Dude, we were just placed on your "anti-piracy watchlist." There was even a story or two about it on/. So I hardly think we've "adopted your IP laws." We just happen to be part of the two over-arcing international copyright agreements.
Easy. The same reason that people are still buying music off Amazon's mp3 store, which lacks DRM. The same reason that people buy games, despite pirated versions lacking the crippling effects of DRM (take a look at the issues surrounding The Sims 2 DRM for a perfect example. People's computers were being literally locked down to the point of needing a reformatting for absolutely no reason that Maxis/EA could figure out, and people who'd legitimately bought the product had to pirate it in order to play.)
Just because it *could* happen doesn't mean it will. I'd rather someone actually took a real chance, and pointed to the market and said "look, we got screwed when we went DRM-free," instead of companies saying "look at all the piracy out there, and if we removed DRM, people wouldn't have a reason to actually pay anymore!", since, you know, that completely ignores the argument of people pirating to avoid DRM-rootkits and lock-in, since pirated copies often lack the DRM.
Why wouldn't one person buy it, then immediately put it in online in a torrent for everyone else to get for free? DRM and streaming attempt to prevent this activity from happening.
Thus, the argument is turned around - why would anyone pay for a version that works less well, when they can get a better functioning version for free? DRM'd products are often available on torrents before they're available through commercial channels, and DRM-free. But those products still sell - when they're quality. DRM doesn't prevent piracy, and most times, it doesn't even slow it down, so assuming that DRM-free would be bought by one person and put up for everyone to get is a facetious argument at best.
Smart business people look at the figures, not the rhetoric.
And if anyone had tried a legitimate system of it yet, there might actually be some figures to support that. The problem with computer games is, if you don't like it, you cannot get your money back. For any reason. Once you buy it, it's yours. And few games offer substantive demos anymore. They'll give you about 10 minutes of carefully scripted and polished experience that gives you basically no idea what the game is like.
You might not be able to return music CDs or video DVDs, but the difference is this: TV shows you can watch on TV before you buy them. Music can be listened to on the radio before you buy it. Movies you can usually get discounted tickets to the theatre, or you can wait for it to get to the cheap theatre, listen to multiple reviews from multiple sources, watch trailers, and do research on the making of it (who's in it, who produced it, who's the director - all have significant bearing on what a movie's like. Video games, you know the studio, maybe the lead designer for people like Miyamoto, Hideo, Suda 51, et al, but the teams within the studio keep changing), if you really want, to find out if you'll like it before you buy. There's no proviso for doing so with games. A studio might have made a game you like before, but $50-$60 is a hell of a lot to drop for most people, on a "I like the brand," which is what a studio boils down to. Demos are really just trailers, and don't give honest impressions. Even game reviews are suspect nowadays (Kane and Lynch, anyone?) So yeah, people nervous about buying Demigod, an ONLINE ONLY GAME WITH NO DEMO are going to be leery.
As for "ruining the launch?" No. They admitted it was because of the retarded way they set it up to connect, with people getting "you are connecting to the game lobby" messages before the connection was even started to establish to the other players, leading to it appearing you were waiting for a minute or more, when you'd not even started. Do some research, and you'll see exactly what happened.
No, they shouldn't be free, but it fucking well should be cheaper than buying a hard copy in the store. You know what the standard retail discount is from book publishers to stores is? 40%. You know what the cost of printing is, in relation to the price of a book? 20%. Book publishers use 40% of the retail price to pay all their costs and get profit. And hey, when you buy an e-book, it's generally cheaper than a dead-tree edition! Damn! Look! A model that does it right! So why is it I'm paying a buck a song, or more, and the entire CD is $13 or so, when that's what I'm paying in the store? The distributor's not paying for manufacturing, physical shelf space, or any of the rest. They're making a lot more money that way. You can argue that it's the a la carte conveience you're paying for, and fine, maybe it is worth a buck a song so I don't get the 4 crappy tracks on the CD. But movies/tv shows don't have that option. Generally, when you download them legitly, you're missing out on all the bonus content on the DVD, but still paying close to the same price as you would be in the store. So you're getting less, and they're spending less, but you're not getting a commesurate discount. It's $15 for Taken in Amazon's Video on Demand section. Or I could go buy the blu-ray with all the extras for $30. Yeah, seems fair.
