Are you saying I'm not allowed to have an opinion? Or that your opinion is more appropriate than mine? Fuck off then. If I feel the lack of DRM-free and cross-platform games in this bundle is an issue, then you can't stop me from saying so.
Oi, Slashdot peeps - aren't you even the slightest bit embarrassed at how low this lack of editorial oversight has become? Why don't you at least push out a press release stating that you are aware of concerns and are going to try to make things better? The continued silence despite all the complaints is deafening.
I don't understand why those running Slashdot have such a lack of respect for its readership.
Look, I get THQ are struggling for money. And to be honest the selection is extremely good quality for any price. But the Humble Bundle is synonymous with DRM-free and cross platform titles. It used to be only about indie titles, but some commercially published games like Psychonauts have starting slipping through and I'm OK with that, since it increases potential interest and they're still DRM-free and cross platform. But here? It's not DRM-free at all (Steam) and it's Windows only. Not something I associate with the "Humble" Bundles.
Having said that the bundle has been available for around 27 hours as the time of this post, and has reached nearly $1.6 million in that short space of time. This kinda reaffirms my belief that ultimately people (well, gamers anyway) don't care about DRM-free and cross platform benefits, so long as the games are cheap.
Can someone elaborate slightly? It's obvious which character is doing something atrocious (Jar Jar, clearly), but it's still hard to remember the movie. I've got Blu-Ray rips of the films for some insane reason - a timestamp would help.
Who says I do? My point was that for the mainstream many titles are not DRM free, DRM free is the exception not the norm. GOG, which I am a fan of, keywords being old games (ones I've already purchased originally, that have nice boxes and the older titles (think 80s) have nice manuals, too) are not representative of many new titles.
I agree that DRM free is the exception. Doesn't mean one has to go along with it. As for GOG, from what I understand they used use that as an acronym Good Old Games, but officially it's just GOG because there are some newer games available now on it (Alan Wake and ARMA 2 come to mind, along with a bunch of newer indie titles and some slightly older games like the newer Sam & Max series). So I wouldn't just class them as all about really old stuff anymore.
Are you telling me as someone whose been an avid gamer for over 20+ years that I should simply rebuy titles I already own? Using movies as an analogy, your argument boils down to not watch any new movies, since the back catalog is so vast?
Heck no, that's not what I mean. Particularly about movies, I'm not saying not to watch newer movies, or even stick with older games. The problem is entirely in the DRM. I'd play more newer commercial games if they didn't use Steam/DRM, simple. It's just that the older games (either by virtue of GOG's modifications or just via their age) don't have DRM because it wasn't around at the time.
To the new comer this might be more appealing. That said, I enjoy many older movies (Big Trouble in Little China I'm looking at you), but I also like newer ones (Skyfall), and there is nothing wrong with that. I suppose you could simply come out and recommend using one of the open sourced Quake engines and play yet another rehash of that game from 1999 or earlier, why, when there are better engines like Source, Unreal 3, games like Skyrim and Minecraft both with awesome mods and vibrant communities?
I guess my point is that if no-one pushes against even light DRM, then it'll be trickle-fed into the next generation and we'll never be able to get back control over how we run our software. People will be so used to authentication, they won't know any better.
The only downside of course is that people want their games and if given a choice between Steam DRM and Half-Life 3... fuck, actually now I'm not sure even I could hold onto my principles in that situation!
Believe me, I understand your point. The problem though is human nature - people tune out extremists because they won't compromise. This might be necessary to push radical ideas across, but it fails the test in actually getting people to listen, particularly if you're effectively telling them that everything you're doing is "wrong" for some arbitrary reason.
What's the point in having extreme (but useful) ideas if the only way to implement them will cause too much pain for people?
One of these days people will use Linux or something very similar to it as the defacto standard for such networks, they will look back and laugh at how silly it was to force a square peg through a round hole.
You're living in a dreamworld. Linux has been around for a sufficiently long time and it still hasn't... fucking... happened. There's too much inertia for Windows and too little impact (on the desktop) for Linux.
Not many AAA titles are DRM free these days, sadly.
You're right. So just don't play them. You mean to tell me you have so much free time and no other hobbies that the selection of GOG is too limiting?
