The only way you're going to get any games is piracy. Even if the original IP holder is still around (which many of them aren't), there isn't enough interest for them to offer a commercial product. They're not gonna be satisfied servicing the desires of a figurative handful of DIY'ers making MAME cabinets, the only way to see these in commercial release is through emulation on a console so they can ensure they get their $10 or whatever out of it. Frankly, the MAME emulation scene just isn't popular enough to ever really see even that come to pass, except for those select few titles like Centipede or Breakout that have stayed relevant in the popular consciousness.
You have to move up to the 8-bit home consoles like the NES and Sega Master System, and beyond, if you're looking for actual legal re-releases, and you will NEVER see that happen in ROM form. If you want a legal way to play old arcade games, go buy some old arcade games. Otherwise, I wouldn't feel too bad about piracy when it comes to this stuff. They have no legal alternative.
Just because most of those people don't complain doesn't mean that nothing has happened. They might be scared to complain. Or they may feel that complaining will get them nowhere at the least.
Not to mention worried that they may miss their flight. Getting a flight changed is a ridiculously expensive endeavor that a lot of people can't just absorb at the drop of a hat, and bucking the system in any way is a really easy way to end up screwing yourself. I've heard of people sitting for 20-30 minutes waiting for an "available supervisor" to get to them, and of course the second anyone complains feet start getting dragged all through the process. Causing a stink could cost you hundreds of dollars, so most people shut up and take it, even though they really shouldn't have to.
They want people opting for the scanners in the interests of time. They push you through those lines for a reason, to keep you feeling rushed. Remember, the same people that wrote and pushed the regulations into effect requiring the new scanners have since left the TSA and gone into business making the fucking things at a cost of $250,000+ per machine, paid by John Q. Taxpayer. There's so much corruption and back alley dealing going on related to this it's ridiculous. And the people running the scanners are not the most savory of individuals anyway. I proctored TSA testing for a while, and it looked more like a McDonalds job fair than testing for security personnel charged with making sure terrorists don't get weapons onto airplanes. It's all just security theater bullshit and we're being ripped off.
We'll just have to agree to disagree on that point, as I feel that humanity, through our logic and understanding, has the ability to rise above it's baser instincts, even if said instincts are hardwired into our DNA by millions of years of natural selection. The flight instinct may kick in when our boss calls us into their office, but we don't go bolting down the hallway in the opposite direction. The drive to consume mass quantities of rich, fatty foods as much as possible can be overcome with willpower and the rational understanding that if you did you would become overweight and sick.
The cynical part of me agrees with you, but I still maintain a small bit of hope that it will come to pass eventually. Something on par with an impending global catastrophe may be enough to get humanity to stop fucking around and grow the hell up.
Then again, it could just make people even more selfish and cruel; even when group cooperation is a necessity of survival, there is always that lazy jagoff. Banishment could cure that real quick, though...
This is a direct factor in why the healthcare debate in the states is so broken. When a good portion of your culture genuinely believes that socialism is absolutely Evil, trying to build a modern system to help them is difficult.
The people want socialized medicine/single payer...whatever you want to call it. A recent poll I saw was right around 70% want a single payer system. Granted, polls are like opinions and assholes, but still, it seems like more people want it than don't...
The problem is the politicians that make the laws are owned by the Healthcare industry so there is NO WAY it will ever come to pass.
The reason the people hate "Obamacare" so much is because it kept all the protections for the insurance companies (i.e., the personal mandate to have health insurance) and stripped almost all benefit to the public. If Obama would have put up a National Health Care bill that was modeled after the UK or Canadian model, it would have gone a long way towards showing the public one crucial thing: when it would have been summarily killed by our representatives (which it would have been, no way in HELL they would have let that come to pass depending on all that Big Pharma/Big Healthcare money that they do) they would realize that they have no more representation in our government now than we did when we were colonies.
I'm so sick and fucking tired of the Communist bashing that goes on even to this damn day in the US. Communism hasn't failed mankind, mankind has always failed Communism. The true question is whether or not a society will mature enough that it's people do not constantly want to posses more of whatever goddamn thing they see than their neighbor. As long as there is that one selfish dickface that just has to hoard bread, or money, or whatever else he gets his hands on, Communism fails. It depends on people acting honorably.
