The CEO of GGF, Hans Pandeya, is being pursued by the Swedish enforcement service for mounting unpaid debts. In an interview with the Swedish business daily 'di.se' today, CEO Hans Pandeya says that the deal is still on.
Are you sure about that Hans? Really? Only those armed Enforcement Officers coming towards your office would seem to suggest otherwise...
I still fail to see how 7000 yuan and your highlighting of the number 1024 has any relation. By translating into one of the vast number of worldwide currencies you could probably make any figure into a binary number...
See this is what happens when all the good names are already taken - a serious project aimed at cataloging distant galaxies is forced to call itself "Galaxy Zoo".
Massive monoculture is always dangerous. The dinosaurs seemed incredibly successful, too, but too many of them were too similar--and look what happened. In diversity there is strength.
I think you might have chosen a bad analogy - I'm fairly sure that the diversification (or not) of computer operating systems will have no effect on meteors impacting the Earth.
The Eclipse community should create peer pressure to prevent the freeloaders and parasites from getting away without punishment
How the hell can anyone consider "punishment" for people who use open-source software? If you make your code open-source then I thought the whole point was that anyone and everyone was free to use it within the constraints of the licence. Show me where it says "Thou shalt giveth back to the open-source community or faceth my wrath".
This mentality is outrageous and damaging to the very principles of open-source software.
How is this related to DRM? magnatune.com gives you the same service (download whatever you bought whenever you want, wherever you are) without DRM.
Ugh. That's still DRM allowing you to do what you describe. Logging in and having your identity checked to see what you've purchased and can therefore download. It's positive DRM. Please, try to understand that DRM doesn't just mean negative things. It's mostly used for negative things but has the potential to be used in a positive way. Like I said in my original post as a matter of fact...
You've missed my entire point. Allowing you to authenticate your identity online and download products you already own anywhere wouldn't work without a Digital system that checks your Rights to re-download a product you own, while performing housekeeping for Management purposes.
You've done what most people do and been brainwashed into regarding these three little letters, DRM, as evil in-of-themselves. I'll say it again: Restrictive DRM is self-defeating and often pointless, but positive, user-enabling features of DRM are never even thought about.
The authentication servers don't (AFAIK) actually hold critical game code that you need to download each time to play, they just give the green light to your client to go ahead and let you play. If they go offline nothing vital is lost, it's just a case of spoofing their response or removing the Steam code that performs the check entirely.
But your positive point about DRM can be applied to any download site not with DRM. If I had a DRM free games site once you logged in and I got payment I could use scripting to allow you to download game.exe. Then all you had to do was login to the site to download game.exe. No DRM yet all the "positives" of DRM you mentioned.
I agree with you totally, but I've yet to see any DRM-free distribution system with an equivalent catalogue of games (in terms of number, quality and age) that Steam has. Restrictive DRM might harm legal consumers more than it harms pirates, but until games developers and publishers realise this I'll take a tiny slice of positive DRM with my huge wedge of negative DRM, thanks very much.
Exactly. I choose to accept Valve's assurances that even if they go bust they'll release the DRM or arrange for authentication servers to remain running. If this turns out not to be the case then I'll just find a crack to continue playing. It amazes me that this is the staple argument people have against Steam, yet it doesn't hold much water as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, my original point wasn't about Steam, it was pointing out how "DRM" autoamtically is assumed to be bad when it has the potential to be positive in many ways - even if the positive aspects aren't often used.
Good to see you read my final sentence. If and when that day comes I and many other like me will have no qualms about cracking our Steam copies. Problem solved, and in the meantime we get the positive benefits I described.
DRM is always evil
So you totally disagree with me that until your hypothetical situation whereby Steam dies and cuts users off we enjoy some positive benefits from the way Steam manages our digital rights to games?
Good to see someone has taken a scientific approach to this for once instead of hyperbole, exaggeration and assumption like we normally see (from both sides I might add).
Also, it's funny how DRM has become automatically negative. The reasons are obvious, but as I've said before many times, DRM can be a positive thing. I'll cite the much debated Steam argument again. Once I buy a game, DRM (positive DRM) allows me to redownload whenever I want, and to play it on any computer whenever and wherever I want. There are some advantages to DRM but of course they're over-shadowed by the many drawbacks and disadvantages from DRM's restrictive aspects.
And can we please not turn this into a "Steam sucks!" - "No YOU suck!" debate again? It was just an example.
Wow, you've certainly convinced me that Microsoft has nothing to do with this ad.
Since that wasn't my intention I have no feelings about this statement. My intention was to highlight the extremely weak, borderline ridiculous link the OP was making between MS, Asus and this web page.
