An update which costs money. Money which, up until this point, was not required to be exchanged in order to play.
This is like giving away an OS, or charging for updates (and thus requiring the updates to keep the product functional). This is the same thing as the threat of MS charging for product updates (that is, aside from their yearly product release cycle).
Sure, they might alow original CS to be played for a while until enough people transition over. How long will that last, though? Seems like the MS business model to me: get people hooked, and then charge for that 'addiction'.
I played CS from beta 5 or so up through the 1.2 or so release. Then I got tired of it: the weapons were -too- balanced, and it lost a good deal of the fun and challenge. That, and things became rediculous, such as the accuracy of headshots and such. It just wasn't fun anymore.
That, and the plethora of people that played it obsessively (not I) were irritating, as they were quite good and made getting killed repeatedly terribly boring/frustrating. Add into that the maps getting replayed an obscene number of times (dust, anyone?), with few people playing the newer (and IMO often better) maps, things got really, really dull.
I'm sorry, but I wouldn't have paid money for Doom with updated graphics. I certainly won't pay for CS with updated graphics.
I bought half-life. With it, I got a dedicated community full of modders, bringing forth DoD, CS, and the like of fun, playable expansions in addition to the single (and multi) gameplay of just Half-Life. What is it, exactly, that I'd get by paying for CS Source that isn't already available in terms of gameplay? Nothing. CS currently looks pretty damn decent, what with the 'modern' textures and such, and runs quite well. An engine change does nothing for gameplay.
Jeez. This sounds like somethign written in the 50's. It takes no account of current social trends. None! Nothing about various social problems of today (stuff from 10 - 40 years ago is still effecting us today), nothing about problems stemming from a worldwide culture. Think people are just going to forget their differences (Christians, Muslims, Athiests, etc.), give up their power (politicians, kings/world leaders, CEOs) and let the populace have this kind of freedom? No.
This really makes me want to continue to not read his books. If they're this unoriginal, shit. I might as well just read something written in the 50's about flying cars and razorless shaving.
Then we need to change the education system of the country. We're got too many stupid, unintelligent people. Schools teach people facts, but not how to reason, deduct, or solve problems.
That's the crux of the matter. If people were self aware (and most aren't, because they don't analyze themselves), most of the social ills.
If the frequencies (and wavelengths) used by a microwave are harmful (and have been shown to cause quite a few problems in both the people that are directly effected by them and the people that eat anything radiated by them), why not something a little lower in frequency such as AM radio? It's been found that the low-level vibrations of vehicles and other modern machinery can be harmful; I don't see why something in the MHz range couldn't be.
For that matter, what about wireless (ie, 802.11)? It uses microwaves - granted, at a much lower power than what's in the nuker. None of this stuff has been thoroughly tested. What happens in 20, 40, 60 years when 60% of the geek populace is dying of cancer and other terminal diseases?
Reference: I'd say half the people I know that use linux, either online or in real life, are big into pirating music, movies, and software (including games). I know quite a few people that have never paid for software. (All of them are 30).
It's not solely endemic to Linux folks, no. But the majority of Linux folks do seem to pirate software, as do the "upper geek bracket" of Windows users. Being as it's likely the case that an "upper geek bracket" Windows user is likely to at least have a token interest in Linux, and potentially cross over to use Linux due to its superiority in various arenas, it's hardly a stretch of the imagination to conclude that the majority of Linux users are software pirates. Hell, the majority of comments on Slashdot in this thread about TransGaming are basically saying, "copy protection bad!" without rhyme or reason that's defendable. Fairly good circumstantial evidence right there.
Not entirely. It's a bit of a stretch, but this -is- Windows 98 we're talking about here. Remember what a huge pain in the ass that was? "Please insert the Windows 98 CD". Then navigate to the proper location. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I recently had to reinstall an AXP 1800+ system that had 512M and a 7200rpm 40G disk. It was using Windows 2000. The only software that was being put on it was the device drivers (including those for a Matrox G450 dualhead), Symantec Act! (all Symantec software is shit, I've concluded), and Office 2000.
The whole affair took roughly 6 hours to complete, possibly a bit longer. Granted, I would make some changes, reboot the thing, and then walk away for a few moments, but I doubt that added much more than 30 minutes to the entire process. I ran into continual driver problems, despite having installed the system with the -exact- same software versions several months prior.
Weird shit would happen. The audio drivers would be installed properly, the speakers would be plugged in and turned on, and media player said audio was being played - but no sound came out of the speakers. Hunt for files, delete files, and reboot. Wash, rinse, repeat.
