2) Return the game, file a complaint with the federal government about the injustice they've caused you, and then complain about how horrible the DRM is.
Last I checked, there's still genocide in Darfur. Let's save option #2 for that.
My guess is Left 4 Dead has a much lower piracy rate than World of Goo despite the fact the latter is a budget game. Reason? Steam's DRM.
Which, as many posters have mentioned, I actually like. No CD to lose, lets me join games with my friends, updates games for me, and instant gratification. The only thing I'd argue that's missing is the ability to sell your game licenses.
So why hasn't World of Goo been a blockbuster hit? Low system requirements, a rating of over 90, a budget price tag, and no DRM?
By far the most popular PC game right now is still World of Warcraft, which runs comfortably on machines without fancy "3D" graphic accelerators Left 4 Dead (mentioned) will also run just fine on a 5 year old machine + a $70 graphics card (GeForce 9500, less than 1/2 the cost of a Wii).
Maybe people just want to play games in the their living room and not their computer room? (If anyone can find a comparison of WoG sales on Wii vs PC, it might be very interesting -- but also might just tell of how much piracy there is on PC)
"Some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to inadequate medical care and the emotional stresses they encountered. Several were killed by military guards for allegedly resisting orders." "These Japanese Americans, half of whom were children, were incarcerated for up to 4 years, without due process of law or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards."
Never blame on malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity. The Japanese, as a culture, place a high premium on loyalty and honor. FDR's administration believed -- wrongly -- that this would result in spies and operatives in the US from Japan. Instead, culturally, the Japanese had traded in their loyalty when they moved here. The Japanese were allowed to enlist in the army -- and did -- having the most distinguished service record of any unit in US history.
The different autobiographical accounts from people who lived in the camps also believed that the system was more based on paranoid xenophobic self-defense moreso than outright racism. While FDR didn't survive the war, there's no reason to believe he wouldn't have taken the same measures Truman did after the war of closing all the camps. And the fact the war could and did end is a main ideological difference with Gitmo.
In a larger sense, it's a regional problem for a country like the US.
I think it's fair to say that Louisiana can't solve its own mosquito problem, but the US can as a whole. Not every country is our size. Secondly, the countries are poor: no industrialization and can't industrialize due to swamps. Third, can you name me a decent university in any of these countries? I suppose you could industrial, create a good educational system, and then solve the mosquito problem, but then again, you can't have good schools with a mosquito problem (who wants to teach where they can get malaria?) nor effectively create industry (all workers get malaria).
How are you supposed to lift yourself up by the bootstraps without boots? Further, isn't this precisely the kind of charity that is most useful to practice?
(1) The portion of the US which has a mosquito problem is relatively small vs the whole of the US due to climate. Meaning, that in the 1800's/early 1900's when the problem was solved, the states without significant swamps contributed money/labor to fixing the problem.
(2) During this point in history (again, industrial revolution era) the US was awash in cash from industrialization. Quite simply, it wasn't a poor country when we solved the problem.
(3) Science. The US had the scientific background it needed to solve the problem. Again, mostly in places in the north (think Yale/Cornell/Harvard et al) which weren't affected by the problem.
Wasn't America once a poor country, too? Yet we overcame and solved our mosquito problem.
Yes, before you were born, America was a poor country. You've inherited a rich one. Now go spend your our forefather's money like you made it yourself while other people work 80 hour weeks for less the minimum wage and contract malaria, because by golly, you've earned it! It's their fault for being born into poverty!
If you pirate, how does the farmer get paid? That's what it's ultimately about. The farmer doesn't sow his soil with "love" or "greed". He needs seeds, equipment, labor, and fertilizer.
Piracy is bad because if everyone did it, there would simply be no groceries (except the ones grown by that some long-haired hippie who goes by RMS).
Religion and science are fundamentally opposed on the issue of epistemology.
From an epistemological POV, one is concerned with the explanation of repeatable events the former seeks explanation for non-repeatable events. Also: one is primarily quantitative while the other is primarily qualitative.
Religion isn't going to tell me how many degrees adding one mole of NaCl to a glass of water is going to raise its boiling temperature. But with science, I experiment, find the answer, etc.
Science can't explain to me what one ought to do with one's life, and how to deal with death/relationships/etc. True, ethics and art can help with these, but show me one religion whose texts weren't based in both.
Also: there's nutters everywhere who won't accept reason when presented with it. Religion can be another cloak of ignorance just as patriotism or trust can. It doesn't make it a scapegoat.
Most of the reasons you mention are "people are already using it" rather than addressing the question "it's better".
