You've clearly failed to understand the important role the Daily Mail plays in British society. Every page is full of stories about how immigrants are taking all the jobs, how your tax money pays for illegal immigrants to buy pornography, how your children are at risk every time they go online to check their e-mail, how beef/bread/wine/cheese/saturated fat/unsaturated fat will WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT kill you/reduce your risk of heart disease/prevent you from getting cancer.
The middle classes are happily distracted by the constant threat towards their very way of life, and which foods are killing them this week, that they forget about things like climate change, human rights violations around the world and the state of the global economy, which makes the government very happy indeed.
Totally irrelevant and off-topic (watch the mods jump on this) but I had to point this out: in your sig "sentence" is a verb (such as "I sentence you to death")! Score one for the pedants...
Being invisible sounds ok, until you realize that with perfect invisibility you will be effective blind. That will end non military uses you had in mind.
Blind in the visible light spectrum, which would still leave you with sonar, radar, possibly IR and UV if the material very selectively blocks the visible light portion of the EM spectrum. Not to mention the possibility of maintaining links to remote cameras and other visual/information sources using data transmitted ion wavelengths way, way outisde the visible light spectrum.
So yes, as a Harry Potter invisibility cloak this would suck, but as a Start Trek cloak this would be awesome.
The time spent developing the Downloadable Content cost money in terms of programmer salaries. The publishers (rightly or wrongly) feel they deserve an extra $5 in return for the additional time they spent on this DLC. Now someone will crack it and people will be able to get it for free, but it's not legitimate consumers that lose here, it's the publishers. The consumer isn't incovenienced by not having this extra material - not having it doesn't stop the game working nor does it piss them off by clogging up their system and screwing with their DVD burner. Now if people think "Fuck you Mr. Publisher, I have no problem with you losing thousands and thousands of dollars" then that's a different issue.
I strongly suggest you find a decent couple of servers with active admins. A good admin will be able to spot and deal with cheaters quickly. VAC, by it's very nature (delayed bans), doesn't stop some idiot kid who just downloaded an aimbot that day.
You've commited no crime. The distributor has (apparently) commited the crime of supplying equipment for circumventing security protection on the DS. Just because it can be used legally doesn't mean it is, and a minority of people using it for legal purposes doesn't erase fact that it's most commonly going to be used for breaking the law.
If you can point out a statement I've made that equates to "R4 == piracy" then I'd be impressed. What I've been saying (if you'd paid attention) was more along the lines of "homebrew << piracy". See the difference there?
Yes, except your statement is hyperbole, and mine is an educated assertion. I know damn well what exclusively means, and the qualifier "pretty much" reduces it from being a synonym for "totally" or "only" to something slightly less. I suspect that it's actually you that needs the English lesson.
Well if I were a homebrewer I'd be lobbying Nintendo to provide tools for developing apps for the DS. I don't hold much hope that they would, but at least they'd be aware of the scale of the homebrew scene.
You're right, I don't know you. Apparently you missed my point. People like yourself are the minority. Therefore Nintendo are obviously going to be gunning for anyone selling or making the R4 to prevent it from being used for piracy, which in the majority of cases it's going to be. Yeah it's a shame that that screws homebrewers like yourself, but is it really that much of a surprise that this has happened?
Yeah I totally agree, but the fact remains that the R4 is pretty much used exclusively to pirate games. I know three people that have them and none of them use it for anything except playing downloaded ROMs. Maybe my sample is biased, but I suspect it's probably not. If there were an easy (read that as monetarily cheap and fast) way to punish just those people using it for piracy then I'm sure Nintendo would prefer to do that. I guess their point is that people are making money of a device than can, in theory, be used for legal reasons but is in fact being used almost toally for piracy.
Well I totally agree with you on this. Legitimate homebrew is a totally valid use of a piece of hardware, and should be encouraged. It's just an unfortunate thing that enabling homebrew usually also opens the door for piracy. Some decent API's and a support system from Nintendo would help them, and homebrewers, by eliminating the "I was just doing homebrew" argument from real pirates. For once Microsoft actually have the right idea (sort of) with this, and their efforts to allow people to make their own games and stuff. Holy crap, praise for Microsoft. What's the world coming to?
