I made one last year. At the time, I was following the Silicon Valley VC bloggers because I was thinking of founding a startup. Those people would not shut up about twitter, so I checked it out. After my median one tweet (and deciding that the whole VC scene is about navel gazing), I never logged in again and I'm not even sure what my password is anymore.
But I still get emails about once a week that XYZ is now following me.
For that, things like Facebook are better; not for technical, but cultural reasons. On FB, people tend to give fewer â" but more weighty - updates than on twitter. This means that the 70 or so friends and family I'm tracking are not spamming that they are now having a cup of coffee and now eating lunch and now taking a dump. Whenever some twit starts feeding his twittering into FB and spamming all over the place, I filter him out.
>I'm not interested in international traffic and all I get is spammers and content scrapers.
Why do I get an urge to do a facepalm? As an American expat who has lived in both Europe and Asia, I have nothing good to say about my experiences with geolocation.
You chose an analogy that was inherently ambiguous; you could use it to mean whatever you wanted by slipping either party into the role of the rape victim.
WTF? I wrote the analogy, I know damn well who is what.
If you can't wrap your head around that simple analogy, then you've been drinking way too much kool aid.
sigh..... I've been trying to argue nicely. Must we hurl invective? I know it is pointless. I'm just an object in your periphery. You are just an object in my periphery and for all I know, you could be a piece of software. I'm also aware of the fact that on the internet, there are no repercussions to not arguing nicely and no incentive not to needlessly insult.
But it is possible and you never know. If your argument is solid and you are not insulting, perhaps you can change a mind sometime.
ugggghhhhh THEY (meaning Stardock et. al.) are not "the rapist" here. That was why I tried to shift from an inherently ambiguous metaphor (the rapist metaphor can be twisted either way) to game theory.
In the case of most game companies (e.g. EA), BOTH parties (the company and pirates) are defectors.
If Stardock gets screwed - or perceives that they got screwed â" by piracy and defects next time, you canâ(TM)t blame them. They still went with a âoedonâ(TM)t defect first approachâ. Anyone who defects against someone using a no first defection policy is an asshat.
Perhaps I missed the context of what you intended to say. My analagy was that companies like Stardock, who previously resisted using DRM on idealogical grounds, might conclude that being nice simply does not pay. They are not accepting blame any more than the woman who dresses conservatively because she can't be bothered dealing with asshats who take clothing as licence to grope is accepting blame.
I'll use game theory and try a better analagy: coming to a rural intersection with no predefined right of way.
In some countries, notably in continental Europe, if you indicate to someone that they should take the right of way, they'll thank you. In others, notably the US, Canada and Scandinavia, they'll likely offer the right of way to you first. In India, if someone raises a hand, it is to indicate to the other that they should yield the right of way to the hand raiser; and they never thank you if you offer it. In game theory, this would be called defection.
If you habitually offer the right of way to someone who habitually demands it, you are screwed. Not packaging media with DRM is offering the right of way. Both pirating and shipping with obnoxious DRM are demanding the right of way; i.e. are defection. Packaging with DRM is based on the presumption that people are asshats and defect.
So the question is whether you can take the risk that people won't defect.
article blaming china for hacking in the past 6 months. the US must always have an enemy it seems.
This has nothing to do with the US. It is a human condition.
The 'biggest' always has a list of those who covet that #1 position. This has been so all through human history and plays out on all levels; including in the politics of your office. China would love to be #1. I continually read gloating in Indian newspapers about how they are overtaking the west and even the Europeans for all their cuddly talk, get goosebumps when they speculate about the Euro taking over from the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Britain had a list of those who coveted the #1 position when it was there. Both Japanese and Nazi officials dreamed of taking India from Britain for example. The next top dog will have the same.
Well, if these guys really used to have a more lenient stance on DRM and have only moved towards stricter attitudes over time, you'd think there might be a reason for that.... If Stardock indeed used to have a lenient stance at least in the past, clearly they didn't have these motivations. If their opinion has changed, they've either picked up these ulterior motives over time (which, I suppose, is also a possibility), or they've actually come to believe that it's necessary due to the piracy figures.
Actually this is quite common. Small, hungry companies start out with the promise to be "different" and "gamer friendly" etc, some get successful and more successful they get, more money the owners see filling their bank accounts, greedier they get. Soon after the Ferraris and the yachts get purchased, the greed becomes a burning, unquenchable desire that soon is overshadowing everything. Paranoia sets in that some "thieves" are looking to take it all away, the government "goon" tax-men, the undeserving uppity employees, the "pirates" etc and so on.