Michael Sharp is a common name but:
--SNIP--
Conclusive? Not at all. A good indication? In my opinion, yes. Considering no evidence toward Asus with no logical reason for Asus to make this ad (are they going to sell more by stirring this up?) I would say it's most likely Microsoft's work.
One of your links doesn't even work. You laughably say there's no evidence this is the work of Asus, then totally contrdaict your point by citing this as evidence that it's "probably" Microsoft. And yes, Asus could conceivably sell more through this web page since they're targetting the much wider user-base of Windows users.
Seriously? You're linking this in your mind because there's two people with the same name? Microsoft hire so many people I bet there's dozens of Michael Sharp's emplyed.
Please, put your tin-foil hat back on. You're spilling crazy all over the carpet.
Ok, from there if you google Arbitron Asus [google.com] and Arbitron Microsoft [google.com] you come up with two very juicy powerpoints from Microsoft on Arbitron's site.
Errr, where exactly? I see a couple of Powerpoint links on Google. Newsflash - all Powerpoint files linked on Google say "Microsoft" next to them because that's who made Powerpoint. Neither of the presentations actually seem to be from, to or about Microsoft.
Not exactly a well researched or even factual story this, even for/.
A quick check of the domain registry shows that the site isn't owned by either Microsoft or Asus. In fact it appears to be some kind of ad agency, probably hired to increase sales of Asus equipment for a third party.
Don't let me stop the conspiracy theories though. I suppose the site is badly designed, looks awful and doesn't actually do anything useful deliberately? Perhaps to instil doubt as to whether such a large and evil corporation would actually publish a web page as crap as this? Microsoft do a lot of stupid crap but I don't think you can blame this on them. I'm sure plenty will continue to do so though.
Pandora is (or used to be) $36 a year (I think) for advert free listening, with only light restrictions on how often you could skip tracks on a single station. Couple that with intelligent expansion of the songs on a station based on your feedback, and nice integration with certain home audio and mobile devices and that seems like a bargain to me.
I'll have a look at Spotify but if Pandora returns I'll have to ditch it like yesterday's leftovers.
The fact that he's dumb as a post makes that jealousy fade a little, but still...
Sometimes I wonder if being stupid but rich would be better than intelligent and poor (my current situation). I'd love to say that being intelligent is its own reward, but $480,000 a year for the foreseeable future seems like a bigger one...
A couple of people have told me to try Spotify. One of the things I loved about Pandora though was the music discovery element. From a handful of songs it could build an entire radio station with amazing tracks that were similar to the ones you'd picked. Apparently they had some pretty nifty analysis software under the hood. Does Spotify also do this sort of thing?
We all know that every time you pirate a CD the artist actually loses money. ThePirateBay keep track of it all you see, and they send their findings to the PRS and the RIAA. They then debit money from artist's bank accounts for every pirated copy. You music pirates should be ashamed of yurselves...your taking money away from people like Britney Spears. She needs another mansion dammit!
As a former user of Pandora in the UK I'm waiting for them to make a statement about this. The death of Pandora here was a real blow to me as a music lover. While the rate reduction isn't exactly mind-blowing in size I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll be enough for it to return to the UK without me having to resort to unreliable proxies or VPNs.
I've bought a couple of CDs of bands that I'd only discovered through Pandora in the past - I'll bet that the PRS don't factor those new sales into their bleeding heart stories about how streaming music is forcing songwriters to live in cardboard boxes. Hyperbole I know, but they took my Pandora away dammit!
I played Gears of War 2 through with a friend over a Christmas holiday. Once we were done I decided to replay it alone to get the full-screen cinematic experience. As we'd already completed it on the second hardest setting I thought I'd bump it up to "Insane" and be a real man. I stopped playing after a day or two. Some of the set pieces were just ridiculously difficult, and a lack of checkpoints meant you had to play for 5 minutes before you even got back to the point where you'd die.
Yeah, yeah, I should have known it was going to be hard. I work for a living and don't get a lot of time to play games, so I want it to be fun as well as hard. Sadly it was just hard.
Very true, but my point is that a torjan could very easily ask the user for an admin password, and the user (thinking Macs are totally safe - they don't get "viruses") isn't even a little suspicious.
Same thing on a mahcine running Windows and they might be a little more suspicious - they're very aware of "viruses" that affect Windows. Just a hypotetical situation but it illustrates my point.
To the average uninformed user there is no difference between viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, adware and a variety of other software that is generally viewed as "bad". Apple knew this when they launched that ad campaign about there being no Mac viruses (or in their words "Last year there were 6,234 viruses for the PC. There were none for the Mac").
Technically, yes, they were correct, but it's very misleading to your average layperson.
