Like a five year old you want what you want when you want it - but only on your own terms. And if those terms aren't met, you'll steal it while proclaiming "look what they forced me to do".
Think of it this way - the content providers have to compete with piracy. Try as they might, they've been wholly unable to stop it. So it stands to reason that the only legitimate way they could have any hope to compete is to basically give people what they want - DRM-free content that is accessible anywhere in the world.
Also think about this - the content providers have, for the most part, acting like stubborn fucks for ages. They clearly don't want to give people what they want, so why should people buy on their own terms? The providers don't listen if you do the RIGHT thing (legally anyway), so you might as well break the law and hope that the pressure of piracy will eventually force them to accept the reality of the situation. You don't gain anything by playing nice with them, if they aren't interested in playing nice with you.
This guy has open-sourced all of his game engines (baring id Tech 5, but only because it's still in use commercially at id), even going so far as to rewrite critical portions of an engine (id Tech 4, specifically the implementation of stencil buffered shadow volume algorithms) so that it could be open sourced in the first place (work he would get no money from and didn't have any obligation to do... and yet did it anyway), and what happens? The Linux community, the primary beneficiary for all this open-sourced goodness which has been used in countless free games, bash Carmack because he has the balls to say that iD Software have not had any commercial success with the Linux platform.
Now whether you agree with his criteria for measuring this success or not, the number of hateful comments I'm reading people make towards this guy is truly disgusting. If I were in his position, why the FUCK would I want to even look at the Linux community anymore after giving them so much?
I don't see the reason for netbook bashing to be honest.
Early this year I spent 5 weeks travelling in Europe. I bought and hence an Asus Aspire One netbook specifically for this trip, and I did so for several reasons:
(1) It's a really, really cheap netbook (the cheapest available at the time), which was importance since there was a chance of the thing being stolen or broken - at such a small outlay, the pain of it being unavailable for whatever reason would be far less than an iPad.
(2) It's very portable and has a great battery life. Of course tablets do so as well, but most don't satisfy condition (1).
(3) Typing on it, even with a cramped keyboard is somewhat easier and nicer than a tablet due to physical keys being pressed.
(4) Since it runs a traditional computer operating system (Windows 7 in this case - Linux didn't support everything as well and still doesn't, how unsurprising), I could use my favorite programs such as uTorrent to leech the fuck out of things in Switzerland.
So yeah, as underpowered as the bloody thing is, it's been very, very useful.
If the EULA changes in such as way as to become unacceptable, you can't just "leave" Steam without some sort of sacrifice for what you've already bought, as most (but not all) of the games use executables which incorporate a wrapper requiring Steam to launch and authenticate anyway in order to run. I suppose you can still leave of course, you just have to find cracks. And I doubt when Steam appears on Linux that cracks will be particularly easy to find (when's the last time you needed a crack for a Linux game?)
At least with GOG, if they fuck up the EULA you've already got all the game installers and extras downloaded (presumably), can play them without any further interaction with GOG and so you can take your business elsewhere without losing what you bought. Steam? Not so much.
Heh. I know you're joking but since it's worth elaborating - the crashes appears to bee due to the engine failing to parse scripts properly at certain areas - in my case it was reasonably predictable to occur at the beginning area of the Mechanical age. I THINK it's some sort of race condition as it's common but not guaranteed to happen, and a reload tends to work for long enough so you can then get out of there and progress.
Some of us want our friends, family, and other normal human beings to be able to enjoy what we made. You know, the kind of people that don't have Linux installed. I realize they may not figure prominently in your worldview, being only a negligible 99% of the populace, but I hear they like games too
You don't have to be smug. SDL works in Windows, OS X and Linux - build a game using it for one platform and porting it to the rest should be, in theory, painless (or at least much less painful than using something like DirectX and THEN trying to port).
The argument several people have made (including the guys behind the Humble Bundles) is that it doesn't make sense to choose an API that only works on one or two platforms (i.e. DirectX) when you can pick something which exists on far more (i.e. SDL + OpenGL). Yes Windows constitutes the largest audience, but there's no reason to limit yourself if you don't have to. Valve are learning that as we speak.
