Yes, there are laws related to private real property where the sale of a copy takes place.
There is no such law on the books requiring any developer to put DRM on any of their products. Period.
Developers are free to agree or not agree to what a publisher wants.
Unless all publishers with access to Best Buy, Walmart*, and GameStop require DRM.
No, they are even free to agree or not if that were the case. There are marketplace realities that might make them want to pursue such an agreement -- but that does not free them their complicity in screwing the customer -- which is what the OP made it seem to be, that the developer wanted no DRM but the evil evil publisher made them do it, and they had no choice in the matter. Bollocks.
It might be explainable by a desire to "protect" the first 1-4 weeks of the game being on the market (I have no data on this, but if it's anything like movie theatres, the bulk of the sales are made in that time-period). Of course this is bollocks -- the cracked version is usually out the very same day on countless filesharing networks.
The skillset required to tweak a PC for gaming and really enjoy PC games overlaps significantly with the skillset required to play pirated games. Consequently, there are two ways to really turn a profit on PC games: make the game online-only, or release a mega-hit. And face it--if you release a mega-hit, people will accept the DRM. Grudgingly? Sure. But they'll accept it.
Different people might accept it, and therefore more people. I have not accepted it, and will not accept it. I haven't bought HL2, either -- even though I had the money in hand, ready to fork it over. After all that hype, I might even have bought Spore, DRMless.
Supreme Commander was a case where the developers were forced to ship games with Securerom, but they had no requirements placed upon them about removing it via a patch. Since that was the case, they abided by the letter of the law and then immediately stripped it off.
That's a nice PR spin you have there.
There is no such law.
The developers were not forced to ship the game with SecuROM. Developers are free to agree or not agree to what a publisher wants.
Yeah, but who is going to do the slapping? There won't be proper plaintiffs ready to do battle over youtube videos, unless someone somehow gets them together to form a class-action lawsuit. Unlikely.
Yes, and that is PRECISELY why the DMCA is a bad, bad idea, has always been a bad, bad idea, and will always be a bad, bad idea. Of course, it's a paid-for bad, bad idea, so the politicians are happy.
It's also somewhat interesting that the youtube venue provides no opportunity for the exercise of DMCA counter-notices,
Where did you read that ?
It does.
which are an important part of the law. Perhaps it's time to move controversial videos to a site that will have a bit more of a backbone and not allow the powerful to walk all over those who don't even get the rights they're entitled to by law. (I wonder if youtube has any criteria at all for evaluating the validity of these notices before it complies.)
That's the kicker of the DMCA. YouTube is not SUPPOSED to check anything beyond the formal specifications. They are not lawyers. They do not give legal advice. It is not their content. They should not be the ones determining whether something is ok or not -- and indeed they really can't.
On the other hand, unscrupulous web hosts (such as NetSol, for one) have and will continue to ignore their legal obligation to maintain service after proper counter-notice is given
They have no such obligation. They can simply terminate your account or take one-sided "administrative" measures. Since your NetSol account is not a right, you have none to it. You could argue breach of contract, but I'd advise you to read your contract again -- in all likelihood, it allows NetSol to terminate your account for any and all reasons, if they so choose.
- despite the fact that the law is very clear that doing so can open up statutory liability on their part.
Where ?
When a company perceives a power-imbalance they're likely to side with the one they perceive to be more powerful, regardless of what the law says or the truth of the claims involved.
Correct. Big bully with expensive lawyers > little guy with website. It is a different story if the little guy is a big website with scary lawyers, too. Slashdot, for instance.
I suppose the Internet needs a video site like Wikileaks serious about free speech enough not to cave into threats. Otherwise, not only are opposing voices stifled, but powerful interests like Scientology may be emboldened to go after and seek the removal of criticism in other forms of online media across the Internet.
Wake up.
Scientology has been trying to silence all their critics for decades, often by less than legal means.
We are their enemy. Therefore, any and all treatment of us is deemed acceptable.
In fact, if they are careful, all those users who had their material taken down could cause so much trouble for Scientology they may never send another DMCA again.
Say, have you heard of Scientology before ? It seems you have not.
1 mbit/s H.264 is laughable for that price, sorry. The quality should EXCEED that of "regular" DVDs for the simple reason that there are now better codecs than MPEG2, and the price is too high for even that at full bitrate.
At any rate, Amazon is entering the "arms race" with the pirates now. Those folks are moving to 720p, fast, usually at around 6-8mbps H.264 + DTS or equivalent at 1-2mbit/s. Amazon is entering the market with about the quality pirates had 7-8 years ago. Congrats.
In short, pirates are the reason that we all have to deal with DRM BS. Pirates are not Robin Hood - They're just people too cheap to pay for what they want and too weak to just go without it.
Sorry, but that's bullshit. The reason we have DRM is not a logical consequence of pirates. Hell, pirates are just about the only people who do NOT have to deal with DRM.
DRM has not hindered a single "pirate" in "pirating" their video. Ever. It won't ever, either. It may take one proto-pirate to figure out how to break the DRM (or rerecord it or obtain the stuff from a different source), but that's it -- one guy. In all likelihood, this one guy uses software made to be used so easily (point and click) that a baby could use it. DRM does absolutely NOTHING to curb that kind of "piracy" -- and it sure as HELL won't curb commercial piracy (where people actual have financial incentives to break stuff, fast).
Anybody who thinks DRM is just there because there are pirates and would not be there if there were no pirates has drunken the kool-aid. You've been had.
Wait, did you just berate the OP on social interaction ?
You, sir, win.
(As to the rest of the rubbish you said : Just because YOU seem to think that politics cannot, or should not, be a hobby and cannot, or should not, be successfull when it is a hobby does not mean that it cannot, or should not, be (successful as) a hobby. Hell, it's better than doing nothing at all -- even though you might not agree.
You don't see that update until the TTL expires. That's why there's a TTL. If you're planning to make a change, lower the TTL well in advance to allow the new TTL to propagate.
Impeccable logic.
What if the change is unplanned ? Say, an outage-prompted one ?
Without the benefit of a monopoly, Bell Labs can't really afford to spend money on fundamental research, which costs a lot of money, and results in very little private gain.
And in a perfect world, the government (or rather, us taxpayers) would fund fundamental research and make the results freely accessible to all.
In our world, IF the government funds fundamental research (instead of paying lip-service to that goal) and it does produce interesting results, the private sector will take those results, tweak one or two knobs, patent the entire thing, and lock out any and all innovation in that field by either private companies OR publicly funded research facilities. At least with Bell, they used to do their own work and not just ride on the coattails of public research.
You never paid a single penny, other than your time invested. You got it taken care of in less than three hours. That is not guaranteed to be the case.
Furthermore, you have absolutely no idea what other databases this information has since been incorporated to. Hard to "fix" something you don't know exists.