Here's my top 11 (top 6 are not about inertia):
11 Firefox has been ported to Qt 9. Skype is Qt based. 8. Google Earth is Qt based. 7. Qt's cross-platform support is so good that some people (e.g. doxygen) use it who have no/very few GUI components. 6. Qt is C++ based. 5. Localization support. And these guys even thought about making number suffixes right in Czech. 4. Qt is easier to use. 3. Qt has a usable UI creation kit (designer) 2. Qt extends C++ by offering an event based handling framework. 1. Qt is a tool for platform abstraction, so like Java, it's possible to create complex cross-applications with no #ifdef WINDOWS or #ifdef LINUX. 0. I love any company who names itself TrollTech;)
I use Qt in professional application development I have to tell you, vs the Xtoolkit or Motif, it's night and day. Using Qt is 10x easier. It's also much easier to create truly cross-platform apps (using a make system like CMAKE for example) with platform specific code.
I look for Qt to become more widely used simply because of how good it is...rather than because "some influential people are using it".
I heard a historian talking on NPR about the differences between this congress and FDR's congress. He said the biggest difference is that FDR came into an established congress where most politicians were elected on their own platforms.
In contrast, he said, most of our newly elected congress was elected on Obama's platform, in a sense, running with him.
He'd expected this congress to be a lot less reticent about working with the pres vs FDR's congress...and look what FDR got done.
So in the example, the nice guy gets fired and that back stabber gets promoted.
Well, 5 years down the road, the backstabber is also fired, while the "nice guy" found a job through one of his former coworkers who thought he was amazing and good to work with (the guy was good but also made him look better!) The backstabber, can't find work, and has no references.
Being nice or moral isn't generally filled with short term benefits (which is why it's contrasted with greedy!), but in the long term can yield very good results.
Removing patches isn't the destruction of Valve's asset base.
There's no Blizzard game out currently that has CD authentication and cannot be played single player without an internet connection. (WoW has no singe player mode...strangely;))
And no one accuses Blizzard of being either unprofitable or not selling software.
From a legal POV, simply make purchasers of a game creditors and assign the value of a DRM removing patch to $1 that you owe them. Contractually, any one taking over the company to liquidate it would want to avoid losing $1 on every copy sold.
no install media, no printed manuals, no feelies and no package, plus pay for the distribution myself through ISP charges
Then go buy it in a store and register the product on steam. No one's forcing to use steam to download everything. The reason there's price parity is for shelf space. No one is going to sell a game that can be bought online for much cheaper.
lower product quality WTF? I'm sorry, but Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, and Half Life 2 are in no way "lower quality products". Those honors belong to the ilk of GTA4 or Saint's Row 2 for PC.
proper guarantee that Steam games will contiunue to work when the Steam service shuts down They've already said thus.
I don't really know what your problem with steam is. The only valid point you make is no resale value.
Linix is like car. There's all different type of cars, but you wouldn't take a car to go to the moon. (Yay car analogy!)
Similarly, can you name anyone who uses Linux for professional photography editing? Eh? I mean, the GIMP is nice, but it's no photoshop.
The GP's right...best tool should be used for the job regardless of how it's developed and anything else forces software down people's throats -- how is that free? At the same time, the free is working together to make their software the best so there can be another coup like IE to FireFox, which happened because Mozilla decided to stop sucking (I say this as a former Mozilla user...firefox is 10x better!)
If you'd believe that spending money for personal enjoyment is an investment, then strange things seem to qualify. As in, I invested $200 in hookers and blow last night.
Unless you've got a wicked sense of irony or are a pimp and drug dealer, I'm not quite sure that qualifies as an investment;)
First of all, the 32 bit addressible space is 2^32 which is 2^10 (KB) * 2^10 (MB) * 2^10 (GB) * 2^2 (4). That's exactly 4 GB unless I'm using some fuzzy maths. It's my understanding that there's a BIOS restriction on PCs that doesn't allow them to address physical memory past 3 GB...but since the GPU memory itself is a different animal, I'm not entirely certain the same 3 GB restriction would apply.
However, I'm not even sure it'd be the OS that'd be the issue. If the GPU registers themselves are 32 bit, you'd be SOL regardless.
Slashdot Mirror
You are presented with 2 solutions:
1) Wait until tomorrow and enjoy a game.
2) Return the game, file a complaint with the federal government about the injustice they've caused you, and then complain about how horrible the DRM is.
Last I checked, there's still genocide in Darfur. Let's save option #2 for that.
Piracy does not affect everyone equally.
My guess is Left 4 Dead has a much lower piracy rate than World of Goo despite the fact the latter is a budget game. Reason? Steam's DRM.
Which, as many posters have mentioned, I actually like. No CD to lose, lets me join games with my friends, updates games for me, and instant gratification. The only thing I'd argue that's missing is the ability to sell your game licenses.