Convenience is a powerful thing
I don't understand this though. On say GOG, you buy the game, you download the files, you create a folder and dump the installer files into said folder. Then, you can run and install the game at your leisure, and backup the installers for another time. Assuming ANY level of basic computer literacy, this is easy enough that the benefits of not having to deal with DRM outweigh any issues from a little file and folder management.
Optional DRM is nice if it comes in numbers. Someone crunched some numbers once and determined that out of the 3000+ games on Steam, only about 130 were DRM free (as in the game's exe could be run completely standalone). There were for mostly DOS games though, such as the original Doom series, X-Com and others. You can make backups sure, but they're still dependent on Steam. If your account is fucked or Valve is fucked, you're fucked.
In my experience, most gamers are clueless about long-term issues with DRM. Most just want to play games.
Interesting post. I happen to agree with you; I'm really shocked at how happy people are in using Steam despite its DRM. Sure, they try to make themselves feel better by saying it's the lightest form of DRM compared to a lot of others, which is perhaps true, but you're still having all your games linked to a single point of failure - the health of your account, and the status of Valve as a company. The other argument is that Steam is very easy to crack, which is more or less accurate. Problem is, as a customer I don't want to have to rely on this when buying games, because it might not work out in practice. At least with DRM-free games, I can keep the installers and not worry about what happens to the vendor in 5-10+ years time.
I'm only 29, and I don't see my opinions as being particularly of the grumpy-old-men level either. It seems to just be a fact that games make people drop their principles for DRM and justify it instead of staying away from it entirely and opting instead of DRM-free stuff like that from GOG.com. But unfortunately there are WAY too many Valve fanboys around who tend to drown out your opinion.
Ideas are great. I like a lot of his ideas and certain aspects of his philosophy on software. However as you say, they're rather extremist at times and this causes problems because we live in the real world, not an idealist paradise (not yet, and likely not ever).
So ideas are great, but if they can't be implemented in practice without there being some significant pushback that prevents achievement of an outcome, then we have a problem. Stallman says a lot, but if for example I were to follow them to the letter, I'd have no career because no-one but Xilinx developers the (proprietary) software to design on their (proprietary) FPGAs, as a very simple example. Would I like a completely free FPGA along with the software to go with it? Sure! Heck these guys are trying to achieve that very thing (an ASIC, but the same general area: http://opencores.org/). But you're not going to be able to do the high power stuff I'm required to do on those things, hence I need to use proprietary material every single day.
Well duh, it's Internode. Of course you're gonna have an easy time with IPv6. OK the modem/router has to support it of course, but with Internode at least it's easy enough to enable it on your account. I'd expect nothing less from those guys.
Which is fine, for OS X (given it's a necessary subsystem for proper use of the operating system).
With Quicktime on Windows it seems to think it deserves to take control over your machine as well, as if you deserve the level of integration it has in OS X (despite being entirely different systems).
Being truly principled is difficult for most people for two reasons:
(1) Being principled requires sacrifice. It means going without, which for someone who's used to pirating lots of games/movies, is the emotional equivalent of cutting off their blood supply. Seems like a very trivial and firstworldproblem issue but it's just an example of a low-cost sacrifice a lot of people can have a tough time dealing with.
(2) Being principled can be dangerous. Stepping in to help someone being beaten up is damn dangerous, and even a principled person has to decide if it's actually going to help, or just end up with two people bashed up instead of one. Or like that one Mexican politician who wasn't corrupt and genuinely tried to face the Mexican drug gangs, who survived two assassination attempts (one of them costing her husband's life) before finally being killed recently. She was principled, and she died for it. Most people won't have to face that level of dedication but they might have to deal with still dangerous issues where it might take someone principled to do the "right thing".
So basically, most people (including myself, make no mistake) like the idea of principles, but only if they don't have any major negative sides to them. Otherwise, they'll decide that they only have one life and it's not worth ruining or sacrificing for no perceptible gain.
You're deliberately missing his point. Personal change in terms of eliminating or reducing human flaws. Becoming less jealous, less envious, improving one's temper, tolerance and respect for others, improving one's discipline and willpower, etc. There are clear benefits in all of the above, but thinking 1+1 is anything but 2 (and let's not go into floating-point tricks people like to mention to ruin the argument) is stupid and, well, something else which could do with some personal change.