10.5 hours is completely understandable for a 6 year old Windows 98 machine from Gateway, of all places, known for shitty hardware world round. Reinstalling Windows is often a bitch.
Um. I'm not sure if your comment is off-topic, or if you simply don't understand what TG is doing.
They're "watermarking" stuff to to be able to essentially track legit users. IE, they will give support to people with legit watermarked tarballs. IE, service. Warezed copies will not receive services, thus not costing the company any direct money. You didn't honestly think the company was stupid enough to think they could 'prevent' piracy, did you? No, there will always be morally corrupt people such as yourself out there that have no compunction about not paying for what they get.
Hopefully this makes sense to you.
Oh, and one more thing - TG's software is making niche software. They are not making popular software. Your own argument is self-defeating.
I don't the idea here is to prevent the warez "producers". It's to prevent people who got a warezed copy from being able to a) claim they got a legit copy and b) getting official support for that copy.
To lengthen the answer: because without revenue, the product will cease to exist.
I mean, seriously. Come off it, you wankers. "It breaks gentoo's ebuild". BFD. It's still (relatively) simple to work around. Are you that much of an automatron that you can't deal with this miniscule inconvenience?
This presents a fairly striking point about the majority of Linux/"free software" people. They're also largely proprietors of warez and other forms of copyright violation/property 'theft'. It's no small wonder why commercial products are slow to come to Linux - there's no market for them, as most would be pirated by the geeks and there'd be miniscule revenue.
Sure, there's a place and probably a market for large commercial apps, but I'm talking about smaller things (such as the transgaming stuff). There are quite a few people that truly ascribe to the "free as in freedom" philosophy on a whole. Most people just want a free ride.
I don't mean to play the antagonist here, but no, biodiesel is not a good alternative. It currently takes over one gallon of fossil fuels to produce a gallon of biodiesel due to the production overhead involved in planting, harvesting, etc. the crops required to make biodiesel.
Sorry, I don't have any statistics on this, but google does. It's also been mentioned here quite a few times on slashdot.
You were on Mars. Mars has a weaker gravitational field than earth does.
What Doom 3 did, it did well. It never claimed to be anything other than what it was. That's a breathe of fresh air a person can respect in today's hype-filled market (oh, and I should note that I was saying Doom 3 would be hype months prior to its release, myself).
Re:And now for something completely different...
on
Life After Doom
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· Score: 0
Dear god! Man, I've not laughed so hard in such a long time.
Between your post and the comments further up about Maxis leasing the engine to integrate with The Sims, this is the funniest shit I've seen on slashdot in ages.
I don't see it happening this late into the development process, personally. If indeed they're still working on it. The UT2k and various subsequent engine versions are quite capable engines. Were they not using the UT line of engine? Given the nature of Duke3d's gameplay, the graphic engine was not such a substantial stake in the quality of the game.
I mean, shit. BUILD sucked. What made Duke3d rock was the combination of weapons, attitude, and humor. And the hookers. They don't need Doom 3's engine for that, and I highly doubt anyone would ditch 3+ years of undesclosed-yet-highly-anticipated development for a new engine when it's likely that they're at least nearing a point where they could consider a feature lock. I'd hope.
Anyone think it's interesting that, after the vision, feel, and environment for the Doom universe is fully established with the release of Doom 3, that Universal Pictures finally decides to make a film out of it?
I can imagine this scenario... two or three film execs are in a room talking it up, maybe with a gaming PC on a desk, with one of the execs playing it on easy and getting his ass kicked. They start talking, and say,
exe1: hey, this is really scary. exe2: yeah. I've not seen a horror film this terrifying since Chucky 3! exe3: hey, that's it, we should finally make this game into a movie! They've already done all the hard work for us! Environment, feel, you name it. We won't even need to hire that many artists to design sets, costumes, or any of that other costly stuff!
what we need now is a root kit which installs a remote shell on the machine of the person rooting, and then send off a snippet of information to a central authority (FBI? vigilante forces?) who would then use the information to take these fools out.
or, i could see a rootkit maker integrate something like this and then use it to gain access to all the zombied machines of the people that employed the rootkit... that would likely be bad.
And there are plenty of socially adept men. A trend or general predisposition is now a law of physics. It is not an absurd statement to say that, in general, men are more technically inclined, and women more socially inclined. It is simply a result of our collective cultural values, environment, and upbringing.
