The Steam Forums have been swamped with people now claiming they are unable to play, many claiming they have had their accounts disabled for no reason.
Because I'm sure most software pirates would go to the forum and instead post remorsefully about how they tried to the steal HL2 and Valve caught em and they got what they deserved. Right.
It's possible that some legit folks got canned, but I bought the game and my account is still active. I'd be interested in hearing the methods they used to catch people.
The essence of which boiled down to this for me; pay $50 for a game, then download it at 30-50K/s (on a line capable of 200K/s).
I had no qualms whatsoever with Steam. Since I pre-ordered the game via Steam, I already had the entire game downloaded when it released at midnight on the 15th. All it had to do was unlock the content. I was playing within five minutes.
Death also requires a reload of the previous checkpoint. This is all stuff that Bungie figgured out for Halo 2, if only Valve could watch and learn.
You can quicksave at any time to avoid going all the way to back to a checkpoint after death. Also: Half-Life 2, like Halo 2, mostly had it's level breaks in long corridors and such rather than in the middle of an action sequence. If you were loading during an action sequence you had probably led the enemies pretty far away from their spawn points. And Bungie's solution to loading a new zone seems to be to remove the player from the game entirely to start a new "level" wherein the player's health/armor and weapons are reset. Talk about breaking up the game play...
China is now part of the WTO. Although piracy is still rampant there, the government has been slowly stepping up enforcement against large-scale operations and that is only going to increase.
"You can use them in elevators, subways and parking garages."
So, is the author claiming that China's cell technology is so awesome that it has overcome interference? Because I'm better that there are indeed elevators and parking garages, likely cased in concrete, steel, etc. wherein those cell phones indeed do not work.
"It's a cheap, pay-as-you-go system, with no stupid monthly contracts or credit checks. The phones are so cheap -- even sidewalk cabbage vendors have them -- that China is now the biggest cellphone market in the world."
America has pay-as-you-go cellphones. not sure if canada does, though. