What is the point of running an online game (WoW) connectionless?
If you have a single player game, my proposal doesn't affect game play at all. Many people run pirated / cracked versions of games because of DRM getting in the way.
If you make it easy to 1)get games (cheap/fast) then there is no reason to pirate. Unless you're a thief. In which case, you have other issues.
If you make it easy to 2)DL and update games via simple server side registration then there is no need for DRM.
All DRM does is say "we have a broken profit model, and our games are broken". It also says "our customers are thieves". Yeah, some are, most are not, if you give them a chance.
Well, if you are buying a game now, which is primarily for Online playing, what happens when it goes defunct?
There are two types of games, single player (Civ) and multiplayer (WoW). Some games have features of both, but I don't know anyonw who plays WoW by themselves: what is the point in that?
And if you have a single player game, who cares if they don't have servers to access if the game never checks in.
If you read deeper in the threads above, you'll see my response regarding piracy and single player games.
The greatest problem I have with single player games is what do I do if they suck? I don't want to pay for a game that sucks.
If they go out of business, then you're not playing online with their servers. If you have a single player mode, then you have no problem, because it doesn't need to check anything (no DRM).
The only check is for playing online. That should be DRM (user account) enough.
No, you make it hurt. You learn to play the bully's game better than the bully. If the bully punches you, you best know how to punch back, and better than the bully.
Martial arts teaches discipline, and as citizens we need to practice the discipline of Martial Arts, but within the legal system.
And we have even more tools today than before. We can blog about abuses, report them to a much wider audience.
Bad cops exist, it is easier to remove them if you play within the system. And not all cops are bad, even if they are overreaching. They are people, and people makes mistakes.
A simple "Officer, I believe you are mistaken" might garner more sympathetic ear than "Fuck you, you jack booted asshole". And if it doesn't, then you have recourse that is much more productive.
The solution for single player games is just as easy. Make it easier to get the game than to pirate it. The assumption here is that you're not connected to the network, now you have to go to a store (game stop) or whatever to buy the game. Make it easy (less expensive).
If they have a connection to the internet, but the game is single player (eg Civ), then make it available online even cheaper than retail.
Who cares about finding a Torrent or cracked version that isn't spyware/virus plagued when it is just as easy to go get it from the source?
Pirates only operate where it pays to pirate, and the commodity is scarce. If you offer a good product and service at a fair price, you'll have customers. Yes, there will be people who STEAL (yes I said steal) the game to play, but that is not the software company's problem. They are going to do it anyways.
The point is get to a point of "why would I need to Crack and Torrent something that is so easy to get from SOFTGAMECO?"
You can make a point without being an asshole. If they are abusing power, then the best way to deal with it is to LET THEM, and report it.
We don't live in Nazi Germany, we live in a land with laws that are enforced. If the cops break the law, then report it.
Part of the response to the above isn't to be an asshole, it should be informing the officers that their names and badge numbers are being recorded, and their actions are going to be reported through official channels and on the Internet, but that you are going to comply.
And if they ask you to delete the pictures, politely suggest that you can't destroy evidence. And if they delete the photos from the camera, then you'll file evidence tampering charges in addition to false imprisonment / arrest charges.
The facts are, the laws work in both directions. You have to be smarter than the cops.
No, the game companies ought to give the games away for free, and charge people to connect to their servers.
UsernameID should be enough to satisfy DRM, since it is tied directly to a user. People buying a RETAIL copy of a game should get a certain number of USER registrations (suggested value = 5) for people in a house.
If they did this, then they would have their cake, and eat it too. Single people could share their Install Code 4 times and spread the popularity and such.
The solution is EASY if one can just wake up to it.
I'm always polite. However I'm a polite kind of asshole. I will calmly inform the officers that their actions are being noted, as is their demeanor and it will be reported back to supervisors and possibly the press. But I will be polite, and comply, and yet still be an asshole by actively NOT HELPING.
Seriously, the better asshole would realize the cop was BSing and call him on it, to his face, while complying.
Saying something like "you're full of shit, you and I both know it, but I'm going to do what you requested. But know this, I'm going to report this to the proper authorities and perhaps even a news organization. Do you like free publicity?"
This is formally protesting, while complying. This is actually giving you MORE power, than being just an average asshole. Trust me, if you comply with their requests while protesting their request, they are in a much worse position, and you are in a much better position, than if you ignore their requests.
Yes is not an answer to the question above. It is a "have you stopped beating your wife" type question. If a police officer says "yes" or "no" to a question requires a follow up question.
The correct phrase of such a question would demand an appropriate and definitive answer.
"Please tell me whether I am free to go, or if I am being charged with a crime".
But even that is not perfect, because you can be detained while an officer is investigating a crime which you are a party to, or being issued a citation (not a crime) or summons.
The problem here is that most of us Slashdotters love to be assholes and amateur lawyers. I don't recommend either.
Actually, if they want to keep people from taking pictures and seeing the inside of a ATM machine, then they should service the thing behind a protective screen barrier that prevents casual observance and photographing.
The relatively new phenomenon of cameras everywhere is going to take a whole new approach to how we do things.
Both sides of this can be assholes, but a little polite behavior would solve all sorts of problems, even if it takes a tad more effort to accomplish. However, the assholes of the world (on both sides) are already screwing it for everyone else.
While you have a right to be an asshole, you should expect people to be assholes back to you if you are one.
Most "Systems Administrators" are people like me, who know enough to keep a wide variety of systems functioning, with little or no training, and are expected to spend a great deal of time and energy keeping the systems functioning... all by themselves. The scope of responsibility of many of these "System Administrators" spans much further than auditing logs.
I only WISH I had the time to audit logs, and make corrective actions. But our staff has 6000 PCs and three dozen (or more) servers that we have to keep running.
Administration doesn't care about hackers until it is too late. They don't care about computers or keeping them running, until they are without. It is like all those people bitching and complaining when they don't have electricity for a day after a storm. They don't care what it takes to keep the juice flowing until it isn't.
The old saying "don't fix it, if it ain't broke" runs many IT Depts.
Conversely, why should a project wait until the last minute to get all the rights and permissions in order to produce a product, free or not, that derives from a company's trademarks and copyrights?
It is easier to beg forgiveness than to get permission.
I learned that when I was 19, and it is easily one of the more true axioms that are oft repeated.
Yes, all those links are somewhat "creepy". But even creepier is that someone thinks all of this is a good (great??) idea!
The problem is some lawyer somewhere is suing some city for not having a camera on every corner because some bad thing happened to someone somewhere. They will frame the need in terms like "high crime rate" and such, saying the city should have been monitoring the area with surveillance equipment.
And some other lawyer will be protesting the setup suggested above as an invasion of privacy, big brother etc.
Just because we CAN do something doesn't mean we OUGHT to do it. Even if it SEEMS like a good idea at the time.
By next week the Congress will have been exposed (again) as gutless wimps/corporate whores.
Surely you can't mean the current (D) congress. We all know that they are paragons of virtue and looking out for the little guy. I know, because Pelosi and Reid both say they are.
WE all know that you were directing your comments at the rat bastards in the (R) party.
You know what happens in any game, be it online, tabletop, sport, or whatnot? You lay down a simple rule, it will get abused.
Actually, the same applies to "complex" rules as well. More rules DON'T improve the game, when assholes are hell bent on pushing the boundries of the rules. BTW, Assholes are the ones that push the rules to the breaking point, using rules against those that follow them.
You know when an asshole appears, it usually is followed by "there ought to be a law(or rule)". And thus, there usually IS a new law (or rule), often named for either a victim, or the asshole himself.
In Poker, there is a Havad Khan Rule. You guessed it, named after the asshole that spurred the rule. And as much as I despise what Mr Khan did in the WSOP in 2007, I don't believe it needed a "rule".
Megan's law is another case, as is all the "hate crime" legislation. We don't need additional legislation to add additional punishment because you "hate". We just need the punishment for the actual "crime" to fit in the first place.
More laws don't make us behave any better, and end up being selectively enforced, and often for political gain, and finacial gain by the rule makers. Lawyers making laws, can anyone say conflict of interest?
Why do we allow lawyers in either of the other branches of government is beyond my understanding. You want to fix the system? Keep lawyers from the Legislative and Executive Branches of Government, except as legal counsel and prosecuting attorneys.
I did that once, with a journaling file system, and now, my girlfriend never goes down on me... ever! I like the stability of the relationship, but I seem to miss something.
I think I'm going to get one of those Windows Girlfriends.
Hey, here's an idea. WHY not have the file contain the meta data needed for it, within it, and not use Extensions to decide what runs, what is a doc, and what opens a particular file? That way, I can have one JPG file that opens in GIMP, and another that opens in Firefox?
I know, I know, that is too complicated for the user to figure out, and extensions (which are hidden) are SO much easier to figure out.
Windows automatically updates clock settings, when it connects to a network. I suggest that you make sure when you do it, that you don't put it on the net until you have it the way you want it.
Another fine example of the tolerant left. Just admit it, you only tolerate those you agree with, and are no different than (R) you hate so much for their intolerance.
You and the parent post are both wrong. The government shouldn't decide who and who cannot be married. PERIOD.
Marriage is a SACRED (ie Religious) ceremony instituted long ago. First Amendment Freedom of Religion dictates that ANYTHING resembling religion be excised from government, this includes Marriage (and Weekends by the way). I want my mail 7 days a week, and the only reason it isn't delivered on Sunday is a holdout from a more religious time.
Seriously I would love it if all the Atheists were at least consistent about their church/state separation.
Leave marriage to the sacred institutions, and get the government out of it.
I work for a school, and you're close to being right. However, it is worse than that, people who actually KNOW something more than the others are pushed aside and ignored.
I'll give you a great example, here at where I worked. Five years ago, we began planning for a large infrastructure upgrade (gig MAN), and I suggested that as part of the planning we include VLANS so that we can implement proper VLANing when we did the actual upgrades.
The ass kissing guy on our team who doesn't know shit, but has a dark brown nose, said we didn't need to VLAN anything (because he didn't understand what a VLAN was).
Fast forward to today, we have just finished our gig MAN rollout and we don't have VLANS, and people are asking about things like VOIP and using digital tech to replace other communication protocols (Fire/Saftey, HVAC, etc), and we can't because there was no planning done handle it properly within VLANS.
Nobody listened to me, because I don't speak with brown nose qualities. And the idiot who they listen to still doesn't know jack shit about anything.
There is one other small part of this that nobody really knows about. We run our whole department on a shoestring budget with no understanding from anyone in Management about what we have to do, because we are nothing more than a necissary evil to them. In the eight years I've been here, we've doubled the number of servers and desktops we have to manage, without adding a single person. In fact, the last year, we've lost three people from our Dept, and are losing another, and only one has been replaced. And it is really starting to show up in the quality of work we can do. Right now, we're in a position of firefighting, with little or no preventative planning.
And don't ask us about backups. It is only for a complete disaster. I pity the day when that happens, and we realize we didn't back up enough data.
We have good people here, doing the best we can with what we have, for the most part.
Slashdot Mirror
What is the point of running an online game (WoW) connectionless?
If you have a single player game, my proposal doesn't affect game play at all. Many people run pirated / cracked versions of games because of DRM getting in the way.
If you make it easy to 1)get games (cheap/fast) then there is no reason to pirate. Unless you're a thief. In which case, you have other issues.
If you make it easy to 2)DL and update games via simple server side registration then there is no need for DRM.
All DRM does is say "we have a broken profit model, and our games are broken". It also says "our customers are thieves". Yeah, some are, most are not, if you give them a chance.
Well, if you are buying a game now, which is primarily for Online playing, what happens when it goes defunct?
There are two types of games, single player (Civ) and multiplayer (WoW). Some games have features of both, but I don't know anyonw who plays WoW by themselves: what is the point in that?
And if you have a single player game, who cares if they don't have servers to access if the game never checks in.
If you read deeper in the threads above, you'll see my response regarding piracy and single player games.
The greatest problem I have with single player games is what do I do if they suck? I don't want to pay for a game that sucks.
There is no DRM. I don't propose DRM.
If they go out of business, then you're not playing online with their servers. If you have a single player mode, then you have no problem, because it doesn't need to check anything (no DRM).
The only check is for playing online. That should be DRM (user account) enough.
No, you make it hurt. You learn to play the bully's game better than the bully. If the bully punches you, you best know how to punch back, and better than the bully.
Martial arts teaches discipline, and as citizens we need to practice the discipline of Martial Arts, but within the legal system.
And we have even more tools today than before. We can blog about abuses, report them to a much wider audience.
Bad cops exist, it is easier to remove them if you play within the system. And not all cops are bad, even if they are overreaching. They are people, and people makes mistakes.
A simple "Officer, I believe you are mistaken" might garner more sympathetic ear than "Fuck you, you jack booted asshole". And if it doesn't, then you have recourse that is much more productive.
The solution for single player games is just as easy. Make it easier to get the game than to pirate it. The assumption here is that you're not connected to the network, now you have to go to a store (game stop) or whatever to buy the game. Make it easy (less expensive).
If they have a connection to the internet, but the game is single player (eg Civ), then make it available online even cheaper than retail.
Who cares about finding a Torrent or cracked version that isn't spyware/virus plagued when it is just as easy to go get it from the source?
Pirates only operate where it pays to pirate, and the commodity is scarce. If you offer a good product and service at a fair price, you'll have customers. Yes, there will be people who STEAL (yes I said steal) the game to play, but that is not the software company's problem. They are going to do it anyways.
The point is get to a point of "why would I need to Crack and Torrent something that is so easy to get from SOFTGAMECO?"
You can make a point without being an asshole. If they are abusing power, then the best way to deal with it is to LET THEM, and report it.
We don't live in Nazi Germany, we live in a land with laws that are enforced. If the cops break the law, then report it.
Part of the response to the above isn't to be an asshole, it should be informing the officers that their names and badge numbers are being recorded, and their actions are going to be reported through official channels and on the Internet, but that you are going to comply.
And if they ask you to delete the pictures, politely suggest that you can't destroy evidence. And if they delete the photos from the camera, then you'll file evidence tampering charges in addition to false imprisonment / arrest charges.
The facts are, the laws work in both directions. You have to be smarter than the cops.
No, the game companies ought to give the games away for free, and charge people to connect to their servers.
UsernameID should be enough to satisfy DRM, since it is tied directly to a user. People buying a RETAIL copy of a game should get a certain number of USER registrations (suggested value = 5) for people in a house.
If they did this, then they would have their cake, and eat it too. Single people could share their Install Code 4 times and spread the popularity and such.
The solution is EASY if one can just wake up to it.
I'm always polite. However I'm a polite kind of asshole. I will calmly inform the officers that their actions are being noted, as is their demeanor and it will be reported back to supervisors and possibly the press. But I will be polite, and comply, and yet still be an asshole by actively NOT HELPING.
I won't help, but I also won't obstruct.
Seriously, the better asshole would realize the cop was BSing and call him on it, to his face, while complying.
Saying something like "you're full of shit, you and I both know it, but I'm going to do what you requested. But know this, I'm going to report this to the proper authorities and perhaps even a news organization. Do you like free publicity?"
This is formally protesting, while complying. This is actually giving you MORE power, than being just an average asshole. Trust me, if you comply with their requests while protesting their request, they are in a much worse position, and you are in a much better position, than if you ignore their requests.
Unless you like screaming "Don't Taze me bro"
Yes is not an answer to the question above. It is a "have you stopped beating your wife" type question. If a police officer says "yes" or "no" to a question requires a follow up question.
The correct phrase of such a question would demand an appropriate and definitive answer.
"Please tell me whether I am free to go, or if I am being charged with a crime".
But even that is not perfect, because you can be detained while an officer is investigating a crime which you are a party to, or being issued a citation (not a crime) or summons.
The problem here is that most of us Slashdotters love to be assholes and amateur lawyers. I don't recommend either.
Actually, if they want to keep people from taking pictures and seeing the inside of a ATM machine, then they should service the thing behind a protective screen barrier that prevents casual observance and photographing.
The relatively new phenomenon of cameras everywhere is going to take a whole new approach to how we do things.
Both sides of this can be assholes, but a little polite behavior would solve all sorts of problems, even if it takes a tad more effort to accomplish. However, the assholes of the world (on both sides) are already screwing it for everyone else.
While you have a right to be an asshole, you should expect people to be assholes back to you if you are one.
Why yes. Yes it is! Welcome to the Obamanation
Most "Systems Administrators" are people like me, who know enough to keep a wide variety of systems functioning, with little or no training, and are expected to spend a great deal of time and energy keeping the systems functioning ... all by themselves. The scope of responsibility of many of these "System Administrators" spans much further than auditing logs.
I only WISH I had the time to audit logs, and make corrective actions. But our staff has 6000 PCs and three dozen (or more) servers that we have to keep running.
Administration doesn't care about hackers until it is too late. They don't care about computers or keeping them running, until they are without. It is like all those people bitching and complaining when they don't have electricity for a day after a storm. They don't care what it takes to keep the juice flowing until it isn't.
The old saying "don't fix it, if it ain't broke" runs many IT Depts.
YES!!!
Then we wouldn't have any politicians.
Sounds great actually, doesn't it?
It is easier to beg forgiveness than to get permission.
I learned that when I was 19, and it is easily one of the more true axioms that are oft repeated.
... slashdotted ..... by micropayments.
I was gonna say Pirated, but nobody would get it outside Slashdot crowd.
Yes, all those links are somewhat "creepy". But even creepier is that someone thinks all of this is a good (great??) idea!
The problem is some lawyer somewhere is suing some city for not having a camera on every corner because some bad thing happened to someone somewhere. They will frame the need in terms like "high crime rate" and such, saying the city should have been monitoring the area with surveillance equipment.
And some other lawyer will be protesting the setup suggested above as an invasion of privacy, big brother etc.
Just because we CAN do something doesn't mean we OUGHT to do it. Even if it SEEMS like a good idea at the time.
Surely you can't mean the current (D) congress. We all know that they are paragons of virtue and looking out for the little guy. I know, because Pelosi and Reid both say they are.
WE all know that you were directing your comments at the rat bastards in the (R) party.
Actually, the same applies to "complex" rules as well. More rules DON'T improve the game, when assholes are hell bent on pushing the boundries of the rules. BTW, Assholes are the ones that push the rules to the breaking point, using rules against those that follow them.
You know when an asshole appears, it usually is followed by "there ought to be a law(or rule)". And thus, there usually IS a new law (or rule), often named for either a victim, or the asshole himself.
In Poker, there is a Havad Khan Rule. You guessed it, named after the asshole that spurred the rule. And as much as I despise what Mr Khan did in the WSOP in 2007, I don't believe it needed a "rule".
Megan's law is another case, as is all the "hate crime" legislation. We don't need additional legislation to add additional punishment because you "hate". We just need the punishment for the actual "crime" to fit in the first place.
More laws don't make us behave any better, and end up being selectively enforced, and often for political gain, and finacial gain by the rule makers. Lawyers making laws, can anyone say conflict of interest?
Why do we allow lawyers in either of the other branches of government is beyond my understanding. You want to fix the system? Keep lawyers from the Legislative and Executive Branches of Government, except as legal counsel and prosecuting attorneys.
I did that once, with a journaling file system, and now, my girlfriend never goes down on me ... ever! I like the stability of the relationship, but I seem to miss something.
I think I'm going to get one of those Windows Girlfriends.
Hey, here's an idea. WHY not have the file contain the meta data needed for it, within it, and not use Extensions to decide what runs, what is a doc, and what opens a particular file? That way, I can have one JPG file that opens in GIMP, and another that opens in Firefox?
I know, I know, that is too complicated for the user to figure out, and extensions (which are hidden) are SO much easier to figure out.
Windows automatically updates clock settings, when it connects to a network. I suggest that you make sure when you do it, that you don't put it on the net until you have it the way you want it.
Another fine example of the tolerant left. Just admit it, you only tolerate those you agree with, and are no different than (R) you hate so much for their intolerance.
You and the parent post are both wrong. The government shouldn't decide who and who cannot be married. PERIOD.
Marriage is a SACRED (ie Religious) ceremony instituted long ago. First Amendment Freedom of Religion dictates that ANYTHING resembling religion be excised from government, this includes Marriage (and Weekends by the way). I want my mail 7 days a week, and the only reason it isn't delivered on Sunday is a holdout from a more religious time.
Seriously I would love it if all the Atheists were at least consistent about their church/state separation.
Leave marriage to the sacred institutions, and get the government out of it.
I work for a school, and you're close to being right. However, it is worse than that, people who actually KNOW something more than the others are pushed aside and ignored.
I'll give you a great example, here at where I worked. Five years ago, we began planning for a large infrastructure upgrade (gig MAN), and I suggested that as part of the planning we include VLANS so that we can implement proper VLANing when we did the actual upgrades.
The ass kissing guy on our team who doesn't know shit, but has a dark brown nose, said we didn't need to VLAN anything (because he didn't understand what a VLAN was).
Fast forward to today, we have just finished our gig MAN rollout and we don't have VLANS, and people are asking about things like VOIP and using digital tech to replace other communication protocols (Fire/Saftey, HVAC, etc), and we can't because there was no planning done handle it properly within VLANS.
Nobody listened to me, because I don't speak with brown nose qualities. And the idiot who they listen to still doesn't know jack shit about anything.
There is one other small part of this that nobody really knows about. We run our whole department on a shoestring budget with no understanding from anyone in Management about what we have to do, because we are nothing more than a necissary evil to them. In the eight years I've been here, we've doubled the number of servers and desktops we have to manage, without adding a single person. In fact, the last year, we've lost three people from our Dept, and are losing another, and only one has been replaced. And it is really starting to show up in the quality of work we can do. Right now, we're in a position of firefighting, with little or no preventative planning.
And don't ask us about backups. It is only for a complete disaster. I pity the day when that happens, and we realize we didn't back up enough data.
We have good people here, doing the best we can with what we have, for the most part.