No problem. If you can get a hold of the latest dev builds (2.9 series) I believe they've also finally incorporated 16-bit editing, which is another big thing a lot of people want. Still a work in progress though.
Thing is though, in photoshop you aren't constrained by a single window for images either. In CS6 at least, images are at first tabbed but you can tear off a tab like you can in a browser, and the image will appear in a standalone window, not constrained to the main photoshop window at all. So it seems like you're in agreement with the photoshop developers anyway.
But both GIMP and Photoshop provide a single-window mode should people want it. All I use a bitmap editor for is for making the occasional avatar, messing about with photos and fairly often for taking a high-res image and cropping/adjusting/resizing it for a suitable desktop wallpaper. You can call me a noob if you like, but noobs like me are widespread and for US at least, it helps to keep things simple with a single window. But like I said, the option is still there.
Maybe you were just worried that UI development seems to be heading away from power users like yourself, and I understand. It's my pet peeve with desktop UIs nowadays, particularly in Linux. So long as options exist for everyone though, I think they should be embraced, particularly if it means more people can use computers to do something creative for a change without things being more difficult than they have to be.
If you're opening lots of images, they'll all just get tabbed neatly in the main window (plus from memory you can switch between images easily using hotkeys). If you're just working on one or two images at once though (so likely most people) a single window mode is great.
HOWEVER... I appreciate that some people prefer multiple windows, and guess what? That feature is still there and likely won't disappear any time soon. So I don't see what's so bad about the fact we have the best of both worlds now in GIMP.
It's certainly easier that it used to be. The only reason I can put up with it now is because of the single window mode. People were ranting and raving that adding this was somehow bad because it would be pandering to the limitations of Windows... even though it ends up making life so much simpler for those of us who don't care about operating system fanboyism and just want to be able to work without having to manage multiple windows in the world's most popular operating system.
No, I mean he could be messing around with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino, something like that. The knowledge gained from such things (Linux, registers, I/O) would be far more valuable than that from endlessly tweaking hardware.
You might want to consider doing something more useful with your life. Nothing against playing games of course (I do it too), but if you're gonna waste time overclocking/watercooling/SLIing shit, question if you'll regret the wasted time spent playing games when you're older and have more wisdom.
I understand your point and think it's articulated well.
To round out the discussion though, I'll provide two irrefutable examples of why word processors are still important:
1. When I was hunting for a job about two years ago, I noticed that for a large portion of online applications the instructions often suggested submitting one's resume/CV in.doc format (same thing with recruiters). Someone told me this because macros can be run across the uploaded files and pre-fill things like names, addresses and work experience details from the expected labels people uses in CVs into the applications themselves, or to a database of applications at the target. Some places were more flexible and allowed RTF/PDF as well, but.doc was still quite prevalent as the preferred format. When you've been looking for work for a long time, it's hard not to give them what they want.
2. My wife is doing a Masters by coursework. She uses Word and submits her reports and assignments online using the University's uploader in.doc format. She COULD learn how to use LyX and export to PDF and that might still work... except that she's also a teacher and so the use of MS Office is prevalent anyway. She'd probably see no advantage in using LyX/LaTeX over Word, and I'm not crazy enough to tell her otherwise.
The point is that all the bloat and legacy stuff that people give Windows crap for is the very stuff that allows someone to play these older games because legacy support is important, at least for a user-facing operating system. There's a balance of course between legitimately removing a subsystem because it's no longer useful to anyone, and removing a subsystem because it's old. Microsoft knows this because of its large userbase it has to (try to) keep happy, but most Linux distros don't have that legacy to deal with, so they don't.
And unlike some others here, I fully accept that. Unfortunately I doubt Adobe is gonna recommit to the Linux world any time soon (still bitter over them abandoning the Flash plugin).
And how am I suppose to appreciate this fact when the alternatives aren't standing out as an o.verall improvement? LyX/LaTeX for example seems to be useless if you don't use a class/template file to match what it is you want to do. If you just want to freestyle the layout, a word processor seems to be far easier and more flexible in terms of changing things on the fly. For my thesis at least the University provided one, but there were times I wanted to made modifications to the layout and the inflexibility of LyX at least was annoying (though I know, you're not supposed to be messing with the layout in LaTeX, that's the whole damn point).