But... that exclusivity isn't really of any value to anybody _except_ to the copyright holder
And as far as I can tell, when the copyright holder is the actual artist, most people are like, "yeah, they should get paid, they did the work." When copyright extends past the life of the creator, that person's not benefiting from their work anymore, so why should it still be copyrighted? There's no legitimate reason for companies to be making money off something done half a century after the death of the creator, to the detriment of the rest of society. The company holding it in that case just coasts on the previous success, and doesn't feel the need to produce anything of redeeming quality, because they have a stable of content making money for them already. If a company had to go out and find replacement content continually, they might actually be discerning in what they put their cash behind, since if something flops, they're not going to get their investment back in time.
As for using DRM to secure copyrights, the fact is, people are people. They take the path of least effort for most benefits. If you make it so that they need to go through a 20 minute process to play a CD the first time they play it, and 5 minutes every time thereafter, (analagous to games, for example, or needing to find the CD in a massive collection, for an exact corellation), people are instead going to look at easier alternatives. "Hey, I can spend $20 on this CD, and need to keep it pristine, and never lose it, or I'm screwed, and I'm only allowed to use it in specific players (anyone remember CDs that didn't want to work in computer drives?), or I can spend half an hour and some bandwidth, and get it for free, and it'll be available whenever I want, and I can do whatever with it."
If the response a company has to that is "Fine. We'll bend. You can either buy the CD and deal with all that hassle, or you can have this digital format, but it will only work on these devices, and you still can't make copies or move the files, so if your computer breaks and your HDD fries, you need to buy a new copy." people aren't going to accept that. It's not a more convenient way than just going out and downloading it for free. The problem with agencies like Sony and the *AAs is that they want the world to work how THEY think it should work, rather than how it DOES work. Give people an easy, cheap, useful-format-download, and they'll use it, rather than cruising torrents, hoping it doesn't have viruses, it's decent quality, and it's actually what it says it is.
But, keep in mind, people, still being people, you'll still get people stealing, copying, redistributing, and whatever. It just won't be as many, since people will be picking the easier way.
Copyright doesn't grant people the exclusive right to have people buy their things. It grants them the right to make and distribute it. If it's not being distributed how people want, then people aren't going to bother with it. Simple as that.
But even the (real) speed bumps serve a sensible purpose. You have to slow down and thus fewer accidents occur, and those that occur are less severe.
Speed bumps kill. Do a google search for "ambulance delays due to speed bumps" and you get a massive list of cases where an ambulance is delayed a minute or so trying to navigate a speed bump, and people die from delayed treatment. In the meantime, people still go over them as fast as possible, or drive as far over as they can, so that they only go over the speed bump with one pair of wheels, or just cut through the parking spaces, and avoiding the bumps all together. Speed bumps only affect those who were driving properly in the first place.
I doubt I'm alone in being disappointed by Hulu and the other network TV streaming sites.
Definitely not alone. Considering without doing some IP spoofing voodoo, no one outside the US can watch 90% of those sites, since they're all region-locked, and there aren't any DVD-mailing services in Canada, my options are: 1. Watch it on TV. Except my hours don't work for that, and cable's too expensive for the 5 shows I know I'd like to watch. 2. Wait for the DVD set to come out. Which is what I normally do, since it's fairly convenient, the price isn't horrific compared to buying movies on DVD, there's no commercials, and it's easy to skip around episodes, though DVD has issues all its own that I won't get in to now. 3. Torrent it. I've not torrented many TV shows (usually movies I can't find anywhere, or are just so horrible that no one deserves money for making them), but any TV show I have torrented, I either gave up on after 3 episodes as being craptacular, or bought the DVD set as soon as it came out.
