DRM may be Important to you, but, quite clearly, looking at the success of streaming media services like Netflix, Pandora, etc., it is far less important to others.
The key is convenience, if DRM doesn't get in my way then I don't care. Even if you are a conspiracy theorist and these nefarious programs are taking control of your system then what's the argument? "Oh no they have control of my Apple TV or non-privileged control of the VM I remote into from my TV-connected PCs... the horror!" Even if (and that's a big "if") that were the case I still don't see any major issue there.
The moment a browser (or OS) tries to put in technological measures to defend against the owner, your computer is not yours.
Then don't use it, if you don't like DRM then don't support the companies that use it. Stop giving your computer away in exchange for some Hollywood film.
The battle against DRM should not be fought at the platform level, that is obvious stupidity. If you are opposed to DRM then effort should be spent to either convince content producers not to use it or convince users to boycott DRM content because there are plenty of closed platform vendors that will implement DRM and if open platforms demand no DRM then do you think content producers or users will support such platforms? Outside of geeks nobody cares about the platform, it is just a mechanism to get the content they want.
It seems a lot of the budgets goes into more shiny graphics, not necessarily into more sophisticated game play.
I don't know about "shiny" but when you can include more detail and larger levels then obviously that is far more taxing on artists and developers. Then if you give artists the freedom to specify the sort of highend effects that new generations of hardware are capable of you need extra development resources to make that happen. Increasing the power of the hardware is only one part of having next-gen titles, figuring out how to apply that power to bring game concepts to reality is another. Sure you could employ people to work at getting character animation right or you could hire a motion capture studio and actors to get it close to perfect and if you have the budget for that sort of thing then why not?
The high end of those budgets does include marketing as well - not just development - and I would say most of that is the marketing budget given the sort of campaigns that are being run to promote AAA titles these days.
So what is your point? Previously we had to write for many APIs (OpenGL, Direct3D, Glide, Rendition, MSI, etc...), now we have to write for fewer APIs (only OpenGL and Direct3D). In both cases we always had multiple code paths per API so what point are you trying to make?
Ever hear of "the exception that proves the rule"? Congratulations, you found it. One single incident of one single customer claiming to get a refund for one single incident.
You're a gullible fool to think this unconfirmed anecdote from an anonymous person that Amazon would not confirm actually proves anything.
No there are plenty of examples but you are too braindead to just use Google. But of course you are just a corporate boot-licker and will unquestionably believe that anything written in a corporate 'policy' is gospel, go back to your corporate masters with their EULAs and policies and just do whatever they tell you you spineless weasel.
For example, a DirectX 7 game that ran better on a 2008-era Intel integrated GPU tied to an ultra-low-voltage C2Duo clocked at 1.2GHz than it did on a GeForce 9600M with a C2Duo at 2.8GHz, even when both boxes had 4GB of RAM and ran Win7; but ran better than either on single-core 1.8GHz AMD chip with a low-end 2006 mobile graphics chip with Vista on 2GB of RAM.
That sounds very strange, what was the game? Certainly sounds like an outlier than a general rule.
You had the same thing when targeting specific features of the Voodoo 2 as opposed to the Voodoo 1 even when using Glide. Having multiple code paths for a single API to support multiple generations of hardware is not new, it was done back when we were supporting a dozen graphics APIs as well.
Definitely! It was cool to have the 3D accelerator days, a TNT paired with a Voodoo 2 was such a cool combo! But then being able to work on an InifiniteReality the size of a pair of refrigerators with - back then - an enormous amount of computing power was just astounding (from a nerd point of view). I do miss that, and having such a buzzing development community being pulled in all different directions by the latest innovation from one of the many vendors:)
Nobody got a refund from Amazon, you idiot. Didn't you read the policy link?
Curunir_wolf fails again!:
Reader Alex Gladd writes in to let us know that Amazon appears to be altering its standard downloadable game return policy when dealing with customer complaints about SimCity. After writing to Amazon through the "Contact Us" page to express his anger over the state of the game, Gladd got a reply stating, "as a standard policy, Games, Game Items, and Software Downloads are not returnable after purchase. However, because of the circumstances, I've made an exception and issued a refund in the amount of $54.99 http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/ea-not-altering-return-policy-for-furious-simcity-buyers/
That guy may have tried to make such a case with EA, but notice in the article comments that NOBODY got any such refund. Idiot.