So why hasn't World of Goo been a blockbuster hit? Low system requirements, a rating of over 90, a budget price tag, and no DRM?
By far the most popular PC game right now is still World of Warcraft, which runs comfortably on machines without fancy "3D" graphic accelerators Left 4 Dead (mentioned) will also run just fine on a 5 year old machine + a $70 graphics card (GeForce 9500, less than 1/2 the cost of a Wii).
Maybe people just want to play games in the their living room and not their computer room? (If anyone can find a comparison of WoG sales on Wii vs PC, it might be very interesting -- but also might just tell of how much piracy there is on PC)
"Some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to inadequate medical care and the emotional stresses they encountered. Several were killed by military guards for allegedly resisting orders." "These Japanese Americans, half of whom were children, were incarcerated for up to 4 years, without due process of law or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards."
Never blame on malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity. The Japanese, as a culture, place a high premium on loyalty and honor. FDR's administration believed -- wrongly -- that this would result in spies and operatives in the US from Japan. Instead, culturally, the Japanese had traded in their loyalty when they moved here. The Japanese were allowed to enlist in the army -- and did -- having the most distinguished service record of any unit in US history.
The different autobiographical accounts from people who lived in the camps also believed that the system was more based on paranoid xenophobic self-defense moreso than outright racism. While FDR didn't survive the war, there's no reason to believe he wouldn't have taken the same measures Truman did after the war of closing all the camps. And the fact the war could and did end is a main ideological difference with Gitmo.
In a larger sense, it's a regional problem for a country like the US.
I think it's fair to say that Louisiana can't solve its own mosquito problem, but the US can as a whole. Not every country is our size. Secondly, the countries are poor: no industrialization and can't industrialize due to swamps. Third, can you name me a decent university in any of these countries? I suppose you could industrial, create a good educational system, and then solve the mosquito problem, but then again, you can't have good schools with a mosquito problem (who wants to teach where they can get malaria?) nor effectively create industry (all workers get malaria).
How are you supposed to lift yourself up by the bootstraps without boots? Further, isn't this precisely the kind of charity that is most useful to practice?
There's a good number of reasons.
(1) The portion of the US which has a mosquito problem is relatively small vs the whole of the US due to climate. Meaning, that in the 1800's/early 1900's when the problem was solved, the states without significant swamps contributed money/labor to fixing the problem.
(2) During this point in history (again, industrial revolution era) the US was awash in cash from industrialization. Quite simply, it wasn't a poor country when we solved the problem.
(3) Science. The US had the scientific background it needed to solve the problem. Again, mostly in places in the north (think Yale/Cornell/Harvard et al) which weren't affected by the problem.
His intentions are good, but he has no taste.
Cinematography, sound editing, costumes, lighting, camera work and whatnot can still be competent, but God, didn't Love Guru just suck?
That's how I feel whenever I use MS software: competent, but ugly.
Wasn't America once a poor country, too? Yet we overcame and solved our mosquito problem.
Yes, before you were born, America was a poor country. You've inherited a rich one. Now go spend your our forefather's money like you made it yourself while other people work 80 hour weeks for less the minimum wage and contract malaria, because by golly, you've earned it! It's their fault for being born into poverty!
If you pirate, how does the farmer get paid? That's what it's ultimately about. The farmer doesn't sow his soil with "love" or "greed". He needs seeds, equipment, labor, and fertilizer.
Piracy is bad because if everyone did it, there would simply be no groceries (except the ones grown by that some long-haired hippie who goes by RMS).
Religion and science are fundamentally opposed on the issue of epistemology.
From an epistemological POV, one is concerned with the explanation of repeatable events the former seeks explanation for non-repeatable events. Also: one is primarily quantitative while the other is primarily qualitative.
Religion isn't going to tell me how many degrees adding one mole of NaCl to a glass of water is going to raise its boiling temperature. But with science, I experiment, find the answer, etc.
Science can't explain to me what one ought to do with one's life, and how to deal with death/relationships/etc. True, ethics and art can help with these, but show me one religion whose texts weren't based in both.
Also: there's nutters everywhere who won't accept reason when presented with it. Religion can be another cloak of ignorance just as patriotism or trust can. It doesn't make it a scapegoat.
Please keeps your windows/curtains open when having sex with your hot wife. And allow me to tape it.
Only criminals require privacy!
(Mod parent +1 ironic!)
So yesterday, IBM posted great profits that beat wall street estimates. And today they're doing layoffs? That makes no financial sense to me. Why should any company lay off people just because "Everyone else is doing it"?
Most of the reasons you mention are "people are already using it" rather than addressing the question "it's better".