A little known fact about ScummVM is that the official builds do not include all the engines that are currently in development. Makes sense of course that you'd only include engines and support for particular games once they're up to a sufficient level of quality, but there are in fact a number of engines (and hence games) which, although still in development, are mature enough to play all the way through if you use a nightly build from here:
These builds contain all engines in whatever state they exist, and I like using them because unlike the official builds, these builds allow me to run Myst - Masterpiece Edition, Riven and Gabriel Knight 1 all the way through in each without too many issues (Myst's a bit unstable at times though, but it's random and a reload fixes things). The developers are quite fast at fixing issues though I have to say, so if you don't mind living on the edge you can play even more of the popular classics.
Steam-powered games aren't really software that you own in any sense of the word. Then again, due to copyright law, you don't really own any of them anyway.
You're correct about how you don't technically own the software you buy. But with Steam, they can finally ENFORCE this through the use of the Steam client. At least with games from the Humble Bundles or GOG for example, they are installers/stand-alone and as such, so long as I have them backed-up I can play them until the cows come home regardless if they're pulled from their respective online repositories for reasons of licensing issues, or your account goes bad, or the company goes down, or anything else which is not under your control.
Sure they're just games, but if I'm gonna pay money for something I'd like to have as much personal control over it as possible. If someone passes a stupid law in my country (Australia, so it's always possible) whereby all games which contain graphic violence against kids are banned, no-one's gonna break down my door to remove my GOG-purchased copy of Deus Ex 1 because of your ability to gib kids with a nano-sword, but Steam? You bet they'd remove your game. Valve are nice though so they'd probably give everyone affected another game as an exchange, but still.
In terms of software freedom, Steam won't affect much itself. The client is proprietary and as far as I know, every single game featured on Steam is proprietary (although stuff like the iD games can be run using replacement open source engines), but basically it's all one big closed-source pot. It will bring more attention to Linux and maybe some more commercial games, but that's about all.
Now, the only problem I can see is that bringing Steam into Linux will mean another selection of users will becomes used to the idea of DRM (Steam) and having games tied to a single point of failure (Steam), whereas before they were used to having installers that you could backup and install without requiring verification from a third-party. But anyone who's read my posts know I'm beating a dead horse here - I've said it all before about the dangers of keeping all your eggs in one basket, but from what I can tell, games are a special class of software in which this isn't really a concern. It's not crucial or necessary software, so a hypothetical scenario in which you can't play anything due to issues with Steam verification in a longer term scenario don't phase people much.
TL;DR : Steam on Linux will increase Linux's perception in the gaming world, increase its usage base for a bit (at least until some people go back to Windows because it runs some particular tool they didn't realize they needed before throwing away Windows after being swept away in the hype), but it won't do shit for software freedom.
Purely anecdotal, but I've noticed that when it comes to Windows environments a lot of Slashdotters play the "dumb" card, and either pretend to not know how to do something in a Windows environment, or are genuinely ignorant but can't be bothered to find out for themselves. Maybe the argument is that Windows isn't worth the time investigating a solution for, yet for some reason they can perform magic on a Linux box no matter how much it took to do so.
Or, he could just be looking for best practices on what to do in his situation, but honestly it's something someone might ask on a mainstream tech site, not a supposedly geeky place like Slashdot.
Perhaps it's not the intention of the Slashdot editor who titled this story, but you know the saying where if a news title is phrased as a question the answer is always "No"? Well this is the case here as well.
You should always have been aware that Skype might be monitoring your calls, since you don't control the network. Nothing has changed ever since Microsoft took over, so what makes it the case that NOW it's time to change? Besides, change to what? There's nothing else out there which is accessible to most locations around the world with the ease of use and easy of configuration which is comparable to Skype (along with video support). What, Google Voice? How is that better for secure communications? Ekiga? No-one uses it because it doesn't fucking work properly.
Wasn't the FSF supposed to be working on some sort of free Skype alternative? Yeah, go them. In the end you need to bring people across from Skype in addition to finding alternative software, and if those apps aren't even available for your Phone for example, then you'll be hard pressed to get anyone to convert.
An opinion doesn't have to extend to a crusade. You might not like how the Government is behaving, but I don't' begrudge anyone who's not willing to ruin the one life they have by trying to fight the Government and undoubtedly losing.
What the fuck man? Are you one of those "all or nothing" types who don't understand the concept of degrees?
Most of the people in the world are religious. You will therefore find yourself constantly rubbing people the wrong way if you're unable to tolerate their beliefs in at least a passive way (as in "that person is religious - OK then", and move on). Having said that, it's correct that you SHOULDN'T tolerate things like your first example - stupid parents thinking that only God can cure an illness and denying their child the help of modern medicine. Such thinking leads to unnecessary death and suffering and shouldn't be tolerated... yet most religious people don't think like that, so why bash those who are light or moderate believers if they're not harming anyone?