Get out of your mom's basement and try interacting with the real world a bit.
That's rich, coming from the guy who can't even use Google to figure out that Amazon did issue refunds, fool.
Or, I'll just assume you're a shill for EA. It's the only explanation that makes sense.
Yes it clearly makes sense given that I suggest you make remediation through the mechanisms set out in law of merchantability in your particular country. Now what does the law in your country say about how to deal with a breach of said law?
Now before you respond take a moment to think, research and comprehend your answer before you spout a bunch more idiotic bullshit that I will immediately disprove to show you as being the idiot you are.
I don't, having to code for OpenGL, Direct3D, Glide, Rendition and MSI to optimally support all the different vendors on the market was a huge PITA. Though I do agree that the competition was so fierce that technology was bounding forward at a brilliant pace!...and that part I do miss.
Your reading comprehension failures are back again, did you even read the links you've posted? In the link you posted as "good luck with that", the line in the chat explicitly states that Amazon users have gotten refunds:
you: Why can Amazon users get refunds but i can't?
So that disproves your claim about Amazon and shows that it may be in their policy there but that does not override the law and clearly does not apply in the case where a product isn't fit for purpose but just exists to prevent returns if people simply change their mind. If this law of merchantability exists then that policy has no weight, as is demonstrated in that chat log.
As for the EA situation in that chat that was in relation to them having trouble coping with load, not with removing mandatory servers entirely so it is a different situation.
But if the game is so DRM'd and requires an active service that goes belly-up so the game isn't even playable - why does everybody think the distributor gets to keep the money just because you "broke the seal" to find out you can't play the game?
Who do you think is suggesting that?
You're saying I can't demand a refund because I've already driven the car
No, I never said anything of the sort. Take a deep breath and try reading what is written and then taking some time to make sure you actually comprehend it. I don't know where you get the idea I was suggesting anything of the sort, I explicitly stated that you should take action against the merchant, which you somehow managed to not read or misinterpret so I even restated it for you that you take action against the merchant. I don't see how that can be so difficult for you to interpret.
you're FURTHER stating that I can't manufacture my own fuel for the car because that violates the manufacture's "intellectual property rights."
Yes I am stating that, because that is a fact. I'm not saying it's a great situation and I don't agree with it being right but it is a fact regardless of whether you like it or not. You disagreeing with it doesn't make it any less of a fact. Now for the third time - try to understand it this time - you should take action against the merchant for breaching the implied merchantability, if a country has such a law then it has methods for remediation and those are what you should turn to.
Exactly what it says: take action against the merchant. You stated that there is an implied merchantability law that has been violated, so take action with respect to that.
I should "turn the other cheek"? I've been defrauded, but I get no recourse because that would just be "childish nonsense". I should just "take it like a man" and quit complaining about being fucked over by a lying shitbag with millions of dollars obtained by lying to their customers? Yea, I don't think so.
No, I quite clearly said you should take action (maybe you got so angry you couldn't parse that) - but the right kind of action.
They should be forced by law to release that source code.
Or maybe people should wise up and stop buying their products. Seriously how many times do they have to do this before the consumerist lapdogs start to get a clue?
These companies mandate an always-on type of DRM such that it would be necessary for them to run the servers forever and consumers don't see that this might be an issue in the future? No it's just I WANT IT AND I WANT IT NOW, I'll complain about these problems later. Then they go back for another serve.
I think it is unreasonable to demand that products be supported in perpetuity, but companies need to also understand it isn't right to orphan and render software or devices unusable. They need to open it up, remove DRM with a patch, or do whatever it takes to allow products people pay for to continue to be used.
No, they don't need to do that. I certainly agree with you that it is preferable that they do that but the market has decided that they don't, until people start supporting companies that do it in place of companies that don't then those companies don't need to do anything.
That's the fundamental problem, you need to convince people that they should not buy from those companies but ultimately most people are fine to just upgrade when the hardware/software goes EOL. It's a similar issue with the whole DRM content thing where freedom advocates go after hardware/software/device makers when really that's attacking the problem at the middle, either convince content producers to change or convince users to change but trying to strip DRM at the distribution platform level will achieve nothing, content producers will move to different distribution platforms and people who want that content will follow.
They paid for the game, though, and there is the common law (and in some places, explicit law) known as "implied merchantability". For a game, that means I've paid for a game, and expect to be able to play it. If the game cannot be played because the merchant's servers failed, then they have violated the rights of the consumer. That's what the law says.