Oh great, the fucking comment system ate my post because one of my backspace strokes accidentally counted as "back".
Great commenters never use backspace or editing functions... Spelling mistakes are an art !:-P
Yeah, I dislike that particular keystroke-binding as well:->
So here's the short version: I understood what you were saying, but not what the huge problem with all of it really is.
Which is perfectly fine; I have different sensibilities when it comes to what I spend my money on or what happens on my computer, or how my data is used, or how a system/could/ be abused; the best shielding from such abuse is not trust in any one company, but rather to make sure that the abuse is simply impossible even given the worst possible intentions of that company. I know that this is a bit of a gloomy outlook, but at least I get pleasantly surprised more often than negatively;)
You need Internet access for BitTorrent. You might not need it for actually installing the game but with Steam installing IS downloading.
Really a technicality. You need access on the machine that the game is going to be played on, for Steam (and there is really not much of a difference between manually clicking setup.exe or steam doing the same stuff, automatically;)
If you want to play it offline you still can,
If, and only if, you anticipate being offline at --point in time X+1--. I dislike that, if only for the very simple reason that it is an unnecessary encumberment -- one that I PAY to have.
if you want to copy the Steam cache files you still can (to avoid the download) and you will need some minimal access to activate the game...
Yeah, at least that is possible. It's also the way lan parties have to operate (copying an entire steam install minus the keyfiles to an FTP, and hope that nobody makes a mistake and copies login info or keyfiles with it). This is trouble waiting to happen;)
which in this century shouldn't be much of a problem if one tries a little.
No denying that. Now let's look at the competition the system has, on the less-than-legal side. Oh, yes, no access required there. Now let's look at the competition the system has, from boxed versions of a game. Oh, yes, no access required there (well, not true anymore for many games -- games which I return and get a refund for:)
Hell, I could probably do it through my cellphone without any bump in my bill.
Or with IP over avian carrier, with a nice meal at the end too !
But should you HAVE to ?
Also there's a good deal of non-steam games which start to require activation despite not being published online. I know, you won't buy these either...but it's coming whether you like it or not.
I have noticed that. There is no way in hell I am going to buy those games and keep them. In most cases, I can return them at the point where that becomes apparent (there are rather strong customer protection laws in most parts of Europe). If enough people do this (or make their reasons for not buying a particular game known -- believably), vendors will take notice. It's too bad most of them don't seem to have the foresight to see the eventual conclusion of this dance (the music industry is going through the motions as well -- in 3-5 years you'll be able to buy DRM-less music everywhere, and maybe even losslessly compressed.)
It may be coming, but it's not coming to my computer. And if I really, really wanted to play the game, I could just crack it. If cracking the game I legally bought is a requirement to get around those draconian (and thus proven entirely INEFFECTIVE) anti-"piracy" schemes, the question presents itself :
Problem is...you are wrong and you are entrenched in your wrongness. No matter what anyone says you are going to spin it your own way like a Republican at the Deomcratic convention.
I could say the same about you, sorry to say.
The things download really fast from Steam...I generally get better performance from Steam than I do from Vuze.
I don't take issue with their downloads speeds. They are usually fast -- unless of course, you are at a LAN-party. I do take issue with its implementation and inflexibility -- which you gloss over here, nicely.
Do you take your computer off the Internet all the time? I don't...so why are you complaining? Because you are an idiot.
Nice, ad hominem. Good to know we departed from opinions about Steam to opinions about eachother.
Also, don't assume that just because/you/ have an always-on connection, everybody does. Large parts of the worlds still pay by the hour, many, many people have laptops they use to play games -- even when, or actually especially when, there is no WiFi near, etc, and, of course, the aforementioned case where your ISP has trouble.
There are good reasons to be able to want to use your game unencumbered in those cases. The idiocy, I'm afraid, is on your end.
Have you ever been banned? No? Then how do you know what they do?
Ah, so I have to buy into the service, use it, and be banned to have an opinion on a system where the procedures are known ? Where you/know/ that they can easily disable your account and all access to it from their end for any infraction they deem to be one, without a refund ? If you can show me that this is not the case, great. Forgive me if I don't blindly trust Valve to do the right thing, always.
And yes, I've been banned from an online game before. Unjustly, I might add -- and the ban did get reversed after a few weeks of haggling with customer "support" service.
The guy says usually and you jump on him for using that qualifier. What games are more expensive?
I didn't mean to jump at him, just at the notion that this is something which should be mentioned as special or a selling point.
See, if they all had steam they all wouldn't have to download the update from your stupid proxy, would they? They would all have it auto-downloaded. But oh no, you can't use your hack to pwn n00bs from version 1.3.4.6. Boohoo.
Again, you are coming off as the idiot here. I have no desire to cheat, in fact I did qualify my statement to not apply to online games. I would ASSUME that online servers wouldn't even let me connect with an old version, anyway. I don't care about cheating (in a multiplayer game, that's about as low as you can go). I do care about updates which wreck playability on my machine -- which you, also, HAVE heard of. Don't deny it. There are updates that make games unplayable on many setups. There are updates that fundamentally change gameplay. You should not/have/ to install those if you did not want to, in single-player games (or even local multiplayer).
Furthermore, my proxy-comment speaks to the flexibility of the system, and the foresight Valve has shown w.r.t. one of their core demographics -- players at LAN parties.
I guess I can't even bother to read your whole post.
Write "TLDR" then and be done with it. It would show your character even more clearly than attacking the person making the argument instead of attacking the argument does.
You are a sad, bitter little person who just doesn't get it.
Funny, that's pretty much the same thing I thought about you. Of course I wasn't sad, bitter, or little enough to say that.
Steam is a great platform. Everything has flaws and needs improving, but I would much rather companies come
Lots of text, but seriously: The only thing I can understand is the part about the LAN party.
Whether that is because you didn't want to understand it or because I was unclear, I don't know.
"Steam lets you buy a game from anyhwere, anytime"
Reasonably true. Anywhere with an Internet connection, anyway.
So you don't need an Internet connection for BitTorrent?
Naturally, you do. Of course, storebought items do not need this (but a storebought STEAM-Game such as Half Life 2 DOES require an internet connection to even install), and I do not need an internet connection on the machine I actually/install/ the game on when I get the game via a.torrent or other such means.
So you don't need to download it with BitTorrent? Downloading from other users in P2P is faster than the Steam servers? I dobut it as I easily max out my 16MBit/s connection everytime I download something off of Steam.