Stardock is just a latest example of this.
The cynical bastard appraisal runs something like - ideals don't pay the bills while money does and as soon as these starry eyed companies realize this, they turn "evil".
Uh yes it does hurt people. Part of the reason we're getting all sorts of BS DRM is to stop people from thieving.
With that attitude you might as well blame the woman who is raped for being too sexy.
I'll twist your analogy a bit. A woman gets blamed for dressing too sexy when she is raped. So the response of women is to dress less sexy to lower their "perceived" risk. So those raping bastards take away the enjoyment of the rest of us who like to look, but know better than to touch.
>Or does WotC fear that people could find out their latest edition sucks even more than the previous ones and people refuse to buy it entirely, and stick with AD&D 2nd forever?
What do you mean? It started going downhill with 2E. 1E FOREVER!!!
As someone who has lived outside the US for many years, I've seen this soooooooo often.
I tried to buy Ken Burns' "The Civil War" a few years ago on DVD. They would not ship to my (at the time) German address. I wrote to PBS about it and they answered "licensing deals... blah... blah". So I bought it in Wal Mart the next time I was in the US and brought it back to play on my hacked player.
My daughter is a big Avatar fan. They would not sell me the Season 3 DVDs as it was not yet released in Europe. My solution was to torrent it. I'd have happily paid, but they did not want to sell it to me.
Same deal with Pen and Teller's "Bullshit". I can't buy it because I'm in Europe, but I can torrent it.
Now that I'm in India, nobody will sell me anything. No problem. The govt. does not care a hoot about piracy so I can torrent as much as I like.
My recently (legitimately) purchased copy of Prince Caspian is region 3. To play it in the US, I'd have to violate the DMCA. The structure of the music and film industry, like banking, is pre-internet. It lives on specialized deals with country specific distributors and prefers to ignore the fact that the world is flat. What I don't like is governments being convinced to help them solve a structural problem in their industry with draconian laws.
The app seems like a verbose way of saying that the calendar system shuts down access to other apps during the meeting; which is a technical solution to a social problem (people banging away on laptop keyboards during meetings)
>The folks I know who use Excel for analysis use it because it's the package that everyone gets in their organization, there's a shit load of material on the web that uses excel, there's plenty of add-ons for it (no need to reinvent the wheel), and when sharing data and analysis, everyone is familiar with it
Back when I was in grad school, ten years ago, Excel was the preferred data analysis tool for most physical and biological scientists that I knew; even when they had high end analysis tools installed on their machines.
Getting banned in the forums or in-game pretty much means that you behaved like an asshat and behaving like an asshat makes the game experience worse for the majority of the non-asshat players. I don't have the data to prove it, but I's reckon that forum ashattery and in-game greifing correlate.
But it looks like the selfish, socially challenged pre-teens are going to whine for a few hours.
> Game creators work so hard to stop these guys... Maybe they should realize their content sucks if people are willing to pay to skip it.
You sir, just summed up the root cause of RMT in one sentence.
Unfortunately, solving the "how to keep people engaged for hundreds of hours without grinding" problem seems insurmountable with the current crop of game designers.
> clearly you have not lived this experience. YOU grow up and then you'll see it, first hand.
What I see first hand is good jobs going to Outer Ring Road and a bunch of people far away whining because they did not bring as much to the table as the extra they cost. But I guess everyone here should go back to poverty so that the less able in other lands can keep their birthright.
> but it's disgustingly condescending to pretend that everyone has the necessary resources or latent talent (or capacity to develop such talent) to pursue those opportunities.
And it's disgustingly condescending to pretend that those without the necessary resources or latent talent have anything special that a guy in Bangalore does not. Globalization makes the playing field bigger and now people compete with others on the other side of the world. The top talent in America, Europe and India will do fine. The deadbeats everywhere will do less fine.
Exactly how is this worse than American/European deadbeats doing well and the top talent in India having no chance?
Slashdot Mirror
I made one last year. At the time, I was following the Silicon Valley VC bloggers because I was thinking of founding a startup. Those people would not shut up about twitter, so I checked it out. After my median one tweet (and deciding that the whole VC scene is about navel gazing), I never logged in again and I'm not even sure what my password is anymore.
But I still get emails about once a week that XYZ is now following me.