But if you gave me digital downloads of the episodes for a couple bucks each, or threw in commercial breaks, or ads in banner format, I'd probably move to that to check new shows out. I can't see the benefit of locking out entire portions of the world from a *revenue-generating system.* Seriously. I'm Canadian, I'm not a leper. Let me in.
And herein lies the problem-he thinks there are store hours on the internet.
With some websites, there are. My old college's website would be closed after 10pm until 7am. A specific pizza franchise's website will let you browse the menu when they're closed, but won't let you submit an order for later, despite the ability to do so while the stores are open.
Not to mention you can type the word "typewriter" with nothing but top-row characters, thus allowing salesmen to quickly rattle off a 10 character word with little chance of error. Very impressive to someone who'd never seen a typewriter before.
(Yes, Vista allows the drivers the privilege of taking down the whole OS.)
Really? Because it would recover from driver crashes for me pretty much every time. Granted, those were beta display drivers, or audio drivers, but still. It recovered them on its own.
Pirates of the Burning Seas? Unknown? Not really. It's not a huge one, but if you pay attention to games at all, you'd hear about it a few times. Pirate-based MMO? On the internet? And you expect it to go unnoticed?
It's called "exhausting all possible options." If you could find someone with a phone call and a trip down the block vs. 11 hours and over 100 people, even if it was just a small chance in the first part? Secondly, as others have pointed out, deactivated accounts can still call 911. If I had to cancel my service, I'd keep my cell phone present, but powered-down, just in case. And even powered down, your phone can receive a signal, telling it to power up completely, giving a firm lock on your location.
You can also opt out of federal taxes. It involves forfeiting your SSN and your ability to drive on the interstates, among other things, but you can do it. Last I heard, it's been done about 3 times.
From TFS:After an 11-hour search (during which time the sheriff's department was trying to figure out how to pay the bill), the man was found, unconscious.
Notice the part in parenthesis? They apparently tried. Why it didn't work isn't explained. BUT THEY DID TRY.
Second, there is a *world* of difference between "help us find deranged lost guy" and "help us track potential criminal." It's like how they ask for volunteers to help search large areas for missing persons. The police basically asked Verizon to volunteer for the search party.
I'm going to try very hard not to flame you here, because you're trying to be the voice of reason.
But you're talking bullshit. It doesn't matter if it's never happened before. There's a first time for everything. They could have set a precedent. As for "not being able to." That's what the managers are there for. There is no way on this planet that there wasn't someone higher up the chain to talk to for 11 hours. And those managers routinely waive overages on minutes, or reconnect fees, or shipping charges on new handsets, and give out hundreds in freebies every day to keep customers "happy." If the manager couldn't pull his head out of his ass to waive $20 to try and help save a life, the company doesn't deserve its customer-base. They wouldn't even have needed to waive it. Just send a temporary reconnect.
You're also against people saying "Merry Christmas" since the US has "seperation between church and state," aren't you. They were giving a specific instance of something someone could develop, not promoting the iPhone.
So... what you're saying is... If I understand... You want Opera to become broken. They currently follow standards, and others don't. But rather than having everyone else follow those standards, you'd rather they stop.
From what I've read, that number seems to be close to legitimate, however, the issue comes from companies with intranet applications that only run in IE, thus creating a pool of users who can't switch, for one, and second, are familiar with a setup, and won't switch for home use, for a second. Thus, unless companies decide to spend a lot of money upgrading their tools to work on other browsers, I think there's going to be a hard bottom on IE's user base.
Which is a very long-winded way to say "I agree with you."
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, we were just placed on your "anti-piracy watchlist." There was even a story or two about it on /. So I hardly think we've "adopted your IP laws." We just happen to be part of the two over-arcing international copyright agreements.
Yeah. Anyone watched a lacrosse game? Friggin' brutal. Moreso than hockey, nowadays, due to all the NHL anti-fighting rules.