You missed the parts where I described, at length, what's "crappy" about their system. Oh, and yes, I have maxed my connection using BitTorrent -- but also other methods commonly used by pirates (such as direct downloads from sites like RapidShare -- note that I have no idea how fast the HL2 torrent is, I never did get that, and have no intention to;)
Ostensibly, yes, BitTorrent could be way faster than Steam on/any/ connection -- that is if you are fetching the data for two computers behind the same adsl2+-connection, for instance. Local peer discovery works.:>
"Steam lets you play your games on any computer at any time."
Bullshit. Big whonking bullshit. Steam lets you play your games on any computer at any time -- IF you have an internet connection active at the moment or "logged in" and selected that you will want to play "offline" in a bit. On single player games. SINGLE PLAYER GAMES. Not online games. I'm not prepared to "log on" just to play a single player game -- or indeed the single player campaign, for various reasons -- the chief one amongst which is that I am not connected to the net everywhere I go, and I see no reason WHATSOEVER to let Valve know when I consume my gaming fix. They have no reason to know.
If you're not connected everywhere you go all you have to do is set up offline mode once. Yes, you have to be connected to the Internet to do that then again you have to be connected to the Internet to even get your game. It's an online distribution system after all.
A hurdle, I might say, pirated versions do not have. If I want to spontaneously play a singleplayer round of HL2 because my ISP is having trouble right now and I just got disconnected while playing, say, Counterstrike online, I can't do that. I can't just spontaneously go into "offline mode" when I'm offline. I have to go online to go into offline mode. That is a crock of shit. I'm reasonably sure you'll have to go into online mode again to play a bout of multiplayer action or get updates, and then you have to "remember" to go into offline mode.
There is no good reason for it. None at all. Don't give me any of that "But pirates could use it !"-crap -- it takes one "pirate" to crack your game and distribute it all others. That one pirate is not gonna be hindered by this measure. Only your regular, paying customers have to deal with it. Great plan.
No, all that their cheat detection (VAC) will do is ban you from any VAC secured servers. Which granted is the big bunch of them out there, but what use is an omnipresent cheat detection if there is no way to enforce it? Also your single player game experience is completely untouched.
Yes, I threw two different kind of bans into one pot there, you are right, maybe I should have been more clear.
Yes, my solution is "free". But that is not my point. I'm happy to pay for games I play -- in fact, I do. I have not touched Half Life 2 with a ten foot pole, however. I'm sure it's a nice game, but no, I will not bend over and get steamed for it.
"Steam lets you buy a game from anyhwere, anytime"
Reasonably true. Anywhere with an Internet connection, anyway.
"Purchases are instant."
Reasonably true. Once I download it using their extremely crappy download system. More on that in a second.
"Games are installed automatically just by downloading."
Yupp. Not a hard thing to do either. Steam does more, though.
"Steam lets you play your games on any computer at any time."
Bullshit. Big whonking bullshit. Steam lets you play your games on any computer at any time -- IF you have an internet connection active at the moment or "logged in" and selected that you will want to play "offline" in a bit. On single player games. SINGLE PLAYER GAMES. Not online games. I'm not prepared to "log on" just to play a single player game -- or indeed the single player campaign, for various reasons -- the chief one amongst which is that I am not connected to the net everywhere I go, and I see no reason WHATSOEVER to let Valve know when I consume my gaming fix. They have no reason to know.
Furthermore, if your account gets suspended for any reason/IN ANY GAME/, all the games you bought and paid for stop working. Fuck that. Seriously, fuck it. Even/IF/ you could assume that Valve does not make mistakes and that all bans and suspensions are just (and no, you can't assume that -- they're not gods, and they certainly don't care enough to make sure that every ban is reasonable), even then there is absolutely no reason to disable access to any single player game you legally bought. No way am I gonna sign up for something where you "buy" games, but not really -- your "bought" games can be revoked at any time for any reason, and you have no recourse. Fuck it, fuck them, and fuck people like them.
"Steam is usually cheaper than buying in a store."
Usually ? It damn well better be cheaper every time. The costs are a lot lower -- no manual printed, no DVD pressed, no box made, no shipping costs paid, no retail markup from going through that sales chain.
"Steam keeps your games up-to-date automatically."
Big whoop. This is not hard to do even without the "Steam" framework. And maybe, just maybe, I don't WANT to have the latest version, all the time. Not all updates are good updates. Some change gameplay to something you do not like at all, some introduce bugs that affect you adversely, etc. I very much like the control offered by being able to select whether or not I want to update a game.
You agree it's not perfect. Great. So do I. You give away control over some things. Yepp. Well, all things, really. Without recourse. No way in hell am I gonna buy into that.
Now let's see why I don't like Steam.
a.) Technical incompetence. I have not kept up to date with their system, since I quite honestly could care less after the burns they already delivered -- but if your platform cannot handle proxy servers, or indeed offer proxy servers, your platform sucks. If I organize a lan party for 2000 people, I would really want to offer a proxy for game updates and game data. Encrypted, sure, but proxied. I don't want 2000 people downloading the 200mb update for game X that just got released a day before the party starts through one measly 10mbit/s connection (or even 50mbit/s). I want them to hit the local proxy servers for that data. (I also don't want them to fucking PRE-load something that is not released yet, such as Half Life 2 -- 2 gigs of data. Every Counter Strike player starts downloading that. Riiiiiight.) Now, you would think that they might have thought about scenarios like that, since their games are WILDLY popular at lan parties (as well as online). But no. You call them, you w
Ruby at 63x longer (or 30x slower than Java) should shut up all the Java haters who witter on about Ruby (or PHP at 12 slower than Java) for web development.
nonsense:) if you want machine performance, go with C/C++. If you don't care about how fast your app runs becuase you're focussed on programmer productivity go with Ruby or Python. Java/C# therefore is a worse-in-every-case option:)
You drank the cool-aid, eh ?
Not only do you not have to care about how fast your program runs, you also have to not care about its stability when using Ruby. You'll spend a lot of time trying to fix and optimize the unoptimizable.
At the risk of being unpopular, I'm going to say that in my opinion sharing ripped MP3s is morally the equivalent of jaywalking, wheras sharing games is morally closer to shoplifting.
For one thing, I think more work goes into game-making than a Brittney Spears song, and it's done by people I respect rather than people I think are the scum of the earth. For another, it seems to me that the higher costs of making a game makes game piracy closer to real theft. I know recording studio fees are quite expensive, and indie game makers can often make a game without so much as a bank loan, but there's a reason for the generally higher price of games than CDs.
Oh come on, at least compare music from musicians you respect and games from studios you respect. No need to rap on the default example of "bad music" any more. Furthermore, how do YOU know how much time and effort it takes a musician to create their work ? I'm pretty sure many of them are hard-working people, working at least as hard as game-designers. The only difference with the bigger games is that there are more people working on them, total. If pirating a game is morally equivalent to shoplifting a TV, pirating music is probably morally equivalent to shoplifting a towel. It's still shoplifting, and no, it's not, in either case.