I do agree (partially) with what you say in principle, but it's not quite that black and white. If you buy a gun you're not free to remove the serial number, nor are you free to fire it indiscriminantly into the air. If you buy a car you're not free to add a nitrous system to it if you want to drive it on the street. You buy a house you're not free to add a massive extension without permission. Life is full of these little rules that are there for good reason.
I'm sure Nintendo don't really care if you crack open your DS and start playing about with it. They do care if you crack it open, modify it to circumvent their security and start playing pirated games on it. Similarly, they're obviously very concerned about a device that, let's face it, is used almost entirely for playing pirated games.
An astute point. However, if Ubisoft piss off enough people with this they won't have enough normal sales for second hand sales to be a problem. Pirates tend not to try and re-sell their games in retail stores. Textbook cutting off nose to spite face, shooting oneself in the foot etc.
Mention them in the same hushed tones that ET for the Atari 2600 is mentioned with.
I don't get what the big deal is with that game. I played it as a child and found it fairly entertaining. It was no Vanguard, but people regard it with such scorn...
I'm not sure I understand your post at all, and while I think I understand the point you're trying to make, I'm still partially guessing. Nonetheless I'll plough on based on my assumptions.
You draw a false analogy between software development and the scientific method. They are not even remotely similar. You also declare that, or at least torture a metaphor in which, proprietary software is like "snake oil". Forgive me if I'm wrong, but the snake oil argument woud require that proprietary software didn't deliver on it's promises, was some kind of scam or hoax and generally was marketted by liars and thieves? Right? Last time I checked I could open files in my proprietary software operating system, check e-mail with my proprietary software mailing program, and movies played on my proprietary software media player. That's all I want from them, that's what they promised and that's what they delivered. Care to clarify your metaphor?
I have never reported a bug in a proprietary app, but I have reported lots of Linux bugs (mostly distro level, or fixable at distro level) because I can follow what it happening, and I know what the (usually good) reaction to my individual report is.
Thousands and thousands of people report bugs in Windows every day. That little pop-up when something crashes ("Do you wish to send a report...") assists in finding and fixing a lot of bugs, I'm sure. You never clicked "Yes" when that popped up?
Point being, with technology being what it is and constantly advancing, doesn't everything eventually become crap?
Not in my opinion. I still consider the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis to you Americans) as one of the best consoles of all time. By todays standards it outdated and had a terrible controller, sure, but I certainly wouldn't call it crap. Now compare that to the Sega Mega CD which was pretty much crap all round. Both old, both consoles, not equally crap.
AOL's prices were pretty unreasonable, but they made up for it by providing every person on the planet with at least a dozen coasters for their desk in the form of AOL sign up CDs. Not once did I see Apple bombarding me at every waking moment with such gifts. Shame on you Apple, shame on you...
You seem to want First Class elbow room at steerage prices. For that you can't blame fat folks, you can blame your cheapness or poorness.
No, we can blame the really fat guy encroaching onto our seat. The seat that we paid for. The seat that would be fine if it weren't for the guy next to us being really overweight. Airline seats are a certain size. In economy they're pretty small because fares are so damn cheap. Why the hell should I have to pay for a first class seat just to get the elbow room I deserve in economy? This isn't about being poor or being cheap, it's about someone being too fucking big to fit in an economy seat. Let the fat guy spend the cash on a bigger seat in first class. How dare you say it's my responsibility to pay extra cash to accomodate the obesity of someone else. If anyone is being too cheap/poor in this situation it's the fat guy who won't spring for the extra seat that he needs, or one larger seat in a higher class.
The problem is not about whether people choose to be fat or not, despite all the trolls in this story being modded Insightful for spouting abuse. The issue here is that some people, for whatever reason, are simply too large to fit in a single seat. No mention of blame, no moral judgements. They're simply too big. Some have the choice of slimming down, others don't. Either way, if they're too big to fit in a single seat then they need to buy another. It might not be their fault that they're overwieght, but it sure as hell isn't the fault of the poor bastard sat next to them either.
Slashdot Mirror
You've clearly failed to understand the important role the Daily Mail plays in British society. Every page is full of stories about how immigrants are taking all the jobs, how your tax money pays for illegal immigrants to buy pornography, how your children are at risk every time they go online to check their e-mail, how beef/bread/wine/cheese/saturated fat/unsaturated fat will WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT kill you/reduce your risk of heart disease/prevent you from getting cancer.