Easy. The same reason that people are still buying music off Amazon's mp3 store, which lacks DRM. The same reason that people buy games, despite pirated versions lacking the crippling effects of DRM (take a look at the issues surrounding The Sims 2 DRM for a perfect example. People's computers were being literally locked down to the point of needing a reformatting for absolutely no reason that Maxis/EA could figure out, and people who'd legitimately bought the product had to pirate it in order to play.)
Just because it *could* happen doesn't mean it will. I'd rather someone actually took a real chance, and pointed to the market and said "look, we got screwed when we went DRM-free," instead of companies saying "look at all the piracy out there, and if we removed DRM, people wouldn't have a reason to actually pay anymore!", since, you know, that completely ignores the argument of people pirating to avoid DRM-rootkits and lock-in, since pirated copies often lack the DRM.
Why wouldn't one person buy it, then immediately put it in online in a torrent for everyone else to get for free? DRM and streaming attempt to prevent this activity from happening.
Thus, the argument is turned around - why would anyone pay for a version that works less well, when they can get a better functioning version for free? DRM'd products are often available on torrents before they're available through commercial channels, and DRM-free. But those products still sell - when they're quality. DRM doesn't prevent piracy, and most times, it doesn't even slow it down, so assuming that DRM-free would be bought by one person and put up for everyone to get is a facetious argument at best.
Smart business people look at the figures, not the rhetoric.
And if anyone had tried a legitimate system of it yet, there might actually be some figures to support that. The problem with computer games is, if you don't like it, you cannot get your money back. For any reason. Once you buy it, it's yours. And few games offer substantive demos anymore. They'll give you about 10 minutes of carefully scripted and polished experience that gives you basically no idea what the game is like.
You might not be able to return music CDs or video DVDs, but the difference is this:
TV shows you can watch on TV before you buy them.
Music can be listened to on the radio before you buy it.
Movies you can usually get discounted tickets to the theatre, or you can wait for it to get to the cheap theatre, listen to multiple reviews from multiple sources, watch trailers, and do research on the making of it (who's in it, who produced it, who's the director - all have significant bearing on what a movie's like. Video games, you know the studio, maybe the lead designer for people like Miyamoto, Hideo, Suda 51, et al, but the teams within the studio keep changing), if you really want, to find out if you'll like it before you buy.
There's no proviso for doing so with games. A studio might have made a game you like before, but $50-$60 is a hell of a lot to drop for most people, on a "I like the brand," which is what a studio boils down to. Demos are really just trailers, and don't give honest impressions. Even game reviews are suspect nowadays (Kane and Lynch, anyone?) So yeah, people nervous about buying Demigod, an ONLINE ONLY GAME WITH NO DEMO are going to be leery.
As for "ruining the launch?" No. They admitted it was because of the retarded way they set it up to connect, with people getting "you are connecting to the game lobby" messages before the connection was even started to establish to the other players, leading to it appearing you were waiting for a minute or more, when you'd not even started. Do some research, and you'll see exactly what happened.
No, they shouldn't be free, but it fucking well should be cheaper than buying a hard copy in the store. You know what the standard retail discount is from book publishers to stores is? 40%. You know what the cost of printing is, in relation to the price of a book? 20%. Book publishers use 40% of the retail price to pay all their costs and get profit. And hey, when you buy an e-book, it's generally cheaper than a dead-tree edition! Damn! Look! A model that does it right! So why is it I'm paying a buck a song, or more, and the entire CD is $13 or so, when that's what I'm paying in the store? The distributor's not paying for manufacturing, physical shelf space, or any of the rest. They're making a lot more money that way. You can argue that it's the a la carte conveience you're paying for, and fine, maybe it is worth a buck a song so I don't get the 4 crappy tracks on the CD. But movies/tv shows don't have that option. Generally, when you download them legitly, you're missing out on all the bonus content on the DVD, but still paying close to the same price as you would be in the store. So you're getting less, and they're spending less, but you're not getting a commesurate discount. It's $15 for Taken in Amazon's Video on Demand section. Or I could go buy the blu-ray with all the extras for $30. Yeah, seems fair.