Slashdot Mirror
The CEO of GGF, Hans Pandeya, is being pursued by the Swedish enforcement service for mounting unpaid debts. In an interview with the Swedish business daily 'di.se' today, CEO Hans Pandeya says that the deal is still on.
Are you sure about that Hans? Really? Only those armed Enforcement Officers coming towards your office would seem to suggest otherwise...
I still fail to see how 7000 yuan and your highlighting of the number 1024 has any relation. By translating into one of the vast number of worldwide currencies you could probably make any figure into a binary number...
"What's that Billy? Trespassers? Get my oscilloscope from above the fireplace!"
See this is what happens when all the good names are already taken - a serious project aimed at cataloging distant galaxies is forced to call itself "Galaxy Zoo".
Massive monoculture is always dangerous. The dinosaurs seemed incredibly successful, too, but too many of them were too similar--and look what happened. In diversity there is strength.
I think you might have chosen a bad analogy - I'm fairly sure that the diversification (or not) of computer operating systems will have no effect on meteors impacting the Earth.
The Eclipse community should create peer pressure to prevent the freeloaders and parasites from getting away without punishment
How the hell can anyone consider "punishment" for people who use open-source software? If you make your code open-source then I thought the whole point was that anyone and everyone was free to use it within the constraints of the licence. Show me where it says "Thou shalt giveth back to the open-source community or faceth my wrath".
This mentality is outrageous and damaging to the very principles of open-source software.
How is this related to DRM? magnatune.com gives you the same service (download whatever you bought whenever you want, wherever you are) without DRM.
Ugh. That's still DRM allowing you to do what you describe. Logging in and having your identity checked to see what you've purchased and can therefore download. It's positive DRM. Please, try to understand that DRM doesn't just mean negative things. It's mostly used for negative things but has the potential to be used in a positive way. Like I said in my original post as a matter of fact...
You've missed my entire point. Allowing you to authenticate your identity online and download products you already own anywhere wouldn't work without a Digital system that checks your Rights to re-download a product you own, while performing housekeeping for Management purposes.
You've done what most people do and been brainwashed into regarding these three little letters, DRM, as evil in-of-themselves. I'll say it again: Restrictive DRM is self-defeating and often pointless, but positive, user-enabling features of DRM are never even thought about.
The authentication servers don't (AFAIK) actually hold critical game code that you need to download each time to play, they just give the green light to your client to go ahead and let you play. If they go offline nothing vital is lost, it's just a case of spoofing their response or removing the Steam code that performs the check entirely.
But your positive point about DRM can be applied to any download site not with DRM. If I had a DRM free games site once you logged in and I got payment I could use scripting to allow you to download game.exe. Then all you had to do was login to the site to download game.exe. No DRM yet all the "positives" of DRM you mentioned.
I agree with you totally, but I've yet to see any DRM-free distribution system with an equivalent catalogue of games (in terms of number, quality and age) that Steam has. Restrictive DRM might harm legal consumers more than it harms pirates, but until games developers and publishers realise this I'll take a tiny slice of positive DRM with my huge wedge of negative DRM, thanks very much.
Exactly. I choose to accept Valve's assurances that even if they go bust they'll release the DRM or arrange for authentication servers to remain running. If this turns out not to be the case then I'll just find a crack to continue playing. It amazes me that this is the staple argument people have against Steam, yet it doesn't hold much water as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, my original point wasn't about Steam, it was pointing out how "DRM" autoamtically is assumed to be bad when it has the potential to be positive in many ways - even if the positive aspects aren't often used.
DRM is always evil
So you totally disagree with me that until your hypothetical situation whereby Steam dies and cuts users off we enjoy some positive benefits from the way Steam manages our digital rights to games?
Good to see someone has taken a scientific approach to this for once instead of hyperbole, exaggeration and assumption like we normally see (from both sides I might add).
Also, it's funny how DRM has become automatically negative. The reasons are obvious, but as I've said before many times, DRM can be a positive thing. I'll cite the much debated Steam argument again. Once I buy a game, DRM (positive DRM) allows me to redownload whenever I want, and to play it on any computer whenever and wherever I want. There are some advantages to DRM but of course they're over-shadowed by the many drawbacks and disadvantages from DRM's restrictive aspects.
And can we please not turn this into a "Steam sucks!" - "No YOU suck!" debate again? It was just an example.
Wow, you've certainly convinced me that Microsoft has nothing to do with this ad.
Since that wasn't my intention I have no feelings about this statement. My intention was to highlight the extremely weak, borderline ridiculous link the OP was making between MS, Asus and this web page.