âoeSo I say, âoeLive and let live.â Thatâ(TM)s my motto. âoeLive and let live.â And anyone who canâ(TM)t go along with that, take him outside and shoot the motherfucker. Itâ(TM)s a simple philosophy, but itâ(TM)s always worked in our family.â â George Carlin
Ummm, no. Thousands times NO! In this instances say nothing. NOTHING!
Positive feedback only feeds the trolls
Not always possible or practical. If you're in an exit interview and you're asked for your opinion on how your boss treated you while you worked there (regardless of whether it's your own boss asking the questions or not), you can't just say nothing... uncomfortable silence is uncomfortable. You could try saying "I'd rather not answer that", but giving that kind of response tells plenty anyway. So, might as well be nice and lie through your teeth just so that you can part on reasonable terms. You never know if you'll run across your former boss in the future.
If Twitter users are anything like Facebook's, then if you're trying to use narcissism as a rating for psychopathic behavior you're gonna get a LOT of hits.
It's not like Vista has been standing still over those years. Throw the latest service pack on and it has the same code base (effectively) as Windows 7.
If there are truly some features that Windows 7 has that haven't been back-ported to Vista (like perhaps the that document protection stuff you mentioned), then sure, maybe just have that functionality unavailable when running on Vista. But you can't tell me with a straight face that the ENTER of Office 2013 is incompatible with Vista.
plus I lie on my personal information since noise and inconsistency is the only kind of privacy left.
Be careful doing that though.
If you make an account with your name but has false information, other people looking you up (friends, future or current employers, etc) might think that this profile is really you and hence the info presented in is is a correct and accurate record of you. Since you're trying to fake it so that you can hold onto your privacy, it probably contains a lot of crap which you know Facebook can't use to truly identify you, but as we know, privacy settings change all the time in Facebook so even if you set your profile as private in the past, some stuff might later revert to a public setting. People read the bits that are public, interpret it as something you believe it (since you wrote it yourself), and likely you'll suffer repercussions and have to defend yourself.
You might think, "well if I put in a sufficient amount of false crap about myself, no-one could possibly think that profile was about me". Well... you'd be surprised.
here's also the fact that a number of people (including me) only use Facebook because they feel "forced" to do so.
Facebook has now become something of a liability for me. It's gotten to the point where even though I'd probably like> to close the account, I won't simply because others would notice. They probably wouldn't appreciate me telling them that their narcissism and attention-seeking posts reveal a side of them that I didn't want to see, and that I'd be much happier not knowing. Something about Facebook brings out narcissist traits in people, I'm not sure why, and it's awfully off-putting.
If I wanted to be nice I'd give them another reason, like I'm concerned with the behavior of Facebook's management and the privacy issues related to the site, but they would consider me a tinfoil-wearing paranoid fool for such things, probably. Or at the very least they wouldn't accept it as serious enough to leave.
So, I keep the account but don't do much with it. It serves as an indicator that I exist, but not much else.
You need to expand your interests if it's your "dream" to get rid of an operating system that you can't seem to control (otherwise you'd still be able to enjoy it and the software you can get that you can't with Linux).
think I mainly come across as one because I'm reacting to a rabidly anti-DRM culture. Is there an antonym for fanboy, where one blindly hates (instead of loves) regardless of logic? If there is such a word, that describes most/.ers' stance on DRM.
There's nothing illogical about hating DRM though. We shouldn't be encouraging vendors to use it simply because it does not work, it never provides anything useful to the end user, only prevents. There is nothing logical about using it. Steam is arguably one of the lest painful DRM methods out there I agree, but it's still shouldn't be there as it means all games now have a shelf-life equal to the health of your account, and the health of Valve as a company. Should the shit hit the fan, I don't trust ANY company to do me right given the restrictive ToS virtually all companies use to move all the rights and power in their favor.
Do you complain about retail stores having RFID tags and scanners at the doors?
Of course not! Once you've bought the item from a store, the tags are removed and you now have an item that cannot be taken from you later for any reason. I thought this would have been obvious.