But... that exclusivity isn't really of any value to anybody _except_ to the copyright holder
And as far as I can tell, when the copyright holder is the actual artist, most people are like, "yeah, they should get paid, they did the work." When copyright extends past the life of the creator, that person's not benefiting from their work anymore, so why should it still be copyrighted? There's no legitimate reason for companies to be making money off something done half a century after the death of the creator, to the detriment of the rest of society. The company holding it in that case just coasts on the previous success, and doesn't feel the need to produce anything of redeeming quality, because they have a stable of content making money for them already. If a company had to go out and find replacement content continually, they might actually be discerning in what they put their cash behind, since if something flops, they're not going to get their investment back in time.
As for using DRM to secure copyrights, the fact is, people are people. They take the path of least effort for most benefits. If you make it so that they need to go through a 20 minute process to play a CD the first time they play it, and 5 minutes every time thereafter, (analagous to games, for example, or needing to find the CD in a massive collection, for an exact corellation), people are instead going to look at easier alternatives. "Hey, I can spend $20 on this CD, and need to keep it pristine, and never lose it, or I'm screwed, and I'm only allowed to use it in specific players (anyone remember CDs that didn't want to work in computer drives?), or I can spend half an hour and some bandwidth, and get it for free, and it'll be available whenever I want, and I can do whatever with it."
If the response a company has to that is "Fine. We'll bend. You can either buy the CD and deal with all that hassle, or you can have this digital format, but it will only work on these devices, and you still can't make copies or move the files, so if your computer breaks and your HDD fries, you need to buy a new copy." people aren't going to accept that. It's not a more convenient way than just going out and downloading it for free. The problem with agencies like Sony and the *AAs is that they want the world to work how THEY think it should work, rather than how it DOES work. Give people an easy, cheap, useful-format-download, and they'll use it, rather than cruising torrents, hoping it doesn't have viruses, it's decent quality, and it's actually what it says it is.
But, keep in mind, people, still being people, you'll still get people stealing, copying, redistributing, and whatever. It just won't be as many, since people will be picking the easier way.
Copyright doesn't grant people the exclusive right to have people buy their things. It grants them the right to make and distribute it. If it's not being distributed how people want, then people aren't going to bother with it. Simple as that.
But even the (real) speed bumps serve a sensible purpose. You have to slow down and thus fewer accidents occur, and those that occur are less severe.
Speed bumps kill. Do a google search for "ambulance delays due to speed bumps" and you get a massive list of cases where an ambulance is delayed a minute or so trying to navigate a speed bump, and people die from delayed treatment. In the meantime, people still go over them as fast as possible, or drive as far over as they can, so that they only go over the speed bump with one pair of wheels, or just cut through the parking spaces, and avoiding the bumps all together. Speed bumps only affect those who were driving properly in the first place.
I doubt I'm alone in being disappointed by Hulu and the other network TV streaming sites.
Definitely not alone. Considering without doing some IP spoofing voodoo, no one outside the US can watch 90% of those sites, since they're all region-locked, and there aren't any DVD-mailing services in Canada, my options are:
1. Watch it on TV. Except my hours don't work for that, and cable's too expensive for the 5 shows I know I'd like to watch.
2. Wait for the DVD set to come out. Which is what I normally do, since it's fairly convenient, the price isn't horrific compared to buying movies on DVD, there's no commercials, and it's easy to skip around episodes, though DVD has issues all its own that I won't get in to now.
3. Torrent it. I've not torrented many TV shows (usually movies I can't find anywhere, or are just so horrible that no one deserves money for making them), but any TV show I have torrented, I either gave up on after 3 episodes as being craptacular, or bought the DVD set as soon as it came out.
But if you gave me digital downloads of the episodes for a couple bucks each, or threw in commercial breaks, or ads in banner format, I'd probably move to that to check new shows out. I can't see the benefit of locking out entire portions of the world from a *revenue-generating system.* Seriously. I'm Canadian, I'm not a leper. Let me in.