There are hardworking people in the music industry sure, just like there are scum in the gaming industry, and I should also say I've worked in neither industry.
All the same, I think game piraters have less of a moral leg to stand on than music pirates. A $220,000 fine for 24 songs or games is ridiculous, but moreso for music.
Riiiight. Because the game retails for $49.99, while the music retails for $19.99 ? That's reality. Neither warrant $220,000.00 fines, ever. The moral leg and the arguments from the "sharers" are pretty much EXACTLY the same. "I'll buy it if I like it." "If I share it, it gets more exposure !" "It's too expensive and EA is treating their employees like slaves, anyway !", etc.
I also would say that in both cases, nothing is actually stolen in the same sense that you would steal a car, and for the RIAA or ESA to sue individuals into bankrupcy with either is/would be dickish. The RIAA and ESA if they follow suit are the real bad guys here.
It's not just dickish, it's also short-sighted, immoral, and counteproductive. But I guess some lessons just have to be learned the hard way.
My ex used to get mad because I absolutely refused to give her any of my passwords besides my WPA password.
Those people annoy. A lot.
She didn't understand security at all. Later I found out she had been reading her boss' private email
That kind of thing lands people in actual jail with actual bars.
I"m glad I don't trust anyone.
I have people I'd trust with every bit of credentials I have, yet I don't give it up to them either. There is simply no need. If it arises, I can reconsider -- or SIMPLY give them their own login.
Always log out of public computers, never allow them to store private information. It's a good idea to clear private data or reset the browser on public computers as well.
I don't consider public computers safe, at all. You have no idea what their security policies are, you have no idea who has been tampering with it, you have no idea whether there is a physical keylogger attached somewhere, you have no idea whether the box has a rootkit, etc. It's fine for browsing, but only if you don't care that anybody finds out what you are browsing for.
If you live with other people or have guest over you should password protect your computer.
100% agreed. Especially on occasions like parties. If your computer provides the entertainment (music), make sure you have it in your sight always -- or make a user account specifically for that, with all other access blocked. Yes, your friends will snoop on you, think it's "funny" to read your mail, mail something from your mail, put something on your website, chat on IRC under your name, snoop around in your cache, look for porn on your computer, etc. I don't know why that is, but even friends I'd call upstanding, usually responsible people can sometimes give in to this.
The flipside is that I know user credentials for, probably, dozens of people -- or knew them at some point. People do give up their login info, their "standard" password, etc. easily if you help them fix their computer, fix their problem, or show them stuff. I make a point of forgetting them (and never using them outside that incident), but in some cases that's just not possible (you probably know "that guy" who uses a simple password for everything from his user account password to his homebanking PIN...). I suspect many people in support positions are in the same position. That's a lot of trust and responsibility which is easily (and often untracably) abused.
Then think of system administrators -- do you know who has root on all the mailservers your mail may be passing through ? System- and Network-administrators can untracably read pretty much everything that is going on on their network. Often, people do not even realize that this is the case. I suspec this is why end-to-end cryptography is just not a hot topic with many, many people -- they simply do not realize who all has access to their (private) stuff. And if they do, they might still use the same password for their GPG passphrase as their POP3 account as their various forum passwords. Whoops.
This is honestly the first time I've ever heard these things mentioned when it comes to organizing LAN parties.
Any sizable party that has not thought about these issues is foolish. Very foolish.
The purely logical side of me wants to say, "Hey, yeah... nice advance planning. I never even considered the idea of maybe looking at insurance for such an event."
Any party open to the public really should have it. Yes, 99% of them go fine without a hitch. Do you really want to play the numbers and land on that 1% where everything (literally) crashes and burns ?
But the practical side of me? It thinks "WTF is wrong with people today?!?" I've been to a number of LAN parties hosted at people's homes, and even hosted a couple myself. Everyone I've ever met at them was MORE courteous and considerate than average. The closest thing to a "theft" I ever saw was a situation where someone accidentally picked up and packed up another person's Ethernet cable.
Home parties are usually a bit different. You know the people. You trust the people.
I think that got sorted out when another individual offered to just give the guy one of his to keep, for free, since he had plenty of them at home anyway.
Ethernet cables will go missing. Sometimes you discover an extra cable in your bags once you get home. It isn't malicious, usually. There are only so many colors of cable.
The way I see things, sure... ANY time you have some sort of party or get-together involving multiple people, you have a "non zero" risk of something bad happening. Maybe someone will fall down a flight of stairs and break an arm? Maybe they'll plug a defective network card or cable into your gigabit switch and fry the thing? But like the parent post says, you can't even get out of bed in the morning and do anything useful if you're scared of everything.
Naturally. But let's say that somebody DOES fall down the stairs at your party open to the public. Let's say he's been courteous and nice all party long. Do you really want to bet on him not wanting his medical bills paid by you ? Do you really think his insurance might not get that idea ? Is it your switch or did you rent it ? If you rented it, are you willing to pay the major bucks to buy a new one ? What if it's some more expensive equipment ? What if you fry the 5 brand-sparkling-new Alienware top-of-the-line computers by making a cabling-mistake ? (This stuff DOES happen at lan parties, especially if you don't have a certified electrician on hand that'll install your power distribution. Oh, and I hope your power distribution does not consist of an outlet and "letting people do their own thing" -- I have seen a party at a school in which they had 20+ people in one room, daisychaining the power off of one outlet for all of their equipment. One guy in there even had a water heater on it somewhere. Thankfully all that happened was that the cable from the outlet to the first multisocket melted. Nothing got fried, no fire broke out. That could have been a LOT worse. Are you really prepared to take that chance, a chance that could, quite possibly, ruin you for the next dozen years or so, for a LAN party ? I'm not.)
Ultimately, I'd feel FAR safer around a bunch of avid computer gamers willing to drag their expensive computer gear over to my house than the random mix of individuals drinking at the corner bar. (You have to remember, they're all taking a certain amount of risk coming to some "stranger's house" with their equipment in tow, too. The host isn't the only one putting himself out there.)
Certainly. But if their equipment dies a death that you are ostensibly to blame for, they'll want to get it rectified. Or their parents. Or their insurance. If it's their limb that breaks, they want to get it treated. If it's their stuff that gets stolen, they may want to look for a scapegoat.
This is a non-issue if these are your friends and you trust eachother. Otherwise, you will run into assholes every now and then.
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There is no such law.
Yes, there are laws related to private real property where the sale of a copy takes place.
There is no such law on the books requiring any developer to put DRM on any of their products. Period.
Developers are free to agree or not agree to what a publisher wants.
Unless all publishers with access to Best Buy, Walmart*, and GameStop require DRM.
