No, but Valve owes purchasers of their game a pleasant gaming expereience.
You're twisting around what you said in the grandparent. You said that your ability to play the game shouldn't be contingent on what sort of internet connection you have.
Likewise, I paid for the game, I should be able to play it on my 386.
Is the market share of people with 386s worth including support for? No.
I paid for the game, and it includes multiplayer support. I should be able to play on my 75bps modem.
Is the market share of people with 75bps modems worth supporting? No.
Please, what you're saying is that only people "elite" enough in society to be lucky enough to have a top-grade internet connection deserve to enjoy things like this game.
Aside from the fact that this statement is completely inapplicable, since you only need a dialup for confirmation/registration..
Is the market share of people without internet connections worth supporting? In Valve's opinion, no.
If you've got evidence that they sold it in bad faith, that's a different story, but they're free to impose any hardware/networking/dancepad requirements they want, and you're free not to buy it. To expect them to cater to your situation is lunacy.
"The radar systems today are enabling adaptive cruise control, but with these sensors, it will become possible to create features, such as collision avoidance. If the car can slow down as part of adaptive cruise control today, then maybe in the future it can apply its brakes even harder, or take control of the wheel and become a safety system."
If what they are really using is truely radar (and I have little reason to believe it isn't, since this is coming from an engineering publication), then they're making a terrible choice in sensor technology. Radar is great when you're the only one around, but multiply your car by five, ten, or one hundred, and you're going to get more false returns than you can possibly deal with.
Imagine standing in an auditorium trying to pick out your echo with hundreds of other people around you also shouting at the same time. This can be a problem with ships that are near each other -- the broadcast of one ship's radar can appear as the return echo of another ship (or more likely, will drown out the other). You can combat this to an extent by changing the frequency slightly, but there's only a limited amount of the RF spectrum..) Even in cases where there's only one radar, it takes an (arguably) skilled operator to filter out what's really there from the noise.
Congress is poised to reimpose a moratorium on taxing Internet access,
Hmm.. let me get this straight.. now if lawmakers want to put taxes on internet access, they'll have to repeal the law.. and that would be troublesome why? If there were enough congressmen who wanted to tax the internet, how would this law help anything?
When legislators make laws, only legislators will be able to..
What this law really means is that Congress is telling states they can't profit from internet access Congress decides to create a national internet tax.
Recently, researchers successfully sent data from Switzerland to Tokyo at speeds of 7.21 gigabits per second. That was enough speed to transfer a full-length DVD anywhere in the world in less than five seconds, researchers said.
Too bad it'll take me upwards of five minutes to write it to disk. Yet more proof that hard drive speeds are dragging the rest of the industry down. Damn you Hitachi/Fujitsu/WesternDigital/Seagate/Maxtor. Damn you all.
Funny that. This impatient potential customer might actually turn into a pirate instead.
I'm sure that's more than counterbalanced by the number of people who were pissed that there wasn't a crack available before the game hit the stores, and therefore went out and bought it. Or the fact that there wasn't a working crack 12 hours later. I have only anecdotal evidence from watching #halflife2 on efNet, but there's definately two sides of the DRM coin.
Please, what you're saying is that only people "elite" enough in society to be lucky enough to have a top-grade internet connection deserve to enjoy things like this game.
Jesus.. look people, the world doesn't owe you a pleasant gaming experience. I hate to break it to you, but there's lots of shit I "deserve," like staying in the penthouse of a 5-Star Hotel, owning my own island, and banging a different centerfold every night. Unfortunately, the people selling these things don't care, because they're making enough money from the people who CAN afford it.
The world doesn't owe you anything, let alone enjoying a videogame.
Some people cannot get good connections even when living in major cities.
The whole selfish, "I got mine. Anyone who doesn't is a dumbass" attitude just reminds me of why PC gaming has gone downhill
You're right. There's millions of people worldwide who'd give anything for the potato chip you just dropped on the ground, but we should all feel sorry for you because you can't get a decent connection.