Right, but you then take action against the merchant. It's not a case of 'You violated my rights so I'll violate yours' because now you've both broken the law, this 'oh but he did it first' is just childish nonsense.
Wasn't there a story a couple of years ago that Blackberry DID have backdoors to both BES and their own system and shared it with not just US but also Indian and other governments around the world.
That was BIS not BES. BES you run yourself, BIS is run on Blackberry's own servers.
All the things listed, are synced to the iCloud. Sounds to me like they are not accessing the phone
How? How can it possibly sound like that to you?
The story explicitly says they are extracting data from the device Apple Can Extract Texts, Photos, Contacts From Locked iPhones, the article says its technicians can only extract the data from a locked iOS device at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino and the guidelines say Apple can perform this data extraction process on iOS devices running iOS 4 or more recent versions of iOS.. Nowhere does it say anything about iCloud yet in many devices it specifically says they are extracting information from the device, not only that but iCloud is not mandatory so this would be thwarted by anybody who doesn't use iCloud - something that you would expect to be pretty prominent in the material if it were relying on iCloud.
Where do you get any kind of idea that this gets the data from iCloud?
Interesting... I agree with the above poster who laments the fact that at every FOSS/Libre conference, there are an abundance of those closed source HW/SW capitalist MacBooks floating around. Not exactly a good thing.
What's wrong with that? You do realize you can support the FOSS/Libre community without being religiously devoted to the associated ideology don't you? What would they really be using instead?
Slashdot Mirror
DRM may be Important to you, but, quite clearly, looking at the success of streaming media services like Netflix, Pandora, etc., it is far less important to others.
The key is convenience, if DRM doesn't get in my way then I don't care. Even if you are a conspiracy theorist and these nefarious programs are taking control of your system then what's the argument? "Oh no they have control of my Apple TV or non-privileged control of the VM I remote into from my TV-connected PCs ... the horror!" Even if (and that's a big "if") that were the case I still don't see any major issue there.
The moment a browser (or OS) tries to put in technological measures to defend against the owner, your computer is not yours.
Then don't use it, if you don't like DRM then don't support the companies that use it. Stop giving your computer away in exchange for some Hollywood film.
The battle against DRM should not be fought at the platform level, that is obvious stupidity. If you are opposed to DRM then effort should be spent to either convince content producers not to use it or convince users to boycott DRM content because there are plenty of closed platform vendors that will implement DRM and if open platforms demand no DRM then do you think content producers or users will support such platforms? Outside of geeks nobody cares about the platform, it is just a mechanism to get the content they want.
It seems a lot of the budgets goes into more shiny graphics, not necessarily into more sophisticated game play.
I don't know about "shiny" but when you can include more detail and larger levels then obviously that is far more taxing on artists and developers. Then if you give artists the freedom to specify the sort of highend effects that new generations of hardware are capable of you need extra development resources to make that happen. Increasing the power of the hardware is only one part of having next-gen titles, figuring out how to apply that power to bring game concepts to reality is another. Sure you could employ people to work at getting character animation right or you could hire a motion capture studio and actors to get it close to perfect and if you have the budget for that sort of thing then why not?
The high end of those budgets does include marketing as well - not just development - and I would say most of that is the marketing budget given the sort of campaigns that are being run to promote AAA titles these days.
So it sounds like a poorly developed game then.
So what is your point? Previously we had to write for many APIs (OpenGL, Direct3D, Glide, Rendition, MSI, etc...), now we have to write for fewer APIs (only OpenGL and Direct3D). In both cases we always had multiple code paths per API so what point are you trying to make?
Ever hear of "the exception that proves the rule"? Congratulations, you found it. One single incident of one single customer claiming to get a refund for one single incident.
Yeah you obviously don't understand what that means, you said nobody got refunds, which is false as I gave you an example of a person who got a refund and here are a couple more just to prove you wrong even more:
I got a refund for SimCity from Amazon a few days after release
Just contacted Amazon and they gave me a refund for the digital copy.
You're a gullible fool to think this unconfirmed anecdote from an anonymous person that Amazon would not confirm actually proves anything.
No there are plenty of examples but you are too braindead to just use Google. But of course you are just a corporate boot-licker and will unquestionably believe that anything written in a corporate 'policy' is gospel, go back to your corporate masters with their EULAs and policies and just do whatever they tell you you spineless weasel.