I will make it clear that I have not had any issues related to an account lockdown with Valve. I HAVE had an issue whereby my credit card was blocked after a while with the Steam store, which a lot of other people have had the same issue with. Steam support would unblock it, but after the next purchase it'd be locked again. A PayPal account bypassed this issue completely but it still annoys me how stupid Steam's processing backend can be.
In the end, games are a luxury. Since it isn't critical to one's survival to play the latest shooter, I see no reason why being anti-DRM and instead encouraging purchase through someone like GOG is illogical. Music no longer has DRM (for the most part), why encourage games?
Anytime something positive happens someone has to look for the EXACT worst thing that could happen.
Nah, I'm not like that. I've been feeling like this for a few years ago. It's just that since Steam is going to be on the three main platforms now, there's no escaping it and games are going to be tailored for it. People will get USED to being reliant on a third-party for their games and not owning the software. By then it'll be too late - we won't have independent executable anymore because everyone's gotten used to being authenticated.
And the worst part is, we have stores like GOG which exist for non-DRM games, but not enough people/publishers use them yet.
BTW - I read something interesting which I thought was worth sharing. Someone else made the point that they were concerned with Steam for the exact same reasons that I am, but decided to stick with it anyway.
His view was that we have progressed to a state where you don't "own" anything anymore when it comes to software/media, it's all licensed. Now technically you've been buying a license for every piece of software, movie, music and whatnot anyway, it's just that the ability to revoke the license has never been enforceable before. But with closed markets which require Internet-based authentication for the content you've purchased, they can, and they will.
In the old days, if you bought a game and it later became illegal to sell the game in your country (new laws regarding computer game violence for example), it wouldn't matter since you have a physical disc - no-one is going to break down your door to recover it. But if it's on Steam, Valve would have to adhere to said law and lock off access to the game. Notwithstanding cracks, you couldn't do shit - you can no longer use the software you bought simply because some knee-jerk politician wanted tougher laws or something. It's not unreasonable to think this is possible. Heck I live in Australia - we just got R18+ legislation which allows for games which were originally banned here. What if someone goes on a shooting spree and they find out he was a gamer? They'll likely revert the laws based on public outcry or some BS. Any games between now and then which were sold to Aussies with an R18+ grade will have to be removed. They can't do that if you had a non-DRMed copy.
Anyway, point is this fellow decided that since we don't "own" anything and Internet-based control on what we buy are going to become more and more mainstream (since virtually no-one is pushing back), he might as well accept it and embrace it if he wants to continue gaming. I'm not prepared to just accept things like that, but I can see how when it comes to games, some people might just not care enough to bother. In the end they're just games, but it's also a sign of the consumer losing control and rights over the digital products they buy.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you just call people who don't pirate content idiots?
Think of it this way - the content providers have to compete with piracy. Try as they might, they've been wholly unable to stop it. So it stands to reason that the only legitimate way they could have any hope to compete is to basically give people what they want - DRM-free content that is accessible anywhere in the world.
Also think about this - the content providers have, for the most part, acting like stubborn fucks for ages. They clearly don't want to give people what they want, so why should people buy on their own terms? The providers don't listen if you do the RIGHT thing (legally anyway), so you might as well break the law and hope that the pressure of piracy will eventually force them to accept the reality of the situation. You don't gain anything by playing nice with them, if they aren't interested in playing nice with you.
This guy has open-sourced all of his game engines (baring id Tech 5, but only because it's still in use commercially at id), even going so far as to rewrite critical portions of an engine (id Tech 4, specifically the implementation of stencil buffered shadow volume algorithms) so that it could be open sourced in the first place (work he would get no money from and didn't have any obligation to do... and yet did it anyway), and what happens? The Linux community, the primary beneficiary for all this open-sourced goodness which has been used in countless free games, bash Carmack because he has the balls to say that iD Software have not had any commercial success with the Linux platform.
Now whether you agree with his criteria for measuring this success or not, the number of hateful comments I'm reading people make towards this guy is truly disgusting. If I were in his position, why the FUCK would I want to even look at the Linux community anymore after giving them so much?
I don't see the reason for netbook bashing to be honest.
Early this year I spent 5 weeks travelling in Europe. I bought and hence an Asus Aspire One netbook specifically for this trip, and I did so for several reasons:
(1) It's a really, really cheap netbook (the cheapest available at the time), which was importance since there was a chance of the thing being stolen or broken - at such a small outlay, the pain of it being unavailable for whatever reason would be far less than an iPad.