I would put my money on you having had a profound influence in your life by someone - male or female - that either motivated you towards science in some fashion, or detered you from socially-intensive tasks. It may have been something as simple as your parents not giving you dolls but legos to play with, or having older brothers that you did a lot of things with when you were younger.
You really need not have replied with such a pedanticly-bent mindset.
I'd like to agree with you on this. There are fundamental gender differences. Most flaming PC people need to be struck with flaming death, as they're simply a bunch of illogical zealots.
Let me itinerate: yes, men tend to be better at engineering-like disciplines. Women, however, tend to be better at disciplines that require a large degree of socializing, networking (of the human kind), and reading peoples' reactions (empathy) - such as psychologists (or is that psychiatrists? I can never remember which is which).
Too many flaming PC folks reduce the problem to "men vs. women", wanting women to be 'treated as well as, if not better than, men' and end up making fools of themselves and reducing their cause to meaninglessness at the same time. By no means does the validity/quality of one career choice reduce the significance of another! The pay a doctor receives does not negate the significance of a nurse. Underlings get paid less. Get over it.
I hate feminazis. They're just rabid men-haters anyway.
Men that will leave them alone when asked... check!
Un-sexist men... check!
Yeah, that's a lot of motivation to spend 4+ years at college in a tech degree. Seriously though. Would you want to go to a sports school to get a science degree, or somewhere like MIT for sports? No, you wouldn't, as you would not fit in nor would you likely enjoy the social atmosphere.
I'm sure the social aspect has a large amount to do with it, but it's also likely that that technical fields simply don't appeal to most women. Women seem to be pre-disposed towards "social" tasks, and don't think in an engineer-like fashion anway (so psychologists say).
note the difference between something like this, where the product that requires the community to take action would yield a practical result, as the people working on the project would be the ones that decide how it would be used and thus would likely create a more appropriate end-product than the company, and a company that releases a half-assed shoddy driver for their device as "open source", expecting the community to make all the necessary improvements to get the device to work at all in the designed function of the device.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree.
It's currently too balanced. It's like a symetrically perfect face - it looks weird and awkward.
That's what CS is like now. Everything is so perfectly balanced, that there's no excitement to playing any longer. There's no challenge.
An update which costs money. Money which, up until this point, was not required to be exchanged in order to play.
This is like giving away an OS, or charging for updates (and thus requiring the updates to keep the product functional). This is the same thing as the threat of MS charging for product updates (that is, aside from their yearly product release cycle).
Sure, they might alow original CS to be played for a while until enough people transition over. How long will that last, though? Seems like the MS business model to me: get people hooked, and then charge for that 'addiction'.
Which was what, 2+ years ago?
It's not something I lose sleep over thinking about.
This is a mistake on Valve's part.
I played CS from beta 5 or so up through the 1.2 or so release. Then I got tired of it: the weapons were -too- balanced, and it lost a good deal of the fun and challenge. That, and things became rediculous, such as the accuracy of headshots and such. It just wasn't fun anymore.
That, and the plethora of people that played it obsessively (not I) were irritating, as they were quite good and made getting killed repeatedly terribly boring/frustrating. Add into that the maps getting replayed an obscene number of times (dust, anyone?), with few people playing the newer (and IMO often better) maps, things got really, really dull.
I'm sorry, but I wouldn't have paid money for Doom with updated graphics. I certainly won't pay for CS with updated graphics.
I bought half-life. With it, I got a dedicated community full of modders, bringing forth DoD, CS, and the like of fun, playable expansions in addition to the single (and multi) gameplay of just Half-Life. What is it, exactly, that I'd get by paying for CS Source that isn't already available in terms of gameplay? Nothing. CS currently looks pretty damn decent, what with the 'modern' textures and such, and runs quite well. An engine change does nothing for gameplay.
If I want pretty, I'll get a povray renderer.
Jeez. This sounds like somethign written in the 50's. It takes no account of current social trends. None! Nothing about various social problems of today (stuff from 10 - 40 years ago is still effecting us today), nothing about problems stemming from a worldwide culture. Think people are just going to forget their differences (Christians, Muslims, Athiests, etc.), give up their power (politicians, kings/world leaders, CEOs) and let the populace have this kind of freedom? No.
This really makes me want to continue to not read his books. If they're this unoriginal, shit. I might as well just read something written in the 50's about flying cars and razorless shaving.
Then we need to change the education system of the country. We're got too many stupid, unintelligent people. Schools teach people facts, but not how to reason, deduct, or solve problems.
That's the crux of the matter. If people were self aware (and most aren't, because they don't analyze themselves), most of the social ills.