For example, a DirectX 7 game that ran better on a 2008-era Intel integrated GPU tied to an ultra-low-voltage C2Duo clocked at 1.2GHz than it did on a GeForce 9600M with a C2Duo at 2.8GHz, even when both boxes had 4GB of RAM and ran Win7; but ran better than either on single-core 1.8GHz AMD chip with a low-end 2006 mobile graphics chip with Vista on 2GB of RAM.
That sounds very strange, what was the game? Certainly sounds like an outlier than a general rule.
You had the same thing when targeting specific features of the Voodoo 2 as opposed to the Voodoo 1 even when using Glide. Having multiple code paths for a single API to support multiple generations of hardware is not new, it was done back when we were supporting a dozen graphics APIs as well.
Definitely! It was cool to have the 3D accelerator days, a TNT paired with a Voodoo 2 was such a cool combo! But then being able to work on an InifiniteReality the size of a pair of refrigerators with - back then - an enormous amount of computing power was just astounding (from a nerd point of view). I do miss that, and having such a buzzing development community being pulled in all different directions by the latest innovation from one of the many vendors :)
Nobody got a refund from Amazon, you idiot. Didn't you read the policy link?
Curunir_wolf fails again!:
Reader Alex Gladd writes in to let us know that Amazon appears to be altering its standard downloadable game return policy when dealing with customer complaints about SimCity. After writing to Amazon through the "Contact Us" page to express his anger over the state of the game, Gladd got a reply stating, "as a standard policy, Games, Game Items, and Software Downloads are not returnable after purchase. However, because of the circumstances, I've made an exception and issued a refund in the amount of $54.99
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/ea-not-altering-return-policy-for-furious-simcity-buyers/
That guy may have tried to make such a case with EA, but notice in the article comments that NOBODY got any such refund. Idiot.
False, idiot.
Get out of your mom's basement and try interacting with the real world a bit.
That's rich, coming from the guy who can't even use Google to figure out that Amazon did issue refunds, fool.
Or, I'll just assume you're a shill for EA. It's the only explanation that makes sense.
Yes it clearly makes sense given that I suggest you make remediation through the mechanisms set out in law of merchantability in your particular country. Now what does the law in your country say about how to deal with a breach of said law?
Now before you respond take a moment to think, research and comprehend your answer before you spout a bunch more idiotic bullshit that I will immediately disprove to show you as being the idiot you are.
That's not too different from having to write different code paths for different vendors using OpenGL or D3D for performance reasons.
Well it is, like I said it's OGL, D3D and 3 more vendor-specific code paths. Targeting 5 is significantly more effort than targeting 2.
Boy I miss PowerVR, S3, 3DFX Vodoo, and Matrox.
I don't, having to code for OpenGL, Direct3D, Glide, Rendition and MSI to optimally support all the different vendors on the market was a huge PITA. Though I do agree that the competition was so fierce that technology was bounding forward at a brilliant pace! ...and that part I do miss.
Sure. Because that always always works so well.
Your reading comprehension failures are back again, did you even read the links you've posted? In the link you posted as "good luck with that", the line in the chat explicitly states that Amazon users have gotten refunds:
you: Why can Amazon users get refunds but i can't?
So that disproves your claim about Amazon and shows that it may be in their policy there but that does not override the law and clearly does not apply in the case where a product isn't fit for purpose but just exists to prevent returns if people simply change their mind. If this law of merchantability exists then that policy has no weight, as is demonstrated in that chat log.
As for the EA situation in that chat that was in relation to them having trouble coping with load, not with removing mandatory servers entirely so it is a different situation.
But if the game is so DRM'd and requires an active service that goes belly-up so the game isn't even playable - why does everybody think the distributor gets to keep the money just because you "broke the seal" to find out you can't play the game?
Who do you think is suggesting that?
You're saying I can't demand a refund because I've already driven the car
No, I never said anything of the sort. Take a deep breath and try reading what is written and then taking some time to make sure you actually comprehend it. I don't know where you get the idea I was suggesting anything of the sort, I explicitly stated that you should take action against the merchant, which you somehow managed to not read or misinterpret so I even restated it for you that you take action against the merchant. I don't see how that can be so difficult for you to interpret.
you're FURTHER stating that I can't manufacture my own fuel for the car because that violates the manufacture's "intellectual property rights."