I have faith in humanity that eventually we will get to that point, but I'm not gonna sit here and say it will never happen as a justification for my own greed. We get enough of that as it is. Enough with the Randian bullshit. Just say "I want more than your neighbor because fuck him" and be honest with yourself and others. At least we'll know who not to piss on when they're on fire...
That because we've never actually seen real communist rule, we've seen fascist rule calling itself communist. I mean, the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party but they sure as shit were not socialist.
Seems like we should actually see real communism in action before we dismiss it as being a failure. The question is, will a society ever mature enough and be enlightened enough to actually try it?
But there needs to be some way to prevent capital from influencing politics, especially in a democracy. Our representatives are owned wholly by the people that give them the most money, and until we definitively block money from being a driving force in politics we will be ruled by the richest.
Barring direct financial contribution to political candidates and forcing them to run on equal funds would help. Barring the movement between high public office and private business, especially government contractors, would help as well. Good luck on any of this every coming to pass. Our elected representatives directly benefit off the system the way it is now, and as they're the only ones who can legally change it, we're pretty much effed...at least, until the general public breaks out the torches and pitchforks and goes all French Revolution on their asses.
When selecting kitchen appliances and garage tools, I try to avoid digital technology unless it actually does something I need done.. Why? Because the old fashioned mechanical stuff, if you can find it, usually lasts longer and works more reliably than its digital counterpart.
I do the same, particularly with coffee makers, albeit for different reasons...mainly that all the extra digital bullshit and options did nothing to extend the lifetime of the appliance in any way. Whether I buy the $15 model with nothing but an on switch and a carafe, or the $100 with 6 different brew cycles and digital display with "Coffee Freshness timer", the fucking thing dies within a year or so, even if I'm cleaning it regularly (which I do, we drink a lot of coffee around here). Meanwhile, my grandfather's ancient Mr. Coffee that he bought in like 1980 worked up until he died in the late 90's. Hell, their toaster was from sometime in the 60's and it still worked great as well.
Believe me, they will all speak English long before any appreciable number of us speaks Chinese. I suspect language in the not-too-distant future is going to be a lot like the show Firefly...everyone will speak English, but we'll all know some Chinese curses and idioms.
These spammers are the people the ISPs should be going after for eating up bandwidth. How many people actually legitimately "opt-in" for spam? Probably pretty close to 0.
The only complaints I've seen about the game implementation on Google+ has been game developers bitching about the fact that they're separated into their own tab and not splashed all over the main stream like on Facebook. As long as they're separated, I could care less what they do, but if they start caving into developer demands and splashing game bullshit all over the main stream they're going to lose a lot of people and they really can't afford to lose people.
That we literally shit up every single place we go. Do we have a genetic predisposition to fuck things up, or is it just 200,000 years of learned behavior?
Right, it heads off horrible things like democracy in places where it'd be inconvenient.
Hey now, British Petroleum needs to get it's oil somewhere, doesn't it? So what if it involves orchestrating the overthrowing of a democratically elected leader for an ineffectual puppet monarchy that abuses it's citizens? That's the price you pay for freedom!
Eh, it doesn't bother me. If anything, I like the current trend towards Free to Play in MMO's supplemented with a cash store. If a game is horribly crippled without a cash purchase, I delete the game and move on. If it's worth playing and I enjoy the game, I have no problem throwing a few dollars at it if it results in the game being more enjoyable to me.
Case in point, Lord of the Rings: Online. It was a cool game, I played the beta years ago, but it just wasn't worth $15 a month to me. They moved to Free to Play with a cash store and I started playing again and ended up giving them about $25 over the course of the 6 months I played, and my account is still sitting there with all my mules if I ever do decide to play again. Champion's Online was worth a good 3 months of entertainment and I never spent a dime on that. I've been playing Global Agenda: Free Agent for a couple months, haven't spent a dime on that, either. I'm willing to give almost any Free to Play game a chance, and if it's worth spending money on, I will.
Now, DLC is a different story, as people are already buying a game up front for a hefty sum ($60 usually, even more in Europe, they seriously get ripped off) and all it does is encourage developers to release 2/3 of a game for full price now and then charge another $10-$15 to put the missing content back in. Modern Warfare 2, for instance, shipped with the first DLC content on the disc itself on launch, a month down the road you paid your $10 and they unlocked it for you. That is fucking bullshit. The way the number of included tracks declined with each subsequent Guitar Hero/Rock Band release after GHIII was more evidence of shady rip-off behavior which is why I stopped buying the games. I'm not a fan of the direction that console games are going as far as that goes, nor am I a fan of the way Steam is applying that console model to the PC.
But in itself I don't have a problem with microtransactions, I have a problem when it's misapplied or used nefariously by allowing people to play most of the game but then slamming down a content wall without warning. In the end, you just have to do your research before you hand over your money. Complaining about it after the fact does next to nothing, and the publishers of these games know that.
The problem is the smart cops are the ones that work behind the scenes and undercover. The most forward-facing officers, i.e., the "beat cops", are usually those that are brand new and inexperienced and are soon to be promoted off the beat, or the ones either too stupid or too mean to ascend beyond that point.
Of course the general public is going to have a negative perception of cops if the only ones they ever deal with are the ignorant bullies from high school that got into law enforcement so they could continue their bullying behavior in a state sanctioned role.
I couldn't even activate the email account over the internet, I had to call customer service and talk to a live agent so they could set it all up before I could even begin the process of signing up for HBO Go, and due to the fact that I already have to deal with their customer service 3 times a year minimum due to service problems on a this "ridiculously overloaded node" (the level 2 tech's term, not mine) I was not going to spend another 30 minutes on the phone with them in order to do something I can do already, albeit illegally.
Why do I even need my ISP email anyway? Why is my ISP account number, name, and address not enough to sign up for the service, can they not even do the fucking verification themselves, they need me to do that for them , too, by accessing my ISP-given email account? Hell, the link on HBO's site didn't even work with my ISP's web site, I had to click through about half a dozen links just to find out what I needed from Charter in order to verify I really pay for HBO. Even if the process had worked, it's still a whole lot easier to just get the shit via torrent, and I get to keep it when I'm done watching to boot.
It shocks me that anyone suggests participating in American electoral politics as a way of making a dent in anything.
Kinda like the people saying "vote with your wallet", especially as regards ISPs with local monopolies, boycotting Walmart when there's literally nowhere else to shop within an hour's drive, Big Oil...
Crime is crime--if you want to change society, you do live in a democracy and are supposed to change it by voting.
Given the nature of our government today, I'd be willing to argue that the crime is far more effective. Especially considering that we're stuck in a two party system and the cost of mounting an effective campaign is much too high for any real independents to ever win without aligning themselves to one of the two parties and toeing the party line.
Change from within is not going to happen because the only people that have the power to change the system directly benefit from the way it is now. If Anonymous forces the government to clamp down and turn the US into a corporate controlled police state, and that drives more people to fight the state because of it, then the end goal has still been achieved.
Preaching for change through democracy nowadays is about as effective as preaching for change in business by "voting with your wallet." The companies most often complained about are now so large, and have access to such cheaply made goods, that in order to be effective the boycott would have to be on a scale that's almost impossible to achieve, and that ignores the fact that in large swaths of the country there aren't even any realistic alternatives (unless you consider driving 40 minutes past your local Walmart to find a non-Walmart grocery store a realistic alternative, for instance). Ditto for the ISPs that hold local monopolies. Ditto for Big Oil which holds the U.S. by the balls.
Either way, being accused of criminal acts by a government that routinely engages in it's own criminal acts against, not only it's own citizenry, but the world at large is certainly some God-tier state-sponsored trolling. They must be in it for the lulz, too...
Slashdot Mirror
The only way you're going to get any games is piracy. Even if the original IP holder is still around (which many of them aren't), there isn't enough interest for them to offer a commercial product. They're not gonna be satisfied servicing the desires of a figurative handful of DIY'ers making MAME cabinets, the only way to see these in commercial release is through emulation on a console so they can ensure they get their $10 or whatever out of it. Frankly, the MAME emulation scene just isn't popular enough to ever really see even that come to pass, except for those select few titles like Centipede or Breakout that have stayed relevant in the popular consciousness.
You have to move up to the 8-bit home consoles like the NES and Sega Master System, and beyond, if you're looking for actual legal re-releases, and you will NEVER see that happen in ROM form. If you want a legal way to play old arcade games, go buy some old arcade games. Otherwise, I wouldn't feel too bad about piracy when it comes to this stuff. They have no legal alternative.
I will always remember 9/11/11 as the day when I heard that TNG was coming out in HD!
Never forget!!
Second, THAT'S ART?!
If it is, then I've got my own masterpiece right here. I bet I have way more than $5 million on my drive.
Unless they received their assholes due to some sort of concession, I think you mean "conceited".
Just because most of those people don't complain doesn't mean that nothing has happened. They might be scared to complain. Or they may feel that complaining will get them nowhere at the least.
Not to mention worried that they may miss their flight. Getting a flight changed is a ridiculously expensive endeavor that a lot of people can't just absorb at the drop of a hat, and bucking the system in any way is a really easy way to end up screwing yourself. I've heard of people sitting for 20-30 minutes waiting for an "available supervisor" to get to them, and of course the second anyone complains feet start getting dragged all through the process. Causing a stink could cost you hundreds of dollars, so most people shut up and take it, even though they really shouldn't have to.
They want people opting for the scanners in the interests of time. They push you through those lines for a reason, to keep you feeling rushed. Remember, the same people that wrote and pushed the regulations into effect requiring the new scanners have since left the TSA and gone into business making the fucking things at a cost of $250,000+ per machine, paid by John Q. Taxpayer. There's so much corruption and back alley dealing going on related to this it's ridiculous. And the people running the scanners are not the most savory of individuals anyway. I proctored TSA testing for a while, and it looked more like a McDonalds job fair than testing for security personnel charged with making sure terrorists don't get weapons onto airplanes. It's all just security theater bullshit and we're being ripped off.
We'll just have to agree to disagree on that point, as I feel that humanity, through our logic and understanding, has the ability to rise above it's baser instincts, even if said instincts are hardwired into our DNA by millions of years of natural selection. The flight instinct may kick in when our boss calls us into their office, but we don't go bolting down the hallway in the opposite direction. The drive to consume mass quantities of rich, fatty foods as much as possible can be overcome with willpower and the rational understanding that if you did you would become overweight and sick.
The cynical part of me agrees with you, but I still maintain a small bit of hope that it will come to pass eventually. Something on par with an impending global catastrophe may be enough to get humanity to stop fucking around and grow the hell up.
Then again, it could just make people even more selfish and cruel; even when group cooperation is a necessity of survival, there is always that lazy jagoff. Banishment could cure that real quick, though...
This is a direct factor in why the healthcare debate in the states is so broken. When a good portion of your culture genuinely believes that socialism is absolutely Evil, trying to build a modern system to help them is difficult.
The people want socialized medicine/single payer...whatever you want to call it. A recent poll I saw was right around 70% want a single payer system. Granted, polls are like opinions and assholes, but still, it seems like more people want it than don't...
The problem is the politicians that make the laws are owned by the Healthcare industry so there is NO WAY it will ever come to pass.
The reason the people hate "Obamacare" so much is because it kept all the protections for the insurance companies (i.e., the personal mandate to have health insurance) and stripped almost all benefit to the public. If Obama would have put up a National Health Care bill that was modeled after the UK or Canadian model, it would have gone a long way towards showing the public one crucial thing: when it would have been summarily killed by our representatives (which it would have been, no way in HELL they would have let that come to pass depending on all that Big Pharma/Big Healthcare money that they do) they would realize that they have no more representation in our government now than we did when we were colonies.
I wish I could mod you up right now...
I'm so sick and fucking tired of the Communist bashing that goes on even to this damn day in the US. Communism hasn't failed mankind, mankind has always failed Communism. The true question is whether or not a society will mature enough that it's people do not constantly want to posses more of whatever goddamn thing they see than their neighbor. As long as there is that one selfish dickface that just has to hoard bread, or money, or whatever else he gets his hands on, Communism fails. It depends on people acting honorably.
I have faith in humanity that eventually we will get to that point, but I'm not gonna sit here and say it will never happen as a justification for my own greed. We get enough of that as it is. Enough with the Randian bullshit. Just say "I want more than your neighbor because fuck him" and be honest with yourself and others. At least we'll know who not to piss on when they're on fire...
That because we've never actually seen real communist rule, we've seen fascist rule calling itself communist. I mean, the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party but they sure as shit were not socialist.
Seems like we should actually see real communism in action before we dismiss it as being a failure. The question is, will a society ever mature enough and be enlightened enough to actually try it?
But there needs to be some way to prevent capital from influencing politics, especially in a democracy. Our representatives are owned wholly by the people that give them the most money, and until we definitively block money from being a driving force in politics we will be ruled by the richest.
Barring direct financial contribution to political candidates and forcing them to run on equal funds would help. Barring the movement between high public office and private business, especially government contractors, would help as well. Good luck on any of this every coming to pass. Our elected representatives directly benefit off the system the way it is now, and as they're the only ones who can legally change it, we're pretty much effed...at least, until the general public breaks out the torches and pitchforks and goes all French Revolution on their asses.
When selecting kitchen appliances and garage tools, I try to avoid digital technology unless it actually does something I need done.. Why? Because the old fashioned mechanical stuff, if you can find it, usually lasts longer and works more reliably than its digital counterpart.
I do the same, particularly with coffee makers, albeit for different reasons...mainly that all the extra digital bullshit and options did nothing to extend the lifetime of the appliance in any way. Whether I buy the $15 model with nothing but an on switch and a carafe, or the $100 with 6 different brew cycles and digital display with "Coffee Freshness timer", the fucking thing dies within a year or so, even if I'm cleaning it regularly (which I do, we drink a lot of coffee around here). Meanwhile, my grandfather's ancient Mr. Coffee that he bought in like 1980 worked up until he died in the late 90's. Hell, their toaster was from sometime in the 60's and it still worked great as well.
God I wish I could mod you up...
Believe me, they will all speak English long before any appreciable number of us speaks Chinese. I suspect language in the not-too-distant future is going to be a lot like the show Firefly...everyone will speak English, but we'll all know some Chinese curses and idioms.
These spammers are the people the ISPs should be going after for eating up bandwidth. How many people actually legitimately "opt-in" for spam? Probably pretty close to 0.
The only complaints I've seen about the game implementation on Google+ has been game developers bitching about the fact that they're separated into their own tab and not splashed all over the main stream like on Facebook. As long as they're separated, I could care less what they do, but if they start caving into developer demands and splashing game bullshit all over the main stream they're going to lose a lot of people and they really can't afford to lose people.
That we literally shit up every single place we go. Do we have a genetic predisposition to fuck things up, or is it just 200,000 years of learned behavior?
Ouch. Double whammy.
I don't know why you guys argue about this. The world's gonna end in 2012 anyway, who cares about the climate?
Right, it heads off horrible things like democracy in places where it'd be inconvenient.
Hey now, British Petroleum needs to get it's oil somewhere, doesn't it? So what if it involves orchestrating the overthrowing of a democratically elected leader for an ineffectual puppet monarchy that abuses it's citizens? That's the price you pay for freedom!
America! Fuck Yeah!
Eh, it doesn't bother me. If anything, I like the current trend towards Free to Play in MMO's supplemented with a cash store. If a game is horribly crippled without a cash purchase, I delete the game and move on. If it's worth playing and I enjoy the game, I have no problem throwing a few dollars at it if it results in the game being more enjoyable to me.
Case in point, Lord of the Rings: Online. It was a cool game, I played the beta years ago, but it just wasn't worth $15 a month to me. They moved to Free to Play with a cash store and I started playing again and ended up giving them about $25 over the course of the 6 months I played, and my account is still sitting there with all my mules if I ever do decide to play again. Champion's Online was worth a good 3 months of entertainment and I never spent a dime on that. I've been playing Global Agenda: Free Agent for a couple months, haven't spent a dime on that, either. I'm willing to give almost any Free to Play game a chance, and if it's worth spending money on, I will.