(2) It's very portable and has a great battery life. Of course tablets do so as well, but most don't satisfy condition (1).
(3) Typing on it, even with a cramped keyboard is somewhat easier and nicer than a tablet due to physical keys being pressed.
(4) Since it runs a traditional computer operating system (Windows 7 in this case - Linux didn't support everything as well and still doesn't, how unsurprising), I could use my favorite programs such as uTorrent to leech the fuck out of things in Switzerland.
So yeah, as underpowered as the bloody thing is, it's been very, very useful.
And this is why I don't buy using Steam.
If the EULA changes in such as way as to become unacceptable, you can't just "leave" Steam without some sort of sacrifice for what you've already bought, as most (but not all) of the games use executables which incorporate a wrapper requiring Steam to launch and authenticate anyway in order to run. I suppose you can still leave of course, you just have to find cracks. And I doubt when Steam appears on Linux that cracks will be particularly easy to find (when's the last time you needed a crack for a Linux game?)
At least with GOG, if they fuck up the EULA you've already got all the game installers and extras downloaded (presumably), can play them without any further interaction with GOG and so you can take your business elsewhere without losing what you bought. Steam? Not so much.
Heh. I know you're joking but since it's worth elaborating - the crashes appears to bee due to the engine failing to parse scripts properly at certain areas - in my case it was reasonably predictable to occur at the beginning area of the Mechanical age. I THINK it's some sort of race condition as it's common but not guaranteed to happen, and a reload tends to work for long enough so you can then get out of there and progress.
You don't have to be smug. SDL works in Windows, OS X and Linux - build a game using it for one platform and porting it to the rest should be, in theory, painless (or at least much less painful than using something like DirectX and THEN trying to port).
The argument several people have made (including the guys behind the Humble Bundles) is that it doesn't make sense to choose an API that only works on one or two platforms (i.e. DirectX) when you can pick something which exists on far more (i.e. SDL + OpenGL). Yes Windows constitutes the largest audience, but there's no reason to limit yourself if you don't have to. Valve are learning that as we speak.
A little known fact about ScummVM is that the official builds do not include all the engines that are currently in development. Makes sense of course that you'd only include engines and support for particular games once they're up to a sufficient level of quality, but there are in fact a number of engines (and hence games) which, although still in development, are mature enough to play all the way through if you use a nightly build from here:
http://buildbot.scummvm.org/builds.html
These builds contain all engines in whatever state they exist, and I like using them because unlike the official builds, these builds allow me to run Myst - Masterpiece Edition, Riven and Gabriel Knight 1 all the way through in each without too many issues (Myst's a bit unstable at times though, but it's random and a reload fixes things). The developers are quite fast at fixing issues though I have to say, so if you don't mind living on the edge you can play even more of the popular classics.
You're correct about how you don't technically own the software you buy. But with Steam, they can finally ENFORCE this through the use of the Steam client. At least with games from the Humble Bundles or GOG for example, they are installers/stand-alone and as such, so long as I have them backed-up I can play them until the cows come home regardless if they're pulled from their respective online repositories for reasons of licensing issues, or your account goes bad, or the company goes down, or anything else which is not under your control.
Sure they're just games, but if I'm gonna pay money for something I'd like to have as much personal control over it as possible. If someone passes a stupid law in my country (Australia, so it's always possible) whereby all games which contain graphic violence against kids are banned, no-one's gonna break down my door to remove my GOG-purchased copy of Deus Ex 1 because of your ability to gib kids with a nano-sword, but Steam? You bet they'd remove your game. Valve are nice though so they'd probably give everyone affected another game as an exchange, but still.
In terms of software freedom, Steam won't affect much itself. The client is proprietary and as far as I know, every single game featured on Steam is proprietary (although stuff like the iD games can be run using replacement open source engines), but basically it's all one big closed-source pot. It will bring more attention to Linux and maybe some more commercial games, but that's about all.
Now, the only problem I can see is that bringing Steam into Linux will mean another selection of users will becomes used to the idea of DRM (Steam) and having games tied to a single point of failure (Steam), whereas before they were used to having installers that you could backup and install without requiring verification from a third-party. But anyone who's read my posts know I'm beating a dead horse here - I've said it all before about the dangers of keeping all your eggs in one basket, but from what I can tell, games are a special class of software in which this isn't really a concern. It's not crucial or necessary software, so a hypothetical scenario in which you can't play anything due to issues with Steam verification in a longer term scenario don't phase people much.