No, they are even free to agree or not if that were the case. There are marketplace realities that might make them want to pursue such an agreement -- but that does not free them their complicity in screwing the customer -- which is what the OP made it seem to be, that the developer wanted no DRM but the evil evil publisher made them do it, and they had no choice in the matter. Bollocks.
It might be explainable by a desire to "protect" the first 1-4 weeks of the game being on the market (I have no data on this, but if it's anything like movie theatres, the bulk of the sales are made in that time-period). Of course this is bollocks -- the cracked version is usually out the very same day on countless filesharing networks.
The skillset required to tweak a PC for gaming and really enjoy PC games overlaps significantly with the skillset required to play pirated games. Consequently, there are two ways to really turn a profit on PC games: make the game online-only, or release a mega-hit. And face it--if you release a mega-hit, people will accept the DRM. Grudgingly? Sure. But they'll accept it.
Different people might accept it, and therefore more people. I have not accepted it, and will not accept it. I haven't bought HL2, either -- even though I had the money in hand, ready to fork it over. After all that hype, I might even have bought Spore, DRMless.
Supreme Commander was a case where the developers were forced to ship games with Securerom, but they had no requirements placed upon them about removing it via a patch. Since that was the case, they abided by the letter of the law and then immediately stripped it off.
That's a nice PR spin you have there.
There is no such law.
The developers were not forced to ship the game with SecuROM. Developers are free to agree or not agree to what a publisher wants.
Yeah, but who is going to do the slapping? There won't be proper plaintiffs ready to do battle over youtube videos, unless someone somehow gets them together to form a class-action lawsuit. Unlikely.
Yes, and that is PRECISELY why the DMCA is a bad, bad idea, has always been a bad, bad idea, and will always be a bad, bad idea. Of course, it's a paid-for bad, bad idea, so the politicians are happy.
It's also somewhat interesting that the youtube venue provides no opportunity for the exercise of DMCA counter-notices,
Where did you read that ?
It does.
which are an important part of the law. Perhaps it's time to move controversial videos to a site that will have a bit more of a backbone and not allow the powerful to walk all over those who don't even get the rights they're entitled to by law. (I wonder if youtube has any criteria at all for evaluating the validity of these notices before it complies.)
That's the kicker of the DMCA. YouTube is not SUPPOSED to check anything beyond the formal specifications. They are not lawyers. They do not give legal advice. It is not their content. They should not be the ones determining whether something is ok or not -- and indeed they really can't.
On the other hand, unscrupulous web hosts (such as NetSol, for one) have and will continue to ignore their legal obligation to maintain service after proper counter-notice is given
They have no such obligation. They can simply terminate your account or take one-sided "administrative" measures. Since your NetSol account is not a right, you have none to it. You could argue breach of contract, but I'd advise you to read your contract again -- in all likelihood, it allows NetSol to terminate your account for any and all reasons, if they so choose.
- despite the fact that the law is very clear that doing so can open up statutory liability on their part.
Where ?
When a company perceives a power-imbalance they're likely to side with the one they perceive to be more powerful, regardless of what the law says or the truth of the claims involved.
Correct. Big bully with expensive lawyers > little guy with website. It is a different story if the little guy is a big website with scary lawyers, too. Slashdot, for instance.
I suppose the Internet needs a video site like Wikileaks serious about free speech enough not to cave into threats. Otherwise, not only are opposing voices stifled, but powerful interests like Scientology may be emboldened to go after and seek the removal of criticism in other forms of online media across the Internet.
Wake up.
Scientology has been trying to silence all their critics for decades, often by less than legal means.
We are their enemy. Therefore, any and all treatment of us is deemed acceptable.
They'll just throw their operatives under the bus and replace them with new ones. The buck will eventually stop with some low level associate.
In fact, if they are careful, all those users who had their material taken down could cause so much trouble for Scientology they may never send another DMCA again.
Say, have you heard of Scientology before ? It seems you have not.
1 mbit/s H.264 is laughable for that price, sorry. The quality should EXCEED that of "regular" DVDs for the simple reason that there are now better codecs than MPEG2, and the price is too high for even that at full bitrate.
At any rate, Amazon is entering the "arms race" with the pirates now. Those folks are moving to 720p, fast, usually at around 6-8mbps H.264 + DTS or equivalent at 1-2mbit/s. Amazon is entering the market with about the quality pirates had 7-8 years ago. Congrats.
In short, pirates are the reason that we all have to deal with DRM BS. Pirates are not Robin Hood - They're just people too cheap to pay for what they want and too weak to just go without it.
Sorry, but that's bullshit. The reason we have DRM is not a logical consequence of pirates. Hell, pirates are just about the only people who do NOT have to deal with DRM.
DRM has not hindered a single "pirate" in "pirating" their video. Ever. It won't ever, either. It may take one proto-pirate to figure out how to break the DRM (or rerecord it or obtain the stuff from a different source), but that's it -- one guy. In all likelihood, this one guy uses software made to be used so easily (point and click) that a baby could use it. DRM does absolutely NOTHING to curb that kind of "piracy" -- and it sure as HELL won't curb commercial piracy (where people actual have financial incentives to break stuff, fast).
Anybody who thinks DRM is just there because there are pirates and would not be there if there were no pirates has drunken the kool-aid. You've been had.
You probably signed that away with ComCast, and ComCast will claim they are not responsible to make sure, say, Vonage works as intended.
So what you are saying is that we can use evil for good, even though it is, corewise and all, evil ?
Isn't that how the devil suckers us straight folk into darkness ? Hell, next thing you know I'll be playing devil's advoc.... CRAP
Wait, did you just berate the OP on social interaction ?
You, sir, win.
(As to the rest of the rubbish you said : Just because YOU seem to think that politics cannot, or should not, be a hobby and cannot, or should not, be successfull when it is a hobby does not mean that it cannot, or should not, be (successful as) a hobby. Hell, it's better than doing nothing at all -- even though you might not agree.
You don't see that update until the TTL expires. That's why there's a TTL. If you're planning to make a change, lower the TTL well in advance to allow the new TTL to propagate.
Impeccable logic.
What if the change is unplanned ? Say, an outage-prompted one ?
Without the benefit of a monopoly, Bell Labs can't really afford to spend money on fundamental research, which costs a lot of money, and results in very little private gain.
And in a perfect world, the government (or rather, us taxpayers) would fund fundamental research and make the results freely accessible to all.
In our world, IF the government funds fundamental research (instead of paying lip-service to that goal) and it does produce interesting results, the private sector will take those results, tweak one or two knobs, patent the entire thing, and lock out any and all innovation in that field by either private companies OR publicly funded research facilities.
At least with Bell, they used to do their own work and not just ride on the coattails of public research.
You never paid a single penny, other than your time invested. You got it taken care of in less than three hours. That is not guaranteed to be the case.
Furthermore, you have absolutely no idea what other databases this information has since been incorporated to. Hard to "fix" something you don't know exists.
Oh great, the fucking comment system ate my post because one of my backspace strokes accidentally counted as "back".
Great commenters never use backspace or editing functions ... Spelling mistakes are an art ! :-P
Yeah, I dislike that particular keystroke-binding as well :->
So here's the short version: I understood what you were saying, but not what the huge problem with all of it really is.
Which is perfectly fine; I have different sensibilities when it comes to what I spend my money on or what happens on my computer, or how my data is used, or how a system /could/ be abused; the best shielding from such abuse is not trust in any one company, but rather to make sure that the abuse is simply impossible even given the worst possible intentions of that company. ;)
I know that this is a bit of a gloomy outlook, but at least I get pleasantly surprised more often than negatively
You need Internet access for BitTorrent. You might not need it for actually installing the game but with Steam installing IS downloading.
Really a technicality. You need access on the machine that the game is going to be played on, for Steam (and there is really not much of a difference between manually clicking setup.exe or steam doing the same stuff, automatically ;)
If you want to play it offline you still can,
If, and only if, you anticipate being offline at --point in time X+1--. I dislike that, if only for the very simple reason that it is an unnecessary encumberment -- one that I PAY to have.
if you want to copy the Steam cache files you still can (to avoid the download) and you will need some
minimal access to activate the game...
Yeah, at least that is possible. It's also the way lan parties have to operate (copying an entire steam install minus the keyfiles to an FTP, and hope that nobody makes a mistake and copies login info or keyfiles with it). This is trouble waiting to happen ;)
which in this century shouldn't be much of a problem if one tries a little.
No denying that. Now let's look at the competition the system has, on the less-than-legal side. Oh, yes, no access required there. Now let's look at the competition the system has, from boxed versions of a game. Oh, yes, no access required there (well, not true anymore for many games -- games which I return and get a refund for :)
Hell, I could probably do it through my cellphone without any bump in my bill.
Or with IP over avian carrier, with a nice meal at the end too !
But should you HAVE to ?
Also there's a good deal of non-steam games which start to require activation despite not being published online. I know, you won't buy these either...but it's coming whether you like it or not.
I have noticed that. There is no way in hell I am going to buy those games and keep them. In most cases, I can return them at the point where that becomes apparent (there are rather strong customer protection laws in most parts of Europe). If enough people do this (or make their reasons for not buying a particular game known -- believably), vendors will take notice. It's too bad most of them don't seem to have the foresight to see the eventual conclusion of this dance (the music industry is going through the motions as well -- in 3-5 years you'll be able to buy DRM-less music everywhere, and maybe even losslessly compressed.)
It may be coming, but it's not coming to my computer. And if I really, really wanted to play the game, I could just crack it. If cracking the game I legally bought is a requirement to get around those draconian (and thus proven entirely INEFFECTIVE) anti-"piracy" schemes, the question presents itself :
Problem is...you are wrong and you are entrenched in your wrongness. No matter what anyone says you are going to spin it your own way like a Republican at the Deomcratic convention.
I could say the same about you, sorry to say.
The things download really fast from Steam...I generally get better performance from Steam than I do from Vuze.
I don't take issue with their downloads speeds. They are usually fast -- unless of course, you are at a LAN-party. I do take issue with its implementation and inflexibility -- which you gloss over here, nicely.
Do you take your computer off the Internet all the time? I don't...so why are you complaining? Because you are an idiot.
Nice, ad hominem. Good to know we departed from opinions about Steam to opinions about eachother.
Also, don't assume that just because /you/ have an always-on connection, everybody does. Large parts of the worlds still pay by the hour, many, many people have laptops they use to play games -- even when, or actually especially when, there is no WiFi near, etc, and, of course, the aforementioned case where your ISP has trouble.
There are good reasons to be able to want to use your game unencumbered in those cases. The idiocy, I'm afraid, is on your end.
Have you ever been banned? No? Then how do you know what they do?
Ah, so I have to buy into the service, use it, and be banned to have an opinion on a system where the procedures are known ? Where you /know/ that they can easily disable your account and all access to it from their end for any infraction they deem to be one, without a refund ? If you can show me that this is not the case, great. Forgive me if I don't blindly trust Valve to do the right thing, always.
And yes, I've been banned from an online game before. Unjustly, I might add -- and the ban did get reversed after a few weeks of haggling with customer "support" service.
The guy says usually and you jump on him for using that qualifier. What games are more expensive?
I didn't mean to jump at him, just at the notion that this is something which should be mentioned as special or a selling point.
See, if they all had steam they all wouldn't have to download the update from your stupid proxy, would they? They would all have it auto-downloaded. But oh no, you can't use your hack to pwn n00bs from version 1.3.4.6. Boohoo.
Again, you are coming off as the idiot here. I have no desire to cheat, in fact I did qualify my statement to not apply to online games. I would ASSUME that online servers wouldn't even let me connect with an old version, anyway. I don't care about cheating (in a multiplayer game, that's about as low as you can go). I do care about updates which wreck playability on my machine -- which you, also, HAVE heard of. Don't deny it. There are updates that make games unplayable on many setups. There are updates that fundamentally change gameplay. You should not /have/ to install those if you did not want to, in single-player games (or even local multiplayer).
Furthermore, my proxy-comment speaks to the flexibility of the system, and the foresight Valve has shown w.r.t. one of their core demographics -- players at LAN parties.
I guess I can't even bother to read your whole post.
Write "TLDR" then and be done with it. It would show your character even more clearly than attacking the person making the argument instead of attacking the argument does.
You are a sad, bitter little person who just doesn't get it.
Funny, that's pretty much the same thing I thought about you. Of course I wasn't sad, bitter, or little enough to say that.
Steam is a great platform. Everything has flaws and needs improving, but I would much rather companies come
Hi,
Lots of text, but seriously: The only thing I can understand is the part about the LAN party.
Whether that is because you didn't want to understand it or because I was unclear, I don't know.
"Steam lets you buy a game from anyhwere, anytime"
Reasonably true. Anywhere with an Internet connection, anyway.
So you don't need an Internet connection for BitTorrent?
Naturally, you do. Of course, storebought items do not need this (but a storebought STEAM-Game such as Half Life 2 DOES require an internet connection to even install), and I do not need an internet connection on the machine I actually /install/ the game on when I get the game via a .torrent or other such means.
So you don't need to download it with BitTorrent? Downloading from other users in P2P is faster than the Steam servers? I dobut it as I easily max out my 16MBit/s connection everytime I download something off of Steam.