Why didn't they just call it 'DiVX 2' instead of 'Steam'?
Maybe because Steam is more than just a distribution method? This isn't an 8-Track vs Cassette Tape argument.. we're not talking about the format of the media, we're talking about the CONTENT, and Valve isn't competing with another version of Half Life 2 that some company produced and distributed. (Well, okay, technically they're competing with other games, but they seem to be doing just fine).
I understand that Valve has forced a change.. it's the same reason your grandparents bitch about the neighborhood.. people hate change. Sure, computers used to be Stand Alone. Now almost everyone has internet access. It's the future, it's called progress. If Valve chooses to make internet access and server registration/validation/decryption/ebonification a requirement for their software, that's THEIR CHOICE. I'm sure they've weighed the pros and cons and decided that the number of customers they'd lose was negligible, which turns out to be true. At first I was completely against the idea of having to activate my game with the server, but now I really don't care. It's no different than verifying that the CD's in the drive.. it's not something I like, but I can get around it if I want to, so in the end it still doesn't matter.
"But, but, but I want to live in my fallout shelter and run my game without any connection to any network EVER."
Unfortunately, the fact that mass quantities of other people ARE willing to connect, register, and verify (no matter how much they dislike it) means that what you want to do doesn't matter to Valve. As the old saying goes, you can't please all of the people all of the time.
you don't even need to be a lawyer to see how a smart pirate is going to make Valve look like fools in court
Right. Because Captain Cracker has got tons of cash sitting around to go to fight something in court.
Not to mention, there are plenty of ways to find out who's on a torrent without sending one single bit of the torrent itself. Most BT clients are open source.. just route the upstream to/dev/null, block it with your firewall, etc, etc ad infinitum.
Or being unable to connect at all if their authentication server happens to be down (it's not like it has never happened before), or being delayed as you say, or having to have your network connection ready which can be annoying if you play with a laptop and move around a bit more from your geek cellar.:-)
It's a one-time deal. Once it's been authenticated, you can set Steam to offline mode and play it whenever you want. I'm not saying I agree with the requirement of having to connect to their servers at all, but I wouldn't be surprised if the practice becomes more common.
Of course, it doesn't do anything except possibly delay a crack, but that's all they're trying to do really. Publishers are aware that there's no such thing as "copy proof," but if they can delay a crack long enough to frustrate potential customers into paying for a legitimate copy, then they see it as a success. Can't blame them really, if I worked my ass off for 5 years on anything, I'd be pissed if people decided to obtain an illegitimate copy rather than paying for it.
The thing is, most "groups," are proud of their title and wouldn't poison their cracks with virii because of the backlash. For all the talk about avoiding cracked software because of viruses, I've found a much higher amount of malware in legitimate software.
In general, if something's been cracked by a well known organization, they're going to protect their reputation. The only thing you really need to be wary of is second generation copies/repacks, because it's quite possible that someone else has altered the crack. Nothing's guaranteed, of course.. but nothing ever is.
With the popularity of CSI, you'd think people never watched any other cable channels. A&E is usually running a forensic science reconstruction show of some sort, as they have for years. Lately the Discovery Channel (at least the Australian version which I get) has crime reconstruction shows it seems like 24 hours/day. TLC has turned in to a cross between Home & Garden and WE. Even TechTV/G4's target audience is 13yo console kiddies, with an occasional insightful show on how to make one's desktop look even more stupid, how to create sigs for e-mails in Outlook Express, or a review of last year's MP3 players. There's hardly any real science/nerdiness left on TV. I wonder if they still show Mr. Wizard on Nick.. at least then I could relearn something interesting, like how to make a "volcano" with a little baking soda, vinegar, and a dash of molten rock. I can't remember.. maybe one of those ingredients wasn't required.
