influx of ads). Some material can't be acquired at an affordable price (or at all - see the Game of Thrones pirating article on slashdot. Even the Oatmeal had a comic on this).
- FunnyJunk sent out a request for $20,000 - a ridiculous demand considering they're the ones infringing.
Really, the 20K demand is what started this big debacle. If FunnyJunk hadn't sent that, then I'm sure most people would be rather apathetic on the whole scenario. But we (people / slashdot) generally hates frivolous lawsuits, which is why we're reading about this today.
Facts:
FunnyJunk encourages users to upload content from elsewhere on the internet
FunnyJunk encourages users to violate the copyrights of content producers
Sorry, but can you actually verify that? Not trolling, but I can't find any sources where they "encourage" users to upload content from other sites. Are the forum admins actually telling people it's fine to upload content from elsewhere on the internet? That's a pretty bold claim that's been repeated here a few times - an example below from their TOS seems to indicate otherwise (more details if you read more at http://www.funnyjunk.com/termsofservice/ - unless this was very recently updated as a result of this fiasco)
24. User agrees to upload only Third-Party Content for which User holds intellectual property rights, including but not limited to, copyrights, trademarks, rights to the use of personal name and likeness, and rights of publicity.
I'm not trying to defend FJ here, they're clearly the assholes for attempting to sue for $20k here. But there's a big difference between actively encouraging users to pirate material (something you could argue that The Pirate Bay does, given their tongue-in-cheek name and history of mocking DMCA take-down notices) - and simply not removing copyrighted material fast enough (apathy, or negligence).
"Information wants to be free!" My favorite stupid colloquialism. I wasn't aware that non-living entities, objects or concepts were capable of expressing the emotion of desire!
Also, money wants to be spent, my car wants to break down, justice wants to be served, and my toaster wants to burn bread. All of those statements want to be related somehow as well, but transitive logic doesn't want to co-operate.
To be fair, democrats have been getting the vast majority of the black vote for at least 30 years now, somewhere around 90%. Clinton had the lowest percentage at "only" 83-85%. Sure, we can recognize that some percentage of the black population purely voted for Obama because he is also black, (thereby ignoring policy) - but it's probably around the same percentage of people not voting for him for the exact same reason. 96-98% of black americans didn't "ignore all policy, all politics, all qualifications" etc.. when they voted for Obama, they did because republican policies fuck them over a hell of a lot more than democrat policies (wasn't always this way, but it has been for at least for a few decades now).
In some alternate universe, Hillary Clinton is running against Herman Cain for the 2012 election. Herman Cain is not getting 90%+ of the black vote - doubtful that it would be even be 50%.
Exactly the problem here. Until digital distribution was available, most of the music being purchased prior to that came from a select few artists. The record store would carry material from maybe 100 artists or so (rough estimate). They simply couldn't carry music from 10,000 different bands there, due to size constraints. 1% of the artists making 99% of the money.
The amount people spend on music hasn't really changes by that much of a factor - it's just that there's more available artists now. The other 9900 artists that weren't popular enough to get in the record industry are now getting heard. They're just starting to get a cut now, via spotify or whatever
If the concern is "taken out of context", then equip every officer with video cameras - record as much as possible. They already do this (or should) with the dashboard cams - if there's a discrepancy in the videos and worried about people trying to pull a James O'Keefe style stunt on ACORN by editing videos, then surely the video showing the real story eliminates that chance.
But we know that's a bullshit excuse. Dashboard cams "mysteriously" have malfunctions, or they're forgotten to be turned on. Other video recordings from bystanders are confiscated or destroyed. It's not because of "context", it's because the cops know damn well they're about to do something that they're not supposed to. Yes, I'd be annoyed too if someone set up a camera in my cubicle to record me too, and the "if i'm doing nothing wrong" argument wouldn't be any consolation. But if my co-workers were stealing supplies, vandalizing equipment and randomly shitting on other people's desks, you can be your ass that the management would put install some video cameras to figure out how to weed out the culprits. If bad cops shit on your freedoms, and even the good cops won't rat them out (blue shield), then it's time to install some video cameras. Anyway, I know you're not in disagreement here on overall recording of cops, but the "videos could be used out of context" doesn't weigh in as strong as "cops have been abusing their power for too long" in my opinion.
Better yet, eliminate the subsidies on food we have now. There's no good reason why a big mac meal should cost as much as a rice / noodle bowl, or a large salad or a much healthier equivalent. There's virtually no subsidies for veggies and healthy food - the majority of the subsidy share goes towards feed grains (resulting in cheaper prices in beef, not including actual cattle subsidies, which were about $227 Million in 2010), and corn (where a huge chunk goes towards HFCS, arguably worse than sugar).
The beef subsidies irk me the most - if there's an obesity 'epidemic' in the United States, then why the hell is the government artificially lowering the price of one of the most unhealthy meats there is? Fatty foods don't have to cost less than healthy foods here, and they shouldn't. Put all beef subsidies towards broccoli farming and we'll see a lot less obesity.
Fair enough - single player seems like it shouldn't be required. But from what I read about it, your single player character is tied into your account (same char when switching between multi player and single player). Sort of like an MMO - maybe done for hacking / cheat prevention - if all your character data is saved online on Blizzard's servers, then it makes hacking your character a lot harder, or near impossible.
I'm not saying the DRM isn't annoying for single player, but a 10-second check from my stable internet connection before playing a marathon session isn't going to make me stop purchasing the game, and neither is a few hours of downtime on launch day. But that's the alarmist reaction I'm seeing in "insightful" comments peppered on this thread.
Yes, it sucks if you have little or no internet, and I sympathize with you then. 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
"DRM Sucks!!11! Not going to buy"
:
+5 Insightful
Really mods? Not seeing anything terribly insightful here...
I don't care too much to the DRM myself, but if it's part of the requirements - then meh, i'll install it. And so will the other 2 million people that ordered this game. Some other possibly relevant details
- non invasive DRM / tied to the client. You're logged in but it doesn't seem like an additional program is running. Integrated better than steam, or origin (which stay active when you exit the game, somewhat annoying)
- Almost always works. I'm not sure how many "9s" I can say that it's constantly up or working, but from experience with SC2, Diablo 2 and other other games, battle.net is almost always up. Not working on launch day? Well I'll cut them some slack on the release day of the product, with 2 million or so people trying to play. The track record at Blizzard is pretty good, and i'm sure that after another 24 hours or so, all issues there will be resolved (if they aren't already). Compare that with Assassin's Creed 2 - didn't they have like 3 consecutive weeks of login / drm issues?
- Single player tied into the multiplayer. I haven't played this game yet, but I'm pretty sure that when you're playing single player, your character information and leveling and whatnot is tied into multiplayer. If that's the case, it's not truly "single player" in the sense that you're constantly progressing more like an MMO, where your data isn't kept on client side.
- Hacks / cheats. Remember the old diablo, when everyone had their "whale armor of the gods +99" and hacks ran rampant? Same for starcraft, and most multiplayer games. If DRM helps reducing hacking (or eliminate it altogether, then bring it on.
I'm not sure why slashdot hates the DRM here so much. There's a very absolutist position stance taken by many... that *all* DRM is inherently evil and they'll never buy any game with DRM. I can perhaps sympathize with those that don't have steady or constant internet connections - maybe if you're living in the country or with 3rd world infrastructure you can't play this game as a result. But if you have a steady internet connection, then quit whining about *all* DRM. Some is bad (Ubisoft), and some is barely noticable (Blizzard), it's not so black & white.
And every 2 months for the last 10 years or so, someone always has to reassure that "Hey piracy isn't technically theft - theft only occurs when the owner is deprived of their possessions - this is copyright infringement". Perhaps in an attempt to justify or rationalize piracy, though that may not be your intention. Yes yes... we *know* it's not stealing or theft already. That doesn't make it ok or justify this by any means whatsoever.
Saying theft is not the same as piracy, is like saying lying is not the same as telling a story and omitting important details - it's a feeble attempt to make your actions seem less immoral even though you know what you're doing is wrong. If your wife asks you what you did last night, and you only say "went to the movies", and later she finds out you did some blow and went to the strippers well I bet she won't be happy with that. Oh but hey, you weren't *technically* lying because you didn't say you didn't go - you just omitted that detail in your story- so that makes it all better right?
Yes, copyright infringement technically isn't theft. But it might as well be, and it should carry the same penalty and weight because it's close enough to theft - and it's exactly the same for the person doing the stealing (only the owner is affected more through theft than through piracy). Pirating a $10 movie should carry roughly the same penalty as stealing $10 worth of goods from a convenience store. And don't give me that "but you're not depriving the owner of anything!" argument either, else I might have to rant again.
Nah, trust me, move as soon as you can, it's not nearly as bad as it seems here. We certainly don't like Harper & the conservative government - but the level of crazy in the conservatives here doesn't even come close to a Bachman / Santorum level.
There have been numerous conservative scandals in the news in the last year or so, but I've still yet to hear a fellow Canuck say "That's it! I'm sick of this country - I'm moving to America!"
Speaking of reacting to situations, what if a nearby driver cuts you off or makes a bonehead move that almost results in an accident with your vehicle? Can we expect some sort of autonomous honking combined with some robotic middle finger deployment? It would be nice if I didn't have to express my own road rage - that would look a little silly coming from the passenger or back seat.
"In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of magical xylophone? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder. "
/facepalm about something that doesn't make sense, or some poor decision made by one of the main characters. But my wife loves the show, so I'll continue to watch it for a while. I find the premise doesn't make a lot of sense, the technical accuracy is off, and the characters seem to continue to make poor decisions. But maybe the show is more fantasy than science fiction and geared towards a female audience (as suggested earlier in this thread) - The show seems to be more based on character relationships and the ongoing sexual tension between the doctor and the companion and philosophical / ethical conundrums. Perhaps it really shouldn't be classified as a sci-fi show then, despite seeming to be like one (along the same principle of how some people might classify Star Wars as sci-fi just because it's in space with lasers and aliens, though it's not sci-fi at all).
If you're anything like comic book guy, (and I am myself a bit) then that could also be one of the big peeves you have with the show. Every 5 minutes in the show I could
"I'm sorry, you cannot continue watching your regularly scheduled programming until you view the following message from our sponsors / message from our government"
How long before this is implemented? With PVR now, you can skip through ads, much to the disdain of advertisers. If you don't have that right now, at least you can change the channel or leave the room or something during a commercial. With this technology, maybe you'll be forced to actually watch the commercials now...
Except that if you don't watch those mandatory commercials (which will eventually be integrated with this technology somehow), you won't be able to watch TV.
Piecework works for a few industries here and there - but mostly manual labor or tedious repetitive work where it's easy to set a quota. I used to be a treeplanter and I had no problem with the payment system there - you work harder, you get paid more (paid per tree). Seems pretty fair to me.
Piecework would be a nightmare for any sort of IT work. Most projects run over budget, and take much longer than expected, and there's all sorts of problems that happen. This would be true for most industries or jobs where there's really no easily measurable quantity based system. On top of that, most people would prefer a more consistent salary every months. Most north americans have lots of things purchased on credit (mortgage, car lease, TVs etc..) - they can't risk having some months where they get paid significantly less than others (even if it might mean more payment in other months that equate to the same annual salary)