You missed the parts where I described, at length, what's "crappy" about their system. Oh, and yes, I have maxed my connection using BitTorrent -- but also other methods commonly used by pirates (such as direct downloads from sites like RapidShare -- note that I have no idea how fast the HL2 torrent is, I never did get that, and have no intention to ;)
Ostensibly, yes, BitTorrent could be way faster than Steam on /any/ connection -- that is if you are fetching the data for two computers behind the same adsl2+-connection, for instance. Local peer discovery works. :>
"Steam lets you play your games on any computer at any time."
Bullshit. Big whonking bullshit. Steam lets you play your games on any computer at any time -- IF you have an internet connection active at the moment or "logged in" and selected that you will want to play "offline" in a bit. On single player games. SINGLE PLAYER GAMES. Not online games.
I'm not prepared to "log on" just to play a single player game -- or indeed the single player campaign, for various reasons -- the chief one amongst which is that I am not connected to the net everywhere I go, and I see no reason WHATSOEVER to let Valve know when I consume my gaming fix. They have no reason to know.
If you're not connected everywhere you go all you have to do is set up offline mode once. Yes, you have to be connected to the Internet to do that then again you have to be connected to the Internet to even get your game. It's an online distribution system after all.
A hurdle, I might say, pirated versions do not have. If I want to spontaneously play a singleplayer round of HL2 because my ISP is having trouble right now and I just got disconnected while playing, say, Counterstrike online, I can't do that. I can't just spontaneously go into "offline mode" when I'm offline. I have to go online to go into offline mode. That is a crock of shit. I'm reasonably sure you'll have to go into online mode again to play a bout of multiplayer action or get updates, and then you have to "remember" to go into offline mode.
There is no good reason for it. None at all. Don't give me any of that "But pirates could use it !"-crap -- it takes one "pirate" to crack your game and distribute it all others. That one pirate is not gonna be hindered by this measure. Only your regular, paying customers have to deal with it. Great plan.
No, all that their cheat detection (VAC) will do is ban you from any VAC secured servers. Which granted is the big bunch of them out there, but what use is an omnipresent cheat detection if there is no way to enforce it? Also your single player game experience is completely untouched.
Yes, I threw two different kind of bans into one pot there, you are right, maybe I should have been more clear.
Oh, and yes, if your account gets
So you drank the cool-aid, eh ?
Yes, my solution is "free". But that is not my point. I'm happy to pay for games I play -- in fact, I do. I have not touched Half Life 2 with a ten foot pole, however. I'm sure it's a nice game, but no, I will not bend over and get steamed for it.
"Steam lets you buy a game from anyhwere, anytime"
Reasonably true. Anywhere with an Internet connection, anyway.
"Purchases are instant."
Reasonably true. Once I download it using their extremely crappy download system. More on that in a second.
"Games are installed automatically just by downloading."
Yupp. Not a hard thing to do either. Steam does more, though.
"Steam lets you play your games on any computer at any time."
Bullshit. Big whonking bullshit. Steam lets you play your games on any computer at any time -- IF you have an internet connection active at the moment or "logged in" and selected that you will want to play "offline" in a bit. On single player games. SINGLE PLAYER GAMES. Not online games.
I'm not prepared to "log on" just to play a single player game -- or indeed the single player campaign, for various reasons -- the chief one amongst which is that I am not connected to the net everywhere I go, and I see no reason WHATSOEVER to let Valve know when I consume my gaming fix. They have no reason to know.
Furthermore, if your account gets suspended for any reason /IN ANY GAME/, all the games you bought and paid for stop working. Fuck that. Seriously, fuck it. Even /IF/ you could assume that Valve does not make mistakes and that all bans and suspensions are just (and no, you can't assume that -- they're not gods, and they certainly don't care enough to make sure that every ban is reasonable), even then there is absolutely no reason to disable access to any single player game you legally bought. No way am I gonna sign up for something where you "buy" games, but not really -- your "bought" games can be revoked at any time for any reason, and you have no recourse. Fuck it, fuck them, and fuck people like them.
"Steam is usually cheaper than buying in a store."
Usually ? It damn well better be cheaper every time. The costs are a lot lower -- no manual printed, no DVD pressed, no box made, no shipping costs paid, no retail markup from going through that sales chain.
"Steam keeps your games up-to-date automatically."
Big whoop. This is not hard to do even without the "Steam" framework. And maybe, just maybe, I don't WANT to have the latest version, all the time. Not all updates are good updates. Some change gameplay to something you do not like at all, some introduce bugs that affect you adversely, etc.
I very much like the control offered by being able to select whether or not I want to update a game.
You agree it's not perfect. Great. So do I. You give away control over some things. Yepp. Well, all things, really. Without recourse. No way in hell am I gonna buy into that.
Now let's see why I don't like Steam.
a.) Technical incompetence. I have not kept up to date with their system, since I quite honestly could care less after the burns they already delivered -- but if your platform cannot handle proxy servers, or indeed offer proxy servers, your platform sucks. If I organize a lan party for 2000 people, I would really want to offer a proxy for game updates and game data. Encrypted, sure, but proxied. I don't want 2000 people downloading the 200mb update for game X that just got released a day before the party starts through one measly 10mbit/s connection (or even 50mbit/s). I want them to hit the local proxy servers for that data.
(I also don't want them to fucking PRE-load something that is not released yet, such as Half Life 2 -- 2 gigs of data. Every Counter Strike player starts downloading that. Riiiiiight.)
Now, you would think that they might have thought about scenarios like that, since their games are WILDLY popular at lan parties (as well as online). But no. You call them, you w
Steam ? A SOLUTION ?
I get much better service from BitTorrent.com. So long as that is true, the game industry has failed.
How on EARTH did you get a gig that wasn't work-for-hire ?!?
Ruby at 63x longer (or 30x slower than Java) should shut up all the Java haters who witter on about Ruby (or PHP at 12 slower than Java) for web development.
nonsense :) if you want machine performance, go with C/C++. If you don't care about how fast your app runs becuase you're focussed on programmer productivity go with Ruby or Python. Java/C# therefore is a worse-in-every-case option :)
You drank the cool-aid, eh ?
Not only do you not have to care about how fast your program runs, you also have to not care about its stability when using Ruby. You'll spend a lot of time trying to fix and optimize the unoptimizable.
At the risk of being unpopular, I'm going to say that in my opinion sharing ripped MP3s is morally the equivalent of jaywalking, wheras sharing games is morally closer to shoplifting.
For one thing, I think more work goes into game-making than a Brittney Spears song, and it's done by people I respect rather than people I think are the scum of the earth. For another, it seems to me that the higher costs of making a game makes game piracy closer to real theft. I know recording studio fees are quite expensive, and indie game makers can often make a game without so much as a bank loan, but there's a reason for the generally higher price of games than CDs.