Features don't usually affect battery life when you don't use them. My phone has a camera, but I still get 4-5 hours of talk time and/or up to 48 hours of standby with the standard battery, despite lesser claims of 3h/36h by the manufacturer.
How hard could they possibly make it to disable the flash and/or speaker? I also find it ironic that this is coming from the UK, the most surveilled country in the world (tinfoil hat conspiracies aside).
I would love to see some numbers on the frequency and nature of bugs in software...I doubt that the development of programmign technology will advance...
While I have no empirical data to back me up, I have a sneaking suspicion that typos play a large role.
The thing is, the computer inherently requires that the concepts be broken down into primitive tasks. If you've created a program that can understand "Find my friend in the picture, then see who's standing next to him," you've got artificial intelligence on your hands and you, my friend, are a wealthy person*.
*Provided a large government or commercial entity doesn't a) steal your idea, or b) kill you for it.
anymore.. however, one of the things I found most appealing was the process of transforming abstract concepts into concrete functions, and the experience of breaking a problem down into its components. The fact is, natural language and thinking don't lend themselves to programming. People don't think of problem solving in a method that's efficient for a computer. People think a UI *is* a program; they don't think in terms of loops, variables, and datatypes. It's such a huge leap from "natural language," to a programming language that it takes a person years to learn how to do it effectively. We call those people programmers. Any piece of software that could translate these ideas into code would be far more significant for the fact that it would truely be AI.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but Valve owes purchasers of their game a pleasant gaming expereience.
You're twisting around what you said in the grandparent. You said that your ability to play the game shouldn't be contingent on what sort of internet connection you have.
Likewise, I paid for the game, I should be able to play it on my 386.
Is the market share of people with 386s worth including support for? No.
I paid for the game, and it includes multiplayer support. I should be able to play on my 75bps modem.
Is the market share of people with 75bps modems worth supporting? No.
Please, what you're saying is that only people "elite" enough in society to be lucky enough to have a top-grade internet connection deserve to enjoy things like this game.
Aside from the fact that this statement is completely inapplicable, since you only need a dialup for confirmation/registration..
Is the market share of people without internet connections worth supporting? In Valve's opinion, no.
If you've got evidence that they sold it in bad faith, that's a different story, but they're free to impose any hardware/networking/dancepad requirements they want, and you're free not to buy it. To expect them to cater to your situation is lunacy.
On a more serious note..
"The radar systems today are enabling adaptive cruise control, but with these sensors, it will become possible to create features, such as collision avoidance. If the car can slow down as part of adaptive cruise control today, then maybe in the future it can apply its brakes even harder, or take control of the wheel and become a safety system."
If what they are really using is truely radar (and I have little reason to believe it isn't, since this is coming from an engineering publication), then they're making a terrible choice in sensor technology. Radar is great when you're the only one around, but multiply your car by five, ten, or one hundred, and you're going to get more false returns than you can possibly deal with.
Imagine standing in an auditorium trying to pick out your echo with hundreds of other people around you also shouting at the same time. This can be a problem with ships that are near each other -- the broadcast of one ship's radar can appear as the return echo of another ship (or more likely, will drown out the other). You can combat this to an extent by changing the frequency slightly, but there's only a limited amount of the RF spectrum..) Even in cases where there's only one radar, it takes an (arguably) skilled operator to filter out what's really there from the noise.
And they will need, of course, better sensors-CMOS cameras and radar-to "see" the world around them.
So not only will the radar make me infertile, but all the CMOS cameras will have pictures of me so they can point and laugh.
Congress is poised to reimpose a moratorium on taxing Internet access,
Hmm.. let me get this straight.. now if lawmakers want to put taxes on internet access, they'll have to repeal the law.. and that would be troublesome why? If there were enough congressmen who wanted to tax the internet, how would this law help anything?
When legislators make laws, only legislators will be able to..
What this law really means is that Congress is telling states they can't profit from internet access Congress decides to create a national internet tax.