The middle classes are happily distracted by the constant threat towards their very way of life, and which foods are killing them this week, that they forget about things like climate change, human rights violations around the world and the state of the global economy, which makes the government very happy indeed.
The AC was referring only to upload speeds, so the Asynchronous nature of broadband isn't relevant.
...the different kinds of tycoon, simulators... Where are those now?
On Steam, wrapped in DOSBox and still as good as ever. I suggest we all ignore this story and go buy Railroad Tycoon!
Totally irrelevant and off-topic (watch the mods jump on this) but I had to point this out: in your sig "sentence" is a verb (such as "I sentence you to death")! Score one for the pedants...
Being invisible sounds ok, until you realize that with perfect invisibility you will be effective blind. That will end non military uses you had in mind.
Blind in the visible light spectrum, which would still leave you with sonar, radar, possibly IR and UV if the material very selectively blocks the visible light portion of the EM spectrum. Not to mention the possibility of maintaining links to remote cameras and other visual/information sources using data transmitted ion wavelengths way, way outisde the visible light spectrum.
So yes, as a Harry Potter invisibility cloak this would suck, but as a Start Trek cloak this would be awesome.
The time spent developing the Downloadable Content cost money in terms of programmer salaries. The publishers (rightly or wrongly) feel they deserve an extra $5 in return for the additional time they spent on this DLC. Now someone will crack it and people will be able to get it for free, but it's not legitimate consumers that lose here, it's the publishers. The consumer isn't incovenienced by not having this extra material - not having it doesn't stop the game working nor does it piss them off by clogging up their system and screwing with their DVD burner. Now if people think "Fuck you Mr. Publisher, I have no problem with you losing thousands and thousands of dollars" then that's a different issue.
I strongly suggest you find a decent couple of servers with active admins. A good admin will be able to spot and deal with cheaters quickly. VAC, by it's very nature (delayed bans), doesn't stop some idiot kid who just downloaded an aimbot that day.
You've commited no crime. The distributor has (apparently) commited the crime of supplying equipment for circumventing security protection on the DS. Just because it can be used legally doesn't mean it is, and a minority of people using it for legal purposes doesn't erase fact that it's most commonly going to be used for breaking the law.
If you can point out a statement I've made that equates to "R4 == piracy" then I'd be impressed. What I've been saying (if you'd paid attention) was more along the lines of "homebrew << piracy". See the difference there?
Yes, except your statement is hyperbole, and mine is an educated assertion. I know damn well what exclusively means, and the qualifier "pretty much" reduces it from being a synonym for "totally" or "only" to something slightly less. I suspect that it's actually you that needs the English lesson.
Well if I were a homebrewer I'd be lobbying Nintendo to provide tools for developing apps for the DS. I don't hold much hope that they would, but at least they'd be aware of the scale of the homebrew scene.
What wonderful arguments you make. I'll leave it as an exercise for you to see the flaws in your strawmen.
You're right, I don't know you. Apparently you missed my point. People like yourself are the minority. Therefore Nintendo are obviously going to be gunning for anyone selling or making the R4 to prevent it from being used for piracy, which in the majority of cases it's going to be. Yeah it's a shame that that screws homebrewers like yourself, but is it really that much of a surprise that this has happened?
Yeah I totally agree, but the fact remains that the R4 is pretty much used exclusively to pirate games. I know three people that have them and none of them use it for anything except playing downloaded ROMs. Maybe my sample is biased, but I suspect it's probably not. If there were an easy (read that as monetarily cheap and fast) way to punish just those people using it for piracy then I'm sure Nintendo would prefer to do that. I guess their point is that people are making money of a device than can, in theory, be used for legal reasons but is in fact being used almost toally for piracy.
Well I totally agree with you on this. Legitimate homebrew is a totally valid use of a piece of hardware, and should be encouraged. It's just an unfortunate thing that enabling homebrew usually also opens the door for piracy. Some decent API's and a support system from Nintendo would help them, and homebrewers, by eliminating the "I was just doing homebrew" argument from real pirates. For once Microsoft actually have the right idea (sort of) with this, and their efforts to allow people to make their own games and stuff. Holy crap, praise for Microsoft. What's the world coming to?