For that, things like Facebook are better; not for technical, but cultural reasons. On FB, people tend to give fewer â" but more weighty - updates than on twitter. This means that the 70 or so friends and family I'm tracking are not spamming that they are now having a cup of coffee and now eating lunch and now taking a dump. Whenever some twit starts feeding his twittering into FB and spamming all over the place, I filter him out.
The GP has a point. Nobody in India gives a flying &$Â* about swine flu and never will, even if it kills more people than those other diseases.
I may be no safer in India, but at least I'm spared the hysteria.
>I'm not interested in international traffic and all I get is spammers and content scrapers.
Why do I get an urge to do a facepalm? As an American expat who has lived in both Europe and Asia, I have nothing good to say about my experiences with geolocation.
You chose an analogy that was inherently ambiguous; you could use it to mean whatever you wanted by slipping either party into the role of the rape victim.
WTF? I wrote the analogy, I know damn well who is what.
If you can't wrap your head around that simple analogy, then you've been drinking way too much kool aid.
sigh..... I've been trying to argue nicely. Must we hurl invective? I know it is pointless. I'm just an object in your periphery. You are just an object in my periphery and for all I know, you could be a piece of software. I'm also aware of the fact that on the internet, there are no repercussions to not arguing nicely and no incentive not to needlessly insult.
But it is possible and you never know. If your argument is solid and you are not insulting, perhaps you can change a mind sometime.
ugggghhhhh THEY (meaning Stardock et. al.) are not "the rapist" here. That was why I tried to shift from an inherently ambiguous metaphor (the rapist metaphor can be twisted either way) to game theory.
In the case of most game companies (e.g. EA), BOTH parties (the company and pirates) are defectors.
If Stardock gets screwed - or perceives that they got screwed â" by piracy and defects next time, you canâ(TM)t blame them. They still went with a âoedonâ(TM)t defect first approachâ. Anyone who defects against someone using a no first defection policy is an asshat.
Perhaps I missed the context of what you intended to say. My analagy was that companies like Stardock, who previously resisted using DRM on idealogical grounds, might conclude that being nice simply does not pay. They are not accepting blame any more than the woman who dresses conservatively because she can't be bothered dealing with asshats who take clothing as licence to grope is accepting blame.
I'll use game theory and try a better analagy: coming to a rural intersection with no predefined right of way.
In some countries, notably in continental Europe, if you indicate to someone that they should take the right of way, they'll thank you. In others, notably the US, Canada and Scandinavia, they'll likely offer the right of way to you first. In India, if someone raises a hand, it is to indicate to the other that they should yield the right of way to the hand raiser; and they never thank you if you offer it. In game theory, this would be called defection.
If you habitually offer the right of way to someone who habitually demands it, you are screwed. Not packaging media with DRM is offering the right of way. Both pirating and shipping with obnoxious DRM are demanding the right of way; i.e. are defection. Packaging with DRM is based on the presumption that people are asshats and defect.
So the question is whether you can take the risk that people won't defect.
article blaming china for hacking in the past 6 months. the US must always have an enemy it seems.
This has nothing to do with the US. It is a human condition.
The 'biggest' always has a list of those who covet that #1 position. This has been so all through human history and plays out on all levels; including in the politics of your office. China would love to be #1. I continually read gloating in Indian newspapers about how they are overtaking the west and even the Europeans for all their cuddly talk, get goosebumps when they speculate about the Euro taking over from the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Britain had a list of those who coveted the #1 position when it was there. Both Japanese and Nazi officials dreamed of taking India from Britain for example. The next top dog will have the same.
Actually this is quite common. Small, hungry companies start out with the promise to be "different" and "gamer friendly" etc, some get successful and more successful they get, more money the owners see filling their bank accounts, greedier they get. Soon after the Ferraris and the yachts get purchased, the greed becomes a burning, unquenchable desire that soon is overshadowing everything. Paranoia sets in that some "thieves" are looking to take it all away, the government "goon" tax-men, the undeserving uppity employees, the "pirates" etc and so on.
Stardock is just a latest example of this.
The cynical bastard appraisal runs something like - ideals don't pay the bills while money does and as soon as these starry eyed companies realize this, they turn "evil".
Uh yes it does hurt people. Part of the reason we're getting all sorts of BS DRM is to stop people from thieving.
With that attitude you might as well blame the woman who is raped for being too sexy.