If the frequencies (and wavelengths) used by a microwave are harmful (and have been shown to cause quite a few problems in both the people that are directly effected by them and the people that eat anything radiated by them), why not something a little lower in frequency such as AM radio? It's been found that the low-level vibrations of vehicles and other modern machinery can be harmful; I don't see why something in the MHz range couldn't be.
For that matter, what about wireless (ie, 802.11)? It uses microwaves - granted, at a much lower power than what's in the nuker. None of this stuff has been thoroughly tested. What happens in 20, 40, 60 years when 60% of the geek populace is dying of cancer and other terminal diseases?
Reference: I'd say half the people I know that use linux, either online or in real life, are big into pirating music, movies, and software (including games). I know quite a few people that have never paid for software. (All of them are 30).
It's not solely endemic to Linux folks, no. But the majority of Linux folks do seem to pirate software, as do the "upper geek bracket" of Windows users. Being as it's likely the case that an "upper geek bracket" Windows user is likely to at least have a token interest in Linux, and potentially cross over to use Linux due to its superiority in various arenas, it's hardly a stretch of the imagination to conclude that the majority of Linux users are software pirates. Hell, the majority of comments on Slashdot in this thread about TransGaming are basically saying, "copy protection bad!" without rhyme or reason that's defendable. Fairly good circumstantial evidence right there.
Not entirely. It's a bit of a stretch, but this -is- Windows 98 we're talking about here. Remember what a huge pain in the ass that was? "Please insert the Windows 98 CD". Then navigate to the proper location. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I recently had to reinstall an AXP 1800+ system that had 512M and a 7200rpm 40G disk. It was using Windows 2000. The only software that was being put on it was the device drivers (including those for a Matrox G450 dualhead), Symantec Act! (all Symantec software is shit, I've concluded), and Office 2000.
The whole affair took roughly 6 hours to complete, possibly a bit longer. Granted, I would make some changes, reboot the thing, and then walk away for a few moments, but I doubt that added much more than 30 minutes to the entire process. I ran into continual driver problems, despite having installed the system with the -exact- same software versions several months prior.
Weird shit would happen. The audio drivers would be installed properly, the speakers would be plugged in and turned on, and media player said audio was being played - but no sound came out of the speakers. Hunt for files, delete files, and reboot. Wash, rinse, repeat.
10.5 hours is completely understandable for a 6 year old Windows 98 machine from Gateway, of all places, known for shitty hardware world round. Reinstalling Windows is often a bitch.
Um. I'm not sure if your comment is off-topic, or if you simply don't understand what TG is doing.
They're "watermarking" stuff to to be able to essentially track legit users. IE, they will give support to people with legit watermarked tarballs. IE, service. Warezed copies will not receive services, thus not costing the company any direct money. You didn't honestly think the company was stupid enough to think they could 'prevent' piracy, did you? No, there will always be morally corrupt people such as yourself out there that have no compunction about not paying for what they get.
Hopefully this makes sense to you.
Oh, and one more thing - TG's software is making niche software. They are not making popular software. Your own argument is self-defeating.
I don't the idea here is to prevent the warez "producers". It's to prevent people who got a warezed copy from being able to a) claim they got a legit copy and b) getting official support for that copy.
No sane person would give out their legit copy.
The short ansewr is, Yes.
To lengthen the answer: because without revenue, the product will cease to exist.
I mean, seriously. Come off it, you wankers. "It breaks gentoo's ebuild". BFD. It's still (relatively) simple to work around. Are you that much of an automatron that you can't deal with this miniscule inconvenience?
This presents a fairly striking point about the majority of Linux/"free software" people. They're also largely proprietors of warez and other forms of copyright violation/property 'theft'. It's no small wonder why commercial products are slow to come to Linux - there's no market for them, as most would be pirated by the geeks and there'd be miniscule revenue.
Sure, there's a place and probably a market for large commercial apps, but I'm talking about smaller things (such as the transgaming stuff). There are quite a few people that truly ascribe to the "free as in freedom" philosophy on a whole. Most people just want a free ride.
Then why is the program so bloated? Take a look at your doom 3 binary (if you have one) - it's only something like 6 megs.
I don't mean to play the antagonist here, but no, biodiesel is not a good alternative. It currently takes over one gallon of fossil fuels to produce a gallon of biodiesel due to the production overhead involved in planting, harvesting, etc. the crops required to make biodiesel.
Sorry, I don't have any statistics on this, but google does. It's also been mentioned here quite a few times on slashdot.