TL;DR : Steam on Linux will increase Linux's perception in the gaming world, increase its usage base for a bit (at least until some people go back to Windows because it runs some particular tool they didn't realize they needed before throwing away Windows after being swept away in the hype), but it won't do shit for software freedom.
I was waiting for my daily "Microsoft-is-failing" article. That's always a sign of a quality tech site.
Purely anecdotal, but I've noticed that when it comes to Windows environments a lot of Slashdotters play the "dumb" card, and either pretend to not know how to do something in a Windows environment, or are genuinely ignorant but can't be bothered to find out for themselves. Maybe the argument is that Windows isn't worth the time investigating a solution for, yet for some reason they can perform magic on a Linux box no matter how much it took to do so.
Or, he could just be looking for best practices on what to do in his situation, but honestly it's something someone might ask on a mainstream tech site, not a supposedly geeky place like Slashdot.
Perhaps it's not the intention of the Slashdot editor who titled this story, but you know the saying where if a news title is phrased as a question the answer is always "No"? Well this is the case here as well.
You should always have been aware that Skype might be monitoring your calls, since you don't control the network. Nothing has changed ever since Microsoft took over, so what makes it the case that NOW it's time to change? Besides, change to what? There's nothing else out there which is accessible to most locations around the world with the ease of use and easy of configuration which is comparable to Skype (along with video support). What, Google Voice? How is that better for secure communications? Ekiga? No-one uses it because it doesn't fucking work properly.
Wasn't the FSF supposed to be working on some sort of free Skype alternative? Yeah, go them. In the end you need to bring people across from Skype in addition to finding alternative software, and if those apps aren't even available for your Phone for example, then you'll be hard pressed to get anyone to convert.
An opinion doesn't have to extend to a crusade. You might not like how the Government is behaving, but I don't' begrudge anyone who's not willing to ruin the one life they have by trying to fight the Government and undoubtedly losing.
The sad fact though is that for most people, 4chan IS /b/ and only /b/, and that's about the limit of what they know of 4chan.
What the fuck man? Are you one of those "all or nothing" types who don't understand the concept of degrees?
Most of the people in the world are religious. You will therefore find yourself constantly rubbing people the wrong way if you're unable to tolerate their beliefs in at least a passive way (as in "that person is religious - OK then", and move on). Having said that, it's correct that you SHOULDN'T tolerate things like your first example - stupid parents thinking that only God can cure an illness and denying their child the help of modern medicine. Such thinking leads to unnecessary death and suffering and shouldn't be tolerated... yet most religious people don't think like that, so why bash those who are light or moderate believers if they're not harming anyone?
âoeSo I say, âoeLive and let live.â Thatâ(TM)s my motto. âoeLive and let live.â And anyone who canâ(TM)t go along with that, take him outside and shoot the motherfucker. Itâ(TM)s a simple philosophy, but itâ(TM)s always worked in our family.â
â George Carlin
Not always possible or practical. If you're in an exit interview and you're asked for your opinion on how your boss treated you while you worked there (regardless of whether it's your own boss asking the questions or not), you can't just say nothing... uncomfortable silence is uncomfortable. You could try saying "I'd rather not answer that", but giving that kind of response tells plenty anyway. So, might as well be nice and lie through your teeth just so that you can part on reasonable terms. You never know if you'll run across your former boss in the future.
If Twitter users are anything like Facebook's, then if you're trying to use narcissism as a rating for psychopathic behavior you're gonna get a LOT of hits.
It's not like Vista has been standing still over those years. Throw the latest service pack on and it has the same code base (effectively) as Windows 7.
If there are truly some features that Windows 7 has that haven't been back-ported to Vista (like perhaps the that document protection stuff you mentioned), then sure, maybe just have that functionality unavailable when running on Vista. But you can't tell me with a straight face that the ENTER of Office 2013 is incompatible with Vista.
Be careful doing that though.
If you make an account with your name but has false information, other people looking you up (friends, future or current employers, etc) might think that this profile is really you and hence the info presented in is is a correct and accurate record of you. Since you're trying to fake it so that you can hold onto your privacy, it probably contains a lot of crap which you know Facebook can't use to truly identify you, but as we know, privacy settings change all the time in Facebook so even if you set your profile as private in the past, some stuff might later revert to a public setting. People read the bits that are public, interpret it as something you believe it (since you wrote it yourself), and likely you'll suffer repercussions and have to defend yourself.