Perhaps I'm just confused by the fact that the rest of the world uses Word, the world seems to keep on spinning despite this, and yet you're telling me this is wrong for some reason. I don't have to do what everyone else is doing, sure. But it sounds almost like grumpy-old-man syndrome coming from you (said with the best of intentions).
Slashdot Mirror
Are you saying I'm not allowed to have an opinion? Or that your opinion is more appropriate than mine? Fuck off then. If I feel the lack of DRM-free and cross-platform games in this bundle is an issue, then you can't stop me from saying so.
Oi, Slashdot peeps - aren't you even the slightest bit embarrassed at how low this lack of editorial oversight has become? Why don't you at least push out a press release stating that you are aware of concerns and are going to try to make things better? The continued silence despite all the complaints is deafening.
I don't understand why those running Slashdot have such a lack of respect for its readership.
Look, I get THQ are struggling for money. And to be honest the selection is extremely good quality for any price. But the Humble Bundle is synonymous with DRM-free and cross platform titles. It used to be only about indie titles, but some commercially published games like Psychonauts have starting slipping through and I'm OK with that, since it increases potential interest and they're still DRM-free and cross platform. But here? It's not DRM-free at all (Steam) and it's Windows only. Not something I associate with the "Humble" Bundles.
Having said that the bundle has been available for around 27 hours as the time of this post, and has reached nearly $1.6 million in that short space of time. This kinda reaffirms my belief that ultimately people (well, gamers anyway) don't care about DRM-free and cross platform benefits, so long as the games are cheap.
Can someone elaborate slightly? It's obvious which character is doing something atrocious (Jar Jar, clearly), but it's still hard to remember the movie. I've got Blu-Ray rips of the films for some insane reason - a timestamp would help.
I agree that DRM free is the exception. Doesn't mean one has to go along with it. As for GOG, from what I understand they used use that as an acronym Good Old Games, but officially it's just GOG because there are some newer games available now on it (Alan Wake and ARMA 2 come to mind, along with a bunch of newer indie titles and some slightly older games like the newer Sam & Max series). So I wouldn't just class them as all about really old stuff anymore.
Heck no, that's not what I mean. Particularly about movies, I'm not saying not to watch newer movies, or even stick with older games. The problem is entirely in the DRM. I'd play more newer commercial games if they didn't use Steam/DRM, simple. It's just that the older games (either by virtue of GOG's modifications or just via their age) don't have DRM because it wasn't around at the time.
I guess my point is that if no-one pushes against even light DRM, then it'll be trickle-fed into the next generation and we'll never be able to get back control over how we run our software. People will be so used to authentication, they won't know any better.
The only downside of course is that people want their games and if given a choice between Steam DRM and Half-Life 3... fuck, actually now I'm not sure even I could hold onto my principles in that situation!
Believe me, I understand your point. The problem though is human nature - people tune out extremists because they won't compromise. This might be necessary to push radical ideas across, but it fails the test in actually getting people to listen, particularly if you're effectively telling them that everything you're doing is "wrong" for some arbitrary reason.
What's the point in having extreme (but useful) ideas if the only way to implement them will cause too much pain for people?
You're living in a dreamworld. Linux has been around for a sufficiently long time and it still hasn't... fucking... happened. There's too much inertia for Windows and too little impact (on the desktop) for Linux.
But I'm happy to be proven wrong.
You're right. So just don't play them. You mean to tell me you have so much free time and no other hobbies that the selection of GOG is too limiting?
I don't understand this though. On say GOG, you buy the game, you download the files, you create a folder and dump the installer files into said folder. Then, you can run and install the game at your leisure, and backup the installers for another time. Assuming ANY level of basic computer literacy, this is easy enough that the benefits of not having to deal with DRM outweigh any issues from a little file and folder management.
Optional DRM is nice if it comes in numbers. Someone crunched some numbers once and determined that out of the 3000+ games on Steam, only about 130 were DRM free (as in the game's exe could be run completely standalone). There were for mostly DOS games though, such as the original Doom series, X-Com and others. You can make backups sure, but they're still dependent on Steam. If your account is fucked or Valve is fucked, you're fucked.