Yes I am stating that, because that is a fact. I'm not saying it's a great situation and I don't agree with it being right but it is a fact regardless of whether you like it or not. You disagreeing with it doesn't make it any less of a fact. Now for the third time - try to understand it this time - you should take action against the merchant for breaching the implied merchantability, if a country has such a law then it has methods for remediation and those are what you should turn to.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Exactly what it says: take action against the merchant. You stated that there is an implied merchantability law that has been violated, so take action with respect to that.
I should "turn the other cheek"? I've been defrauded, but I get no recourse because that would just be "childish nonsense". I should just "take it like a man" and quit complaining about being fucked over by a lying shitbag with millions of dollars obtained by lying to their customers? Yea, I don't think so.
No, I quite clearly said you should take action (maybe you got so angry you couldn't parse that) - but the right kind of action.
They should be forced by law to release that source code.
Or maybe people should wise up and stop buying their products. Seriously how many times do they have to do this before the consumerist lapdogs start to get a clue?
These companies mandate an always-on type of DRM such that it would be necessary for them to run the servers forever and consumers don't see that this might be an issue in the future? No it's just I WANT IT AND I WANT IT NOW, I'll complain about these problems later. Then they go back for another serve.
I think it is unreasonable to demand that products be supported in perpetuity, but companies need to also understand it isn't right to orphan and render software or devices unusable. They need to open it up, remove DRM with a patch, or do whatever it takes to allow products people pay for to continue to be used.
No, they don't need to do that. I certainly agree with you that it is preferable that they do that but the market has decided that they don't, until people start supporting companies that do it in place of companies that don't then those companies don't need to do anything.
That's the fundamental problem, you need to convince people that they should not buy from those companies but ultimately most people are fine to just upgrade when the hardware/software goes EOL. It's a similar issue with the whole DRM content thing where freedom advocates go after hardware/software/device makers when really that's attacking the problem at the middle, either convince content producers to change or convince users to change but trying to strip DRM at the distribution platform level will achieve nothing, content producers will move to different distribution platforms and people who want that content will follow.
You can't steal an intangible
Actually you can, your rights are not tangible but you can have them taken from you.
They paid for the game, though, and there is the common law (and in some places, explicit law) known as "implied merchantability". For a game, that means I've paid for a game, and expect to be able to play it. If the game cannot be played because the merchant's servers failed, then they have violated the rights of the consumer. That's what the law says.
Right, but you then take action against the merchant. It's not a case of 'You violated my rights so I'll violate yours' because now you've both broken the law, this 'oh but he did it first' is just childish nonsense.
Wasn't there a story a couple of years ago that Blackberry DID have backdoors to both BES and their own system and shared it with not just US but also Indian and other governments around the world.
That was BIS not BES. BES you run yourself, BIS is run on Blackberry's own servers.
Enterprise customers will remain safe from India’s spooks after BlackBerry presumably persuaded the authorities that it doesn’t have – and indeed never did have – the BES encryption keys for individual corporates to hand over.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/11/blackberry_gives_indian_spooks_access/
All the things listed, are synced to the iCloud. Sounds to me like they are not accessing the phone
How? How can it possibly sound like that to you?
The story explicitly says they are extracting data from the device Apple Can Extract Texts, Photos, Contacts From Locked iPhones , the article says its technicians can only extract the data from a locked iOS device at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino and the guidelines say Apple can perform this data extraction process on iOS devices running iOS 4 or more recent versions of iOS.. Nowhere does it say anything about iCloud yet in many devices it specifically says they are extracting information from the device, not only that but iCloud is not mandatory so this would be thwarted by anybody who doesn't use iCloud - something that you would expect to be pretty prominent in the material if it were relying on iCloud.
Where do you get any kind of idea that this gets the data from iCloud?
Well in that case it can be presented as fact. What exactly was the security hole?
Interesting... I agree with the above poster who laments the fact that at every FOSS/Libre conference, there are an abundance of those closed source HW/SW capitalist MacBooks floating around. Not exactly a good thing.
What's wrong with that? You do realize you can support the FOSS/Libre community without being religiously devoted to the associated ideology don't you? What would they really be using instead?
In what way?
Then most apps are not Windows RT apps because all Windows RT apps are Windows Store apps.
Yes, but I think that's pretty obvious given the age and lack of adoption of the platform.