Oh come on, at least compare music from musicians you respect and games from studios you respect. No need to rap on the default example of "bad music" any more. Furthermore, how do YOU know how much time and effort it takes a musician to create their work ? I'm pretty sure many of them are hard-working people, working at least as hard as game-designers. The only difference with the bigger games is that there are more people working on them, total. If pirating a game is morally equivalent to shoplifting a TV, pirating music is probably morally equivalent to shoplifting a towel. It's still shoplifting, and no, it's not, in either case.
There are hardworking people in the music industry sure, just like there are scum in the gaming industry, and I should also say I've worked in neither industry.
All the same, I think game piraters have less of a moral leg to stand on than music pirates. A $220,000 fine for 24 songs or games is ridiculous, but moreso for music.
Riiiight. Because the game retails for $49.99, while the music retails for $19.99 ? That's reality. Neither warrant $220,000.00 fines, ever. The moral leg and the arguments from the "sharers" are pretty much EXACTLY the same. "I'll buy it if I like it." "If I share it, it gets more exposure !" "It's too expensive and EA is treating their employees like slaves, anyway !", etc.
I also would say that in both cases, nothing is actually stolen in the same sense that you would steal a car, and for the RIAA or ESA to sue individuals into bankrupcy with either is/would be dickish. The RIAA and ESA if they follow suit are the real bad guys here.
It's not just dickish, it's also short-sighted, immoral, and counteproductive. But I guess some lessons just have to be learned the hard way.
My ex used to get mad because I absolutely refused to give her any of my passwords besides my WPA password.
Those people annoy. A lot.
She didn't understand security at all. Later I found out she had been reading her boss' private email
That kind of thing lands people in actual jail with actual bars.
I"m glad I don't trust anyone.
I have people I'd trust with every bit of credentials I have, yet I don't give it up to them either. There is simply no need. If it arises, I can reconsider -- or SIMPLY give them their own login.
Always log out of public computers, never allow them to store private information. It's a good idea to clear private data or reset the browser on public computers as well.
I don't consider public computers safe, at all. You have no idea what their security policies are, you have no idea who has been tampering with it, you have no idea whether there is a physical keylogger attached somewhere, you have no idea whether the box has a rootkit, etc.
It's fine for browsing, but only if you don't care that anybody finds out what you are browsing for.
If you live with other people or have guest over you should password protect your computer.
100% agreed. Especially on occasions like parties. If your computer provides the entertainment (music), make sure you have it in your sight always -- or make a user account specifically for that, with all other access blocked. Yes, your friends will snoop on you, think it's "funny" to read your mail, mail something from your mail, put something on your website, chat on IRC under your name, snoop around in your cache, look for porn on your computer, etc. I don't know why that is, but even friends I'd call upstanding, usually responsible people can sometimes give in to this.
The flipside is that I know user credentials for, probably, dozens of people -- or knew them at some point. People do give up their login info, their "standard" password, etc. easily if you help them fix their computer, fix their problem, or show them stuff. I make a point of forgetting them (and never using them outside that incident), but in some cases that's just not possible (you probably know "that guy" who uses a simple password for everything from his user account password to his homebanking PIN ...). I suspect many people in support positions are in the same position. That's a lot of trust and responsibility which is easily (and often untracably) abused.
Then think of system administrators -- do you know who has root on all the mailservers your mail may be passing through ? System- and Network-administrators can untracably read pretty much everything that is going on on their network. Often, people do not even realize that this is the case. I suspec this is why end-to-end cryptography is just not a hot topic with many, many people -- they simply do not realize who all has access to their (private) stuff. And if they do, they might still use the same password for their GPG passphrase as their POP3 account as their various forum passwords. Whoops.
This is honestly the first time I've ever heard these things mentioned when it comes to organizing LAN parties.
Any sizable party that has not thought about these issues is foolish. Very foolish.
The purely logical side of me wants to say, "Hey, yeah... nice advance planning. I never even considered the idea of maybe looking at insurance for such an event."
Any party open to the public really should have it. Yes, 99% of them go fine without a hitch. Do you really want to play the numbers and land on that 1% where everything (literally) crashes and burns ?
But the practical side of me? It thinks "WTF is wrong with people today?!?" I've been to a number of LAN parties hosted at people's homes, and even hosted a couple myself. Everyone I've ever met at them was MORE courteous and considerate than average. The closest thing to a "theft" I ever saw was a situation where someone accidentally picked up and packed up another person's Ethernet cable.
Home parties are usually a bit different. You know the people. You trust the people.
I think that got sorted out when another individual offered to just give the guy one of his to keep, for free, since he had plenty of them at home anyway.
Ethernet cables will go missing. Sometimes you discover an extra cable in your bags once you get home. It isn't malicious, usually. There are only so many colors of cable.
The way I see things, sure ... ANY time you have some sort of party or get-together involving multiple people, you have a "non zero" risk of something bad happening. Maybe someone will fall down a flight of stairs and break an arm? Maybe they'll plug a defective network card or cable into your gigabit switch and fry the thing? But like the parent post says, you can't even get out of bed in the morning and do anything useful if you're scared of everything.
Naturally. But let's say that somebody DOES fall down the stairs at your party open to the public. Let's say he's been courteous and nice all party long. Do you really want to bet on him not wanting his medical bills paid by you ? Do you really think his insurance might not get that idea ?
Is it your switch or did you rent it ? If you rented it, are you willing to pay the major bucks to buy a new one ? What if it's some more expensive equipment ? What if you fry the 5 brand-sparkling-new Alienware top-of-the-line computers by making a cabling-mistake ? (This stuff DOES happen at lan parties, especially if you don't have a certified electrician on hand that'll install your power distribution. Oh, and I hope your power distribution does not consist of an outlet and "letting people do their own thing" -- I have seen a party at a school in which they had 20+ people in one room, daisychaining the power off of one outlet for all of their equipment. One guy in there even had a water heater on it somewhere. Thankfully all that happened was that the cable from the outlet to the first multisocket melted. Nothing got fried, no fire broke out. That could have been a LOT worse.
Are you really prepared to take that chance, a chance that could, quite possibly, ruin you for the next dozen years or so, for a LAN party ? I'm not.)
Ultimately, I'd feel FAR safer around a bunch of avid computer gamers willing to drag their expensive computer gear over to my house than the random mix of individuals drinking at the corner bar. (You have to remember, they're all taking a certain amount of risk coming to some "stranger's house" with their equipment in tow, too. The host isn't the only one putting himself out there.)
Certainly. But if their equipment dies a death that you are ostensibly to blame for, they'll want to get it rectified. Or their parents. Or their insurance. If it's their limb that breaks, they want to get it treated. If it's their stuff that gets stolen, they may want to look for a scapegoat.
This is a non-issue if these are your friends and you trust eachother. Otherwise, you will run into assholes every now and then.