In my experience, most gamers are clueless about long-term issues with DRM. Most just want to play games.
Interesting post. I happen to agree with you; I'm really shocked at how happy people are in using Steam despite its DRM. Sure, they try to make themselves feel better by saying it's the lightest form of DRM compared to a lot of others, which is perhaps true, but you're still having all your games linked to a single point of failure - the health of your account, and the status of Valve as a company. The other argument is that Steam is very easy to crack, which is more or less accurate. Problem is, as a customer I don't want to have to rely on this when buying games, because it might not work out in practice. At least with DRM-free games, I can keep the installers and not worry about what happens to the vendor in 5-10+ years time.
I'm only 29, and I don't see my opinions as being particularly of the grumpy-old-men level either. It seems to just be a fact that games make people drop their principles for DRM and justify it instead of staying away from it entirely and opting instead of DRM-free stuff like that from GOG.com. But unfortunately there are WAY too many Valve fanboys around who tend to drown out your opinion.
Ideas are great. I like a lot of his ideas and certain aspects of his philosophy on software. However as you say, they're rather extremist at times and this causes problems because we live in the real world, not an idealist paradise (not yet, and likely not ever).
So ideas are great, but if they can't be implemented in practice without there being some significant pushback that prevents achievement of an outcome, then we have a problem. Stallman says a lot, but if for example I were to follow them to the letter, I'd have no career because no-one but Xilinx developers the (proprietary) software to design on their (proprietary) FPGAs, as a very simple example. Would I like a completely free FPGA along with the software to go with it? Sure! Heck these guys are trying to achieve that very thing (an ASIC, but the same general area: http://opencores.org/). But you're not going to be able to do the high power stuff I'm required to do on those things, hence I need to use proprietary material every single day.
Well duh, it's Internode. Of course you're gonna have an easy time with IPv6. OK the modem/router has to support it of course, but with Internode at least it's easy enough to enable it on your account. I'd expect nothing less from those guys.
Which is fine, for OS X (given it's a necessary subsystem for proper use of the operating system).
With Quicktime on Windows it seems to think it deserves to take control over your machine as well, as if you deserve the level of integration it has in OS X (despite being entirely different systems).
Being truly principled is difficult for most people for two reasons:
(1) Being principled requires sacrifice. It means going without, which for someone who's used to pirating lots of games/movies, is the emotional equivalent of cutting off their blood supply. Seems like a very trivial and firstworldproblem issue but it's just an example of a low-cost sacrifice a lot of people can have a tough time dealing with.
(2) Being principled can be dangerous. Stepping in to help someone being beaten up is damn dangerous, and even a principled person has to decide if it's actually going to help, or just end up with two people bashed up instead of one. Or like that one Mexican politician who wasn't corrupt and genuinely tried to face the Mexican drug gangs, who survived two assassination attempts (one of them costing her husband's life) before finally being killed recently. She was principled, and she died for it. Most people won't have to face that level of dedication but they might have to deal with still dangerous issues where it might take someone principled to do the "right thing".
So basically, most people (including myself, make no mistake) like the idea of principles, but only if they don't have any major negative sides to them. Otherwise, they'll decide that they only have one life and it's not worth ruining or sacrificing for no perceptible gain.
You're deliberately missing his point. Personal change in terms of eliminating or reducing human flaws. Becoming less jealous, less envious, improving one's temper, tolerance and respect for others, improving one's discipline and willpower, etc. There are clear benefits in all of the above, but thinking 1+1 is anything but 2 (and let's not go into floating-point tricks people like to mention to ruin the argument) is stupid and, well, something else which could do with some personal change.
No problem. If you can get a hold of the latest dev builds (2.9 series) I believe they've also finally incorporated 16-bit editing, which is another big thing a lot of people want. Still a work in progress though.
Thing is though, in photoshop you aren't constrained by a single window for images either. In CS6 at least, images are at first tabbed but you can tear off a tab like you can in a browser, and the image will appear in a standalone window, not constrained to the main photoshop window at all. So it seems like you're in agreement with the photoshop developers anyway.
But both GIMP and Photoshop provide a single-window mode should people want it. All I use a bitmap editor for is for making the occasional avatar, messing about with photos and fairly often for taking a high-res image and cropping/adjusting/resizing it for a suitable desktop wallpaper. You can call me a noob if you like, but noobs like me are widespread and for US at least, it helps to keep things simple with a single window. But like I said, the option is still there.
Maybe you were just worried that UI development seems to be heading away from power users like yourself, and I understand. It's my pet peeve with desktop UIs nowadays, particularly in Linux. So long as options exist for everyone though, I think they should be embraced, particularly if it means more people can use computers to do something creative for a change without things being more difficult than they have to be.
If you're opening lots of images, they'll all just get tabbed neatly in the main window (plus from memory you can switch between images easily using hotkeys). If you're just working on one or two images at once though (so likely most people) a single window mode is great.
HOWEVER... I appreciate that some people prefer multiple windows, and guess what? That feature is still there and likely won't disappear any time soon. So I don't see what's so bad about the fact we have the best of both worlds now in GIMP.
It's certainly easier that it used to be. The only reason I can put up with it now is because of the single window mode. People were ranting and raving that adding this was somehow bad because it would be pandering to the limitations of Windows... even though it ends up making life so much simpler for those of us who don't care about operating system fanboyism and just want to be able to work without having to manage multiple windows in the world's most popular operating system.
No, I mean he could be messing around with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino, something like that. The knowledge gained from such things (Linux, registers, I/O) would be far more valuable than that from endlessly tweaking hardware.
You might want to consider doing something more useful with your life. Nothing against playing games of course (I do it too), but if you're gonna waste time overclocking/watercooling/SLIing shit, question if you'll regret the wasted time spent playing games when you're older and have more wisdom.
I understand your point and think it's articulated well.
To round out the discussion though, I'll provide two irrefutable examples of why word processors are still important:
1. When I was hunting for a job about two years ago, I noticed that for a large portion of online applications the instructions often suggested submitting one's resume/CV in .doc format (same thing with recruiters). Someone told me this because macros can be run across the uploaded files and pre-fill things like names, addresses and work experience details from the expected labels people uses in CVs into the applications themselves, or to a database of applications at the target. Some places were more flexible and allowed RTF/PDF as well, but .doc was still quite prevalent as the preferred format. When you've been looking for work for a long time, it's hard not to give them what they want.
2. My wife is doing a Masters by coursework. She uses Word and submits her reports and assignments online using the University's uploader in .doc format. She COULD learn how to use LyX and export to PDF and that might still work... except that she's also a teacher and so the use of MS Office is prevalent anyway. She'd probably see no advantage in using LyX/LaTeX over Word, and I'm not crazy enough to tell her otherwise.
The point is that all the bloat and legacy stuff that people give Windows crap for is the very stuff that allows someone to play these older games because legacy support is important, at least for a user-facing operating system. There's a balance of course between legitimately removing a subsystem because it's no longer useful to anyone, and removing a subsystem because it's old. Microsoft knows this because of its large userbase it has to (try to) keep happy, but most Linux distros don't have that legacy to deal with, so they don't.
And unlike some others here, I fully accept that. Unfortunately I doubt Adobe is gonna recommit to the Linux world any time soon (still bitter over them abandoning the Flash plugin).
And how am I suppose to appreciate this fact when the alternatives aren't standing out as an o.verall improvement? LyX/LaTeX for example seems to be useless if you don't use a class/template file to match what it is you want to do. If you just want to freestyle the layout, a word processor seems to be far easier and more flexible in terms of changing things on the fly. For my thesis at least the University provided one, but there were times I wanted to made modifications to the layout and the inflexibility of LyX at least was annoying (though I know, you're not supposed to be messing with the layout in LaTeX, that's the whole damn point).
Perhaps I'm just confused by the fact that the rest of the world uses Word, the world seems to keep on spinning despite this, and yet you're telling me this is wrong for some reason. I don't have to do what everyone else is doing, sure. But it sounds almost like grumpy-old-man syndrome coming from you (said with the best of intentions).
Oh God... maybe YOU'RE my supervisor! Hi Greg! :)