And herein lies the problem-he thinks there are store hours on the internet.
With some websites, there are. My old college's website would be closed after 10pm until 7am. A specific pizza franchise's website will let you browse the menu when they're closed, but won't let you submit an order for later, despite the ability to do so while the stores are open.
Not to mention you can type the word "typewriter" with nothing but top-row characters, thus allowing salesmen to quickly rattle off a 10 character word with little chance of error. Very impressive to someone who'd never seen a typewriter before.
Good thing that wasn't a Canadian story. No caffeine in our Mountain Dew. You'd all have been doomed.
It also had a function under the F5 key that would grab all cases ever created, melting the server...
Why would you (in the general sense, not you specifically) code that? I mean, there had to be a better way to auto-kill the server.
Do you have any idea how hard random data is to collect?
Anywhere from trivial to impossible.
(Yes, Vista allows the drivers the privilege of taking down the whole OS.)
Really? Because it would recover from driver crashes for me pretty much every time. Granted, those were beta display drivers, or audio drivers, but still. It recovered them on its own.
have access to free legal
fail.
Pirates of the Burning Seas? Unknown? Not really. It's not a huge one, but if you pay attention to games at all, you'd hear about it a few times. Pirate-based MMO? On the internet? And you expect it to go unnoticed?
It's called "exhausting all possible options." If you could find someone with a phone call and a trip down the block vs. 11 hours and over 100 people, even if it was just a small chance in the first part? Secondly, as others have pointed out, deactivated accounts can still call 911. If I had to cancel my service, I'd keep my cell phone present, but powered-down, just in case. And even powered down, your phone can receive a signal, telling it to power up completely, giving a firm lock on your location.
You can also opt out of federal taxes. It involves forfeiting your SSN and your ability to drive on the interstates, among other things, but you can do it. Last I heard, it's been done about 3 times.
Then you waive the fee, turn it on, then REcharge the fee. Takes about 20 minutes for the entire process. If you've got a broken hand.
From TFS:After an 11-hour search (during which time the sheriff's department was trying to figure out how to pay the bill), the man was found, unconscious.
Notice the part in parenthesis? They apparently tried. Why it didn't work isn't explained. BUT THEY DID TRY.
Second, there is a *world* of difference between "help us find deranged lost guy" and "help us track potential criminal." It's like how they ask for volunteers to help search large areas for missing persons. The police basically asked Verizon to volunteer for the search party.
I'm going to try very hard not to flame you here, because you're trying to be the voice of reason.
But you're talking bullshit. It doesn't matter if it's never happened before. There's a first time for everything. They could have set a precedent. As for "not being able to." That's what the managers are there for. There is no way on this planet that there wasn't someone higher up the chain to talk to for 11 hours. And those managers routinely waive overages on minutes, or reconnect fees, or shipping charges on new handsets, and give out hundreds in freebies every day to keep customers "happy." If the manager couldn't pull his head out of his ass to waive $20 to try and help save a life, the company doesn't deserve its customer-base. They wouldn't even have needed to waive it. Just send a temporary reconnect.
I'm pretty sure Opera's already got HTML5 support, or at least for the vast majority of it. Firefox loses again, if it's not until that evening.
You're also against people saying "Merry Christmas" since the US has "seperation between church and state," aren't you. They were giving a specific instance of something someone could develop, not promoting the iPhone.
So... what you're saying is... If I understand... You want Opera to become broken. They currently follow standards, and others don't. But rather than having everyone else follow those standards, you'd rather they stop.
I am so confused.
From what I've read, that number seems to be close to legitimate, however, the issue comes from companies with intranet applications that only run in IE, thus creating a pool of users who can't switch, for one, and second, are familiar with a setup, and won't switch for home use, for a second. Thus, unless companies decide to spend a lot of money upgrading their tools to work on other browsers, I think there's going to be a hard bottom on IE's user base.
Which is a very long-winded way to say "I agree with you."