But we'll never see the Doom 3 engine on the xbox.
You were on Mars. Mars has a weaker gravitational field than earth does.
What Doom 3 did, it did well. It never claimed to be anything other than what it was. That's a breathe of fresh air a person can respect in today's hype-filled market (oh, and I should note that I was saying Doom 3 would be hype months prior to its release, myself).
Dear god! Man, I've not laughed so hard in such a long time.
Between your post and the comments further up about Maxis leasing the engine to integrate with The Sims, this is the funniest shit I've seen on slashdot in ages.
I don't see it happening this late into the development process, personally. If indeed they're still working on it. The UT2k and various subsequent engine versions are quite capable engines. Were they not using the UT line of engine? Given the nature of Duke3d's gameplay, the graphic engine was not such a substantial stake in the quality of the game.
I mean, shit. BUILD sucked. What made Duke3d rock was the combination of weapons, attitude, and humor. And the hookers. They don't need Doom 3's engine for that, and I highly doubt anyone would ditch 3+ years of undesclosed-yet-highly-anticipated development for a new engine when it's likely that they're at least nearing a point where they could consider a feature lock. I'd hope.
Anyone think it's interesting that, after the vision, feel, and environment for the Doom universe is fully established with the release of Doom 3, that Universal Pictures finally decides to make a film out of it?
I can imagine this scenario... two or three film execs are in a room talking it up, maybe with a gaming PC on a desk, with one of the execs playing it on easy and getting his ass kicked. They start talking, and say,
exe1: hey, this is really scary.
exe2: yeah. I've not seen a horror film this terrifying since Chucky 3!
exe3: hey, that's it, we should finally make this game into a movie! They've already done all the hard work for us! Environment, feel, you name it. We won't even need to hire that many artists to design sets, costumes, or any of that other costly stuff!
how does one perform this conversion?
what we need now is a root kit which installs a remote shell on the machine of the person rooting, and then send off a snippet of information to a central authority (FBI? vigilante forces?) who would then use the information to take these fools out.
or, i could see a rootkit maker integrate something like this and then use it to gain access to all the zombied machines of the people that employed the rootkit... that would likely be bad.
And there are plenty of socially adept men. A trend or general predisposition is now a law of physics. It is not an absurd statement to say that, in general, men are more technically inclined, and women more socially inclined. It is simply a result of our collective cultural values, environment, and upbringing.
I would put my money on you having had a profound influence in your life by someone - male or female - that either motivated you towards science in some fashion, or detered you from socially-intensive tasks. It may have been something as simple as your parents not giving you dolls but legos to play with, or having older brothers that you did a lot of things with when you were younger.
You really need not have replied with such a pedanticly-bent mindset.
I'd like to agree with you on this. There are fundamental gender differences. Most flaming PC people need to be struck with flaming death, as they're simply a bunch of illogical zealots.
Let me itinerate: yes, men tend to be better at engineering-like disciplines. Women, however, tend to be better at disciplines that require a large degree of socializing, networking (of the human kind), and reading peoples' reactions (empathy) - such as psychologists (or is that psychiatrists? I can never remember which is which).
Too many flaming PC folks reduce the problem to "men vs. women", wanting women to be 'treated as well as, if not better than, men' and end up making fools of themselves and reducing their cause to meaninglessness at the same time. By no means does the validity/quality of one career choice reduce the significance of another! The pay a doctor receives does not negate the significance of a nurse. Underlings get paid less. Get over it.
I hate feminazis. They're just rabid men-haters anyway.
Other women... check!
Jobs... check!
Men with money... check!
Men with power... check!
Men with style... check!
Men that will leave them alone when asked... check!
Un-sexist men... check!
Yeah, that's a lot of motivation to spend 4+ years at college in a tech degree. Seriously though. Would you want to go to a sports school to get a science degree, or somewhere like MIT for sports? No, you wouldn't, as you would not fit in nor would you likely enjoy the social atmosphere.
I'm sure the social aspect has a large amount to do with it, but it's also likely that that technical fields simply don't appeal to most women. Women seem to be pre-disposed towards "social" tasks, and don't think in an engineer-like fashion anway (so psychologists say).
note the difference between something like this, where the product that requires the community to take action would yield a practical result, as the people working on the project would be the ones that decide how it would be used and thus would likely create a more appropriate end-product than the company, and a company that releases a half-assed shoddy driver for their device as "open source", expecting the community to make all the necessary improvements to get the device to work at all in the designed function of the device.