I do agree (partially) with what you say in principle, but it's not quite that black and white. If you buy a gun you're not free to remove the serial number, nor are you free to fire it indiscriminantly into the air. If you buy a car you're not free to add a nitrous system to it if you want to drive it on the street. You buy a house you're not free to add a massive extension without permission. Life is full of these little rules that are there for good reason.
I'm sure Nintendo don't really care if you crack open your DS and start playing about with it. They do care if you crack it open, modify it to circumvent their security and start playing pirated games on it. Similarly, they're obviously very concerned about a device that, let's face it, is used almost entirely for playing pirated games.
Apparently the DS is region free so that's one legal defense out the window.
An astute point. However, if Ubisoft piss off enough people with this they won't have enough normal sales for second hand sales to be a problem. Pirates tend not to try and re-sell their games in retail stores. Textbook cutting off nose to spite face, shooting oneself in the foot etc.
Mention them in the same hushed tones that ET for the Atari 2600 is mentioned with.
I don't get what the big deal is with that game. I played it as a child and found it fairly entertaining. It was no Vanguard, but people regard it with such scorn...
I'm not sure I understand your post at all, and while I think I understand the point you're trying to make, I'm still partially guessing. Nonetheless I'll plough on based on my assumptions.
You draw a false analogy between software development and the scientific method. They are not even remotely similar. You also declare that, or at least torture a metaphor in which, proprietary software is like "snake oil". Forgive me if I'm wrong, but the snake oil argument woud require that proprietary software didn't deliver on it's promises, was some kind of scam or hoax and generally was marketted by liars and thieves? Right? Last time I checked I could open files in my proprietary software operating system, check e-mail with my proprietary software mailing program, and movies played on my proprietary software media player. That's all I want from them, that's what they promised and that's what they delivered. Care to clarify your metaphor?
I have never reported a bug in a proprietary app, but I have reported lots of Linux bugs (mostly distro level, or fixable at distro level) because I can follow what it happening, and I know what the (usually good) reaction to my individual report is.
Thousands and thousands of people report bugs in Windows every day. That little pop-up when something crashes ("Do you wish to send a report...") assists in finding and fixing a lot of bugs, I'm sure. You never clicked "Yes" when that popped up?
Point being, with technology being what it is and constantly advancing, doesn't everything eventually become crap?
Not in my opinion. I still consider the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis to you Americans) as one of the best consoles of all time. By todays standards it outdated and had a terrible controller, sure, but I certainly wouldn't call it crap. Now compare that to the Sega Mega CD which was pretty much crap all round. Both old, both consoles, not equally crap.
AOL's prices were pretty unreasonable, but they made up for it by providing every person on the planet with at least a dozen coasters for their desk in the form of AOL sign up CDs. Not once did I see Apple bombarding me at every waking moment with such gifts. Shame on you Apple, shame on you...
You seem to want First Class elbow room at steerage prices. For that you can't blame fat folks, you can blame your cheapness or poorness.
No, we can blame the really fat guy encroaching onto our seat. The seat that we paid for. The seat that would be fine if it weren't for the guy next to us being really overweight. Airline seats are a certain size. In economy they're pretty small because fares are so damn cheap. Why the hell should I have to pay for a first class seat just to get the elbow room I deserve in economy? This isn't about being poor or being cheap, it's about someone being too fucking big to fit in an economy seat. Let the fat guy spend the cash on a bigger seat in first class. How dare you say it's my responsibility to pay extra cash to accomodate the obesity of someone else. If anyone is being too cheap/poor in this situation it's the fat guy who won't spring for the extra seat that he needs, or one larger seat in a higher class.
The problem is not about whether people choose to be fat or not, despite all the trolls in this story being modded Insightful for spouting abuse. The issue here is that some people, for whatever reason, are simply too large to fit in a single seat. No mention of blame, no moral judgements. They're simply too big. Some have the choice of slimming down, others don't. Either way, if they're too big to fit in a single seat then they need to buy another. It might not be their fault that they're overwieght, but it sure as hell isn't the fault of the poor bastard sat next to them either.