Now, DLC is a different story, as people are already buying a game up front for a hefty sum ($60 usually, even more in Europe, they seriously get ripped off) and all it does is encourage developers to release 2/3 of a game for full price now and then charge another $10-$15 to put the missing content back in. Modern Warfare 2, for instance, shipped with the first DLC content on the disc itself on launch, a month down the road you paid your $10 and they unlocked it for you. That is fucking bullshit. The way the number of included tracks declined with each subsequent Guitar Hero/Rock Band release after GHIII was more evidence of shady rip-off behavior which is why I stopped buying the games. I'm not a fan of the direction that console games are going as far as that goes, nor am I a fan of the way Steam is applying that console model to the PC.
But in itself I don't have a problem with microtransactions, I have a problem when it's misapplied or used nefariously by allowing people to play most of the game but then slamming down a content wall without warning. In the end, you just have to do your research before you hand over your money. Complaining about it after the fact does next to nothing, and the publishers of these games know that.
The problem is the smart cops are the ones that work behind the scenes and undercover. The most forward-facing officers, i.e., the "beat cops", are usually those that are brand new and inexperienced and are soon to be promoted off the beat, or the ones either too stupid or too mean to ascend beyond that point.
Of course the general public is going to have a negative perception of cops if the only ones they ever deal with are the ignorant bullies from high school that got into law enforcement so they could continue their bullying behavior in a state sanctioned role.
I couldn't even activate the email account over the internet, I had to call customer service and talk to a live agent so they could set it all up before I could even begin the process of signing up for HBO Go, and due to the fact that I already have to deal with their customer service 3 times a year minimum due to service problems on a this "ridiculously overloaded node" (the level 2 tech's term, not mine) I was not going to spend another 30 minutes on the phone with them in order to do something I can do already, albeit illegally.
Why do I even need my ISP email anyway? Why is my ISP account number, name, and address not enough to sign up for the service, can they not even do the fucking verification themselves, they need me to do that for them , too, by accessing my ISP-given email account? Hell, the link on HBO's site didn't even work with my ISP's web site, I had to click through about half a dozen links just to find out what I needed from Charter in order to verify I really pay for HBO. Even if the process had worked, it's still a whole lot easier to just get the shit via torrent, and I get to keep it when I'm done watching to boot.
It shocks me that anyone suggests participating in American electoral politics as a way of making a dent in anything.
Kinda like the people saying "vote with your wallet", especially as regards ISPs with local monopolies, boycotting Walmart when there's literally nowhere else to shop within an hour's drive, Big Oil...
Crime is crime--if you want to change society, you do live in a democracy and are supposed to change it by voting.
Given the nature of our government today, I'd be willing to argue that the crime is far more effective. Especially considering that we're stuck in a two party system and the cost of mounting an effective campaign is much too high for any real independents to ever win without aligning themselves to one of the two parties and toeing the party line.
Change from within is not going to happen because the only people that have the power to change the system directly benefit from the way it is now. If Anonymous forces the government to clamp down and turn the US into a corporate controlled police state, and that drives more people to fight the state because of it, then the end goal has still been achieved.
Preaching for change through democracy nowadays is about as effective as preaching for change in business by "voting with your wallet." The companies most often complained about are now so large, and have access to such cheaply made goods, that in order to be effective the boycott would have to be on a scale that's almost impossible to achieve, and that ignores the fact that in large swaths of the country there aren't even any realistic alternatives (unless you consider driving 40 minutes past your local Walmart to find a non-Walmart grocery store a realistic alternative, for instance). Ditto for the ISPs that hold local monopolies. Ditto for Big Oil which holds the U.S. by the balls.
Either way, being accused of criminal acts by a government that routinely engages in it's own criminal acts against, not only it's own citizenry, but the world at large is certainly some God-tier state-sponsored trolling. They must be in it for the lulz, too...