I'll twist your analogy a bit. A woman gets blamed for dressing too sexy when she is raped. So the response of women is to dress less sexy to lower their "perceived" risk. So those raping bastards take away the enjoyment of the rest of us who like to look, but know better than to touch.
Except that the woman is the game company here...
You are absolutely correct! After all, didn't arresting him violate his human rights?
>Thank you. How we treat bad people is not about them, it is about us.
Dude, if I only had mod points today. That is the insightful statement of the year.
>Or does WotC fear that people could find out their latest edition sucks even more than the previous ones and people refuse to buy it entirely, and stick with AD&D 2nd forever?
What do you mean? It started going downhill with 2E. 1E FOREVER!!!
As someone who has lived outside the US for many years, I've seen this soooooooo often.
I tried to buy Ken Burns' "The Civil War" a few years ago on DVD. They would not ship to my (at the time) German address. I wrote to PBS about it and they answered "licensing deals... blah... blah". So I bought it in Wal Mart the next time I was in the US and brought it back to play on my hacked player.
My daughter is a big Avatar fan. They would not sell me the Season 3 DVDs as it was not yet released in Europe. My solution was to torrent it. I'd have happily paid, but they did not want to sell it to me.
Same deal with Pen and Teller's "Bullshit". I can't buy it because I'm in Europe, but I can torrent it.
Now that I'm in India, nobody will sell me anything. No problem. The govt. does not care a hoot about piracy so I can torrent as much as I like.
My recently (legitimately) purchased copy of Prince Caspian is region 3. To play it in the US, I'd have to violate the DMCA. The structure of the music and film industry, like banking, is pre-internet. It lives on specialized deals with country specific distributors and prefers to ignore the fact that the world is flat. What I don't like is governments being convinced to help them solve a structural problem in their industry with draconian laws.
Pot, meet kettle.
The app seems like a verbose way of saying that the calendar system shuts down access to other apps during the meeting; which is a technical solution to a social problem (people banging away on laptop keyboards during meetings)
>The folks I know who use Excel for analysis use it because it's the package that everyone gets in their organization, there's a shit load of material on the web that uses excel, there's plenty of add-ons for it (no need to reinvent the wheel), and when sharing data and analysis, everyone is familiar with it
Back when I was in grad school, ten years ago, Excel was the preferred data analysis tool for most physical and biological scientists that I knew; even when they had high end analysis tools installed on their machines.
Amen brother!
Getting banned in the forums or in-game pretty much means that you behaved like an asshat and behaving like an asshat makes the game experience worse for the majority of the non-asshat players. I don't have the data to prove it, but I's reckon that forum ashattery and in-game greifing correlate.
But it looks like the selfish, socially challenged pre-teens are going to whine for a few hours.
I doubt it. EA (Bioware's parent company) and Sony are competitors.
Anyway, it is in EA's interest for you to grind a new character for a few months before starting the endgame.
Raph Koster was not responsible for the changes to SWG that made it suck. Damian Schubert of Shadowbane is the lead designer of the Old Republic.
>what the fuck are you mods smoking that open partisan slander rises to the level of insightful to you?
You must be new here.
> Game creators work so hard to stop these guys... Maybe they should realize their content sucks if people are willing to pay to skip it.
You sir, just summed up the root cause of RMT in one sentence.
Unfortunately, solving the "how to keep people engaged for hundreds of hours without grinding" problem seems insurmountable with the current crop of game designers.
> clearly you have not lived this experience. YOU grow up and then you'll see it, first hand.
What I see first hand is good jobs going to Outer Ring Road and a bunch of people far away whining because they did not bring as much to the table as the extra they cost. But I guess everyone here should go back to poverty so that the less able in other lands can keep their birthright.
> but it's disgustingly condescending to pretend that everyone has the necessary resources or latent talent (or capacity to develop such talent) to pursue those opportunities.
And it's disgustingly condescending to pretend that those without the necessary resources or latent talent have anything special that a guy in Bangalore does not. Globalization makes the playing field bigger and now people compete with others on the other side of the world. The top talent in America, Europe and India will do fine. The deadbeats everywhere will do less fine.
Exactly how is this worse than American/European deadbeats doing well and the top talent in India having no chance?
And yes, I am posting this from bangalore!
>...and is a mechanical fudge. It looks to be typical American engineering, big, clunky, and with no regard for elegance.
Clunky hacks that get you to the moon beat elegance that stays on a drawing board any day.