Here's my top 11 (top 6 are not about inertia):
11 Firefox has been ported to Qt
9. Skype is Qt based.
8. Google Earth is Qt based.
7. Qt's cross-platform support is so good that some people (e.g. doxygen) use it who have no/very few GUI components.
6. Qt is C++ based.
5. Localization support. And these guys even thought about making number suffixes right in Czech.
4. Qt is easier to use.
3. Qt has a usable UI creation kit (designer)
2. Qt extends C++ by offering an event based handling framework.
1. Qt is a tool for platform abstraction, so like Java, it's possible to create complex cross-applications with no #ifdef WINDOWS or #ifdef LINUX.
0. I love any company who names itself TrollTech;)
I use Qt in professional application development I have to tell you, vs the Xtoolkit or Motif, it's night and day. Using Qt is 10x easier. It's also much easier to create truly cross-platform apps (using a make system like CMAKE for example) with platform specific code.
I look for Qt to become more widely used simply because of how good it is...rather than because "some influential people are using it".
Godwin!
Why is this congress the worst?
I heard a historian talking on NPR about the differences between this congress and FDR's congress. He said the biggest difference is that FDR came into an established congress where most politicians were elected on their own platforms.
In contrast, he said, most of our newly elected congress was elected on Obama's platform, in a sense, running with him.
He'd expected this congress to be a lot less reticent about working with the pres vs FDR's congress...and look what FDR got done.
So in the example, the nice guy gets fired and that back stabber gets promoted.
Well, 5 years down the road, the backstabber is also fired, while the "nice guy" found a job through one of his former coworkers who thought he was amazing and good to work with (the guy was good but also made him look better!) The backstabber, can't find work, and has no references.
Being nice or moral isn't generally filled with short term benefits (which is why it's contrasted with greedy!), but in the long term can yield very good results.
SexGirlfriend() is dirty and tangled
That's because the method was implemented unsafely. Try using the condom library to control buffer overflows;)
Removing patches isn't the destruction of Valve's asset base.
There's no Blizzard game out currently that has CD authentication and cannot be played single player without an internet connection. (WoW has no singe player mode...strangely;))
And no one accuses Blizzard of being either unprofitable or not selling software.
From a legal POV, simply make purchasers of a game creditors and assign the value of a DRM removing patch to $1 that you owe them. Contractually, any one taking over the company to liquidate it would want to avoid losing $1 on every copy sold.
no install media, no printed manuals, no feelies and no package, plus pay for the distribution myself through ISP charges
Then go buy it in a store and register the product on steam. No one's forcing to use steam to download everything. The reason there's price parity is for shelf space. No one is going to sell a game that can be bought online for much cheaper.
lower product quality
WTF? I'm sorry, but Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, and Half Life 2 are in no way "lower quality products". Those honors belong to the ilk of GTA4 or Saint's Row 2 for PC.
proper guarantee that Steam games will contiunue to work when the Steam service shuts down
They've already said thus.
I don't really know what your problem with steam is. The only valid point you make is no resale value.
Uh...yeah
I mean, in that you mean the game's graphics quality is much worse, but can't turn it up.
See:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6202552/p-4.html?tag=feature;sidenav
Nope...bottleneck is video card memory. No current card on the market that has enough memory to load the highest quality textures into memory.
Linix is like car. There's all different type of cars, but you wouldn't take a car to go to the moon. (Yay car analogy!)
Similarly, can you name anyone who uses Linux for professional photography editing? Eh? I mean, the GIMP is nice, but it's no photoshop.
The GP's right...best tool should be used for the job regardless of how it's developed and anything else forces software down people's throats -- how is that free? At the same time, the free is working together to make their software the best so there can be another coup like IE to FireFox, which happened because Mozilla decided to stop sucking (I say this as a former Mozilla user...firefox is 10x better!)
If you'd believe that spending money for personal enjoyment is an investment, then strange things seem to qualify. As in, I invested $200 in hookers and blow last night.
Unless you've got a wicked sense of irony or are a pimp and drug dealer, I'm not quite sure that qualifies as an investment;)
First of all, the 32 bit addressible space is 2^32 which is 2^10 (KB) * 2^10 (MB) * 2^10 (GB) * 2^2 (4). That's exactly 4 GB unless I'm using some fuzzy maths. It's my understanding that there's a BIOS restriction on PCs that doesn't allow them to address physical memory past 3 GB...but since the GPU memory itself is a different animal, I'm not entirely certain the same 3 GB restriction would apply.
However, I'm not even sure it'd be the OS that'd be the issue. If the GPU registers themselves are 32 bit, you'd be SOL regardless.
There's still no machine in existence that can run GTA 4 on its highest settings....