You might think, "well if I put in a sufficient amount of false crap about myself, no-one could possibly think that profile was about me". Well... you'd be surprised.
Facebook has now become something of a liability for me. It's gotten to the point where even though I'd probably like> to close the account, I won't simply because others would notice. They probably wouldn't appreciate me telling them that their narcissism and attention-seeking posts reveal a side of them that I didn't want to see, and that I'd be much happier not knowing. Something about Facebook brings out narcissist traits in people, I'm not sure why, and it's awfully off-putting.
If I wanted to be nice I'd give them another reason, like I'm concerned with the behavior of Facebook's management and the privacy issues related to the site, but they would consider me a tinfoil-wearing paranoid fool for such things, probably. Or at the very least they wouldn't accept it as serious enough to leave.
So, I keep the account but don't do much with it. It serves as an indicator that I exist, but not much else.
You need to expand your interests if it's your "dream" to get rid of an operating system that you can't seem to control (otherwise you'd still be able to enjoy it and the software you can get that you can't with Linux).
There's nothing illogical about hating DRM though. We shouldn't be encouraging vendors to use it simply because it does not work, it never provides anything useful to the end user, only prevents. There is nothing logical about using it. Steam is arguably one of the lest painful DRM methods out there I agree, but it's still shouldn't be there as it means all games now have a shelf-life equal to the health of your account, and the health of Valve as a company. Should the shit hit the fan, I don't trust ANY company to do me right given the restrictive ToS virtually all companies use to move all the rights and power in their favor.
Of course not! Once you've bought the item from a store, the tags are removed and you now have an item that cannot be taken from you later for any reason. I thought this would have been obvious.
I will make it clear that I have not had any issues related to an account lockdown with Valve. I HAVE had an issue whereby my credit card was blocked after a while with the Steam store, which a lot of other people have had the same issue with. Steam support would unblock it, but after the next purchase it'd be locked again. A PayPal account bypassed this issue completely but it still annoys me how stupid Steam's processing backend can be.
In the end, games are a luxury. Since it isn't critical to one's survival to play the latest shooter, I see no reason why being anti-DRM and instead encouraging purchase through someone like GOG is illogical. Music no longer has DRM (for the most part), why encourage games?
Nah, I'm not like that. I've been feeling like this for a few years ago. It's just that since Steam is going to be on the three main platforms now, there's no escaping it and games are going to be tailored for it. People will get USED to being reliant on a third-party for their games and not owning the software. By then it'll be too late - we won't have independent executable anymore because everyone's gotten used to being authenticated.
And the worst part is, we have stores like GOG which exist for non-DRM games, but not enough people/publishers use them yet.
BTW - I read something interesting which I thought was worth sharing. Someone else made the point that they were concerned with Steam for the exact same reasons that I am, but decided to stick with it anyway.
His view was that we have progressed to a state where you don't "own" anything anymore when it comes to software/media, it's all licensed. Now technically you've been buying a license for every piece of software, movie, music and whatnot anyway, it's just that the ability to revoke the license has never been enforceable before. But with closed markets which require Internet-based authentication for the content you've purchased, they can, and they will.
In the old days, if you bought a game and it later became illegal to sell the game in your country (new laws regarding computer game violence for example), it wouldn't matter since you have a physical disc - no-one is going to break down your door to recover it. But if it's on Steam, Valve would have to adhere to said law and lock off access to the game. Notwithstanding cracks, you couldn't do shit - you can no longer use the software you bought simply because some knee-jerk politician wanted tougher laws or something. It's not unreasonable to think this is possible. Heck I live in Australia - we just got R18+ legislation which allows for games which were originally banned here. What if someone goes on a shooting spree and they find out he was a gamer? They'll likely revert the laws based on public outcry or some BS. Any games between now and then which were sold to Aussies with an R18+ grade will have to be removed. They can't do that if you had a non-DRMed copy.
Anyway, point is this fellow decided that since we don't "own" anything and Internet-based control on what we buy are going to become more and more mainstream (since virtually no-one is pushing back), he might as well accept it and embrace it if he wants to continue gaming. I'm not prepared to just accept things like that, but I can see how when it comes to games, some people might just not care enough to bother. In the end they're just games, but it's also a sign of the consumer losing control and rights over the digital products they buy.