Michael Sharp is a common name but: --SNIP-- Conclusive? Not at all. A good indication? In my opinion, yes. Considering no evidence toward Asus with no logical reason for Asus to make this ad (are they going to sell more by stirring this up?) I would say it's most likely Microsoft's work.
One of your links doesn't even work. You laughably say there's no evidence this is the work of Asus, then totally contrdaict your point by citing this as evidence that it's "probably" Microsoft. And yes, Asus could conceivably sell more through this web page since they're targetting the much wider user-base of Windows users.
Seriously? You're linking this in your mind because there's two people with the same name? Microsoft hire so many people I bet there's dozens of Michael Sharp's emplyed.
Please, put your tin-foil hat back on. You're spilling crazy all over the carpet.
Ok, from there if you google Arbitron Asus [google.com] and Arbitron Microsoft [google.com] you come up with two very juicy powerpoints from Microsoft on Arbitron's site.
Errr, where exactly? I see a couple of Powerpoint links on Google. Newsflash - all Powerpoint files linked on Google say "Microsoft" next to them because that's who made Powerpoint. Neither of the presentations actually seem to be from, to or about Microsoft.
Not exactly a well researched or even factual story this, even for /.
A quick check of the domain registry shows that the site isn't owned by either Microsoft or Asus. In fact it appears to be some kind of ad agency, probably hired to increase sales of Asus equipment for a third party.
Don't let me stop the conspiracy theories though. I suppose the site is badly designed, looks awful and doesn't actually do anything useful deliberately? Perhaps to instil doubt as to whether such a large and evil corporation would actually publish a web page as crap as this? Microsoft do a lot of stupid crap but I don't think you can blame this on them. I'm sure plenty will continue to do so though.
Pandora is (or used to be) $36 a year (I think) for advert free listening, with only light restrictions on how often you could skip tracks on a single station. Couple that with intelligent expansion of the songs on a station based on your feedback, and nice integration with certain home audio and mobile devices and that seems like a bargain to me.
I'll have a look at Spotify but if Pandora returns I'll have to ditch it like yesterday's leftovers.
And I don't work for Pandora - I just loved it...
The fact that he's dumb as a post makes that jealousy fade a little, but still...
Sometimes I wonder if being stupid but rich would be better than intelligent and poor (my current situation). I'd love to say that being intelligent is its own reward, but $480,000 a year for the foreseeable future seems like a bigger one...
A couple of people have told me to try Spotify. One of the things I loved about Pandora though was the music discovery element. From a handful of songs it could build an entire radio station with amazing tracks that were similar to the ones you'd picked. Apparently they had some pretty nifty analysis software under the hood. Does Spotify also do this sort of thing?
exactly.
Exactly.
We all know that every time you pirate a CD the artist actually loses money. ThePirateBay keep track of it all you see, and they send their findings to the PRS and the RIAA. They then debit money from artist's bank accounts for every pirated copy. You music pirates should be ashamed of yurselves...your taking money away from people like Britney Spears. She needs another mansion dammit!
As a former user of Pandora in the UK I'm waiting for them to make a statement about this. The death of Pandora here was a real blow to me as a music lover. While the rate reduction isn't exactly mind-blowing in size I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll be enough for it to return to the UK without me having to resort to unreliable proxies or VPNs.
I've bought a couple of CDs of bands that I'd only discovered through Pandora in the past - I'll bet that the PRS don't factor those new sales into their bleeding heart stories about how streaming music is forcing songwriters to live in cardboard boxes. Hyperbole I know, but they took my Pandora away dammit!
Depends on the game and the gamer.
I played Gears of War 2 through with a friend over a Christmas holiday. Once we were done I decided to replay it alone to get the full-screen cinematic experience. As we'd already completed it on the second hardest setting I thought I'd bump it up to "Insane" and be a real man. I stopped playing after a day or two. Some of the set pieces were just ridiculously difficult, and a lack of checkpoints meant you had to play for 5 minutes before you even got back to the point where you'd die.
Yeah, yeah, I should have known it was going to be hard. I work for a living and don't get a lot of time to play games, so I want it to be fun as well as hard. Sadly it was just hard.
Very true, but my point is that a torjan could very easily ask the user for an admin password, and the user (thinking Macs are totally safe - they don't get "viruses") isn't even a little suspicious.
Same thing on a mahcine running Windows and they might be a little more suspicious - they're very aware of "viruses" that affect Windows. Just a hypotetical situation but it illustrates my point.
To the average uninformed user there is no difference between viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, adware and a variety of other software that is generally viewed as "bad". Apple knew this when they launched that ad campaign about there being no Mac viruses (or in their words "Last year there were 6,234 viruses for the PC. There were none for the Mac").
Technically, yes, they were correct, but it's very misleading to your average layperson.