From the article:
Recently, researchers successfully sent data from Switzerland to Tokyo at speeds of 7.21 gigabits per second. That was enough speed to transfer a full-length DVD anywhere in the world in less than five seconds, researchers said.
Too bad it'll take me upwards of five minutes to write it to disk. Yet more proof that hard drive speeds are dragging the rest of the industry down. Damn you Hitachi/Fujitsu/WesternDigital/Seagate/Maxtor. Damn you all.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
Not all of us can afford good memory, you insensitive Stop 0x0000000A or IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Funny that. This impatient potential customer might actually turn into a pirate instead.
I'm sure that's more than counterbalanced by the number of people who were pissed that there wasn't a crack available before the game hit the stores, and therefore went out and bought it. Or the fact that there wasn't a working crack 12 hours later. I have only anecdotal evidence from watching #halflife2 on efNet, but there's definately two sides of the DRM coin.
Please, what you're saying is that only people "elite" enough in society to be lucky enough to have a top-grade internet connection deserve to enjoy things like this game.
Jesus.. look people, the world doesn't owe you a pleasant gaming experience. I hate to break it to you, but there's lots of shit I "deserve," like staying in the penthouse of a 5-Star Hotel, owning my own island, and banging a different centerfold every night. Unfortunately, the people selling these things don't care, because they're making enough money from the people who CAN afford it.
The world doesn't owe you anything, let alone enjoying a videogame.
Some people cannot get good connections even when living in major cities.
The whole selfish, "I got mine. Anyone who doesn't is a dumbass" attitude just reminds me of why PC gaming has gone downhill
You're right. There's millions of people worldwide who'd give anything for the potato chip you just dropped on the ground, but we should all feel sorry for you because you can't get a decent connection.
Your tragedy has me on the verge of tears.
Why didn't they just call it 'DiVX 2' instead of 'Steam'?
Maybe because Steam is more than just a distribution method? This isn't an 8-Track vs Cassette Tape argument.. we're not talking about the format of the media, we're talking about the CONTENT, and Valve isn't competing with another version of Half Life 2 that some company produced and distributed. (Well, okay, technically they're competing with other games, but they seem to be doing just fine).
I understand that Valve has forced a change.. it's the same reason your grandparents bitch about the neighborhood.. people hate change. Sure, computers used to be Stand Alone. Now almost everyone has internet access. It's the future, it's called progress. If Valve chooses to make internet access and server registration/validation/decryption/ebonification a requirement for their software, that's THEIR CHOICE. I'm sure they've weighed the pros and cons and decided that the number of customers they'd lose was negligible, which turns out to be true. At first I was completely against the idea of having to activate my game with the server, but now I really don't care. It's no different than verifying that the CD's in the drive.. it's not something I like, but I can get around it if I want to, so in the end it still doesn't matter.
"But, but, but I want to live in my fallout shelter and run my game without any connection to any network EVER."
Unfortunately, the fact that mass quantities of other people ARE willing to connect, register, and verify (no matter how much they dislike it) means that what you want to do doesn't matter to Valve. As the old saying goes, you can't please all of the people all of the time.
What bothers me the most about HL2 is the fact that you have to log into steam every single time you want to play a single player game.
That's completely incorrect. You have to connect once, to unlock it. That's it. I'm not saying I agree, just that you're arguing against fiction.
you don't even need to be a lawyer to see how a smart pirate is going to make Valve look like fools in court
/dev/null, block it with your firewall, etc, etc ad infinitum.
Right. Because Captain Cracker has got tons of cash sitting around to go to fight something in court.
Not to mention, there are plenty of ways to find out who's on a torrent without sending one single bit of the torrent itself. Most BT clients are open source.. just route the upstream to
Or being unable to connect at all if their authentication server happens to be down (it's not like it has never happened before), or being delayed as you say, or having to have your network connection ready which can be annoying if you play with a laptop and move around a bit more from your geek cellar. :-)
It's a one-time deal. Once it's been authenticated, you can set Steam to offline mode and play it whenever you want. I'm not saying I agree with the requirement of having to connect to their servers at all, but I wouldn't be surprised if the practice becomes more common.
Of course, it doesn't do anything except possibly delay a crack, but that's all they're trying to do really. Publishers are aware that there's no such thing as "copy proof," but if they can delay a crack long enough to frustrate potential customers into paying for a legitimate copy, then they see it as a success. Can't blame them really, if I worked my ass off for 5 years on anything, I'd be pissed if people decided to obtain an illegitimate copy rather than paying for it.
The thing is, most "groups," are proud of their title and wouldn't poison their cracks with virii because of the backlash. For all the talk about avoiding cracked software because of viruses, I've found a much higher amount of malware in legitimate software.
In general, if something's been cracked by a well known organization, they're going to protect their reputation. The only thing you really need to be wary of is second generation copies/repacks, because it's quite possible that someone else has altered the crack. Nothing's guaranteed, of course.. but nothing ever is.
I'll stick to legos.
I'm sure he didn't steal those from work either. *cough*
With the popularity of CSI, you'd think people never watched any other cable channels. A&E is usually running a forensic science reconstruction show of some sort, as they have for years. Lately the Discovery Channel (at least the Australian version which I get) has crime reconstruction shows it seems like 24 hours/day. TLC has turned in to a cross between Home & Garden and WE. Even TechTV/G4's target audience is 13yo console kiddies, with an occasional insightful show on how to make one's desktop look even more stupid, how to create sigs for e-mails in Outlook Express, or a review of last year's MP3 players. There's hardly any real science/nerdiness left on TV. I wonder if they still show Mr. Wizard on Nick.. at least then I could relearn something interesting, like how to make a "volcano" with a little baking soda, vinegar, and a dash of molten rock. I can't remember.. maybe one of those ingredients wasn't required.
Why go through all of the trouble of mandating GPS when they could just check the EDRs, the equivelant of an airplane's black box.
Features don't usually affect battery life when you don't use them. My phone has a camera, but I still get 4-5 hours of talk time and/or up to 48 hours of standby with the standard battery, despite lesser claims of 3h/36h by the manufacturer.
I'm not sure how the /. article could vary so far from the content of the bbc article
/. tradition, just like the obligatory comment I'm about to make:
That's a
You must be new here...
Even though you have a lower number than me and you were obviously being sarcastic.
How hard could they possibly make it to disable the flash and/or speaker? I also find it ironic that this is coming from the UK, the most surveilled country in the world (tinfoil hat conspiracies aside).
That would be a copyright violation. I was doing a parody.
Plus I couldn't remember what the hell his name was, and Carson was the first male name listed in the credits on IMDB.
Ahh.. I thought Alice was referring to a different venture into real-language comprehension.
http://www.alicebot.org/
I would love to see some numbers on the frequency and nature of bugs in software...I doubt that the development of programmign technology will advance...
While I have no empirical data to back me up, I have a sneaking suspicion that typos play a large role.
The thing is, the computer inherently requires that the concepts be broken down into primitive tasks. If you've created a program that can understand "Find my friend in the picture, then see who's standing next to him," you've got artificial intelligence on your hands and you, my friend, are a wealthy person*.
*Provided a large government or commercial entity doesn't a) steal your idea, or b) kill you for it.
anymore.. however, one of the things I found most appealing was the process of transforming abstract concepts into concrete functions, and the experience of breaking a problem down into its components. The fact is, natural language and thinking don't lend themselves to programming. People don't think of problem solving in a method that's efficient for a computer. People think a UI *is* a program; they don't think in terms of loops, variables, and datatypes. It's such a huge leap from "natural language," to a programming language that it takes a person years to learn how to do it effectively. We call those people programmers. Any piece of software that could translate these ideas into code would be far more significant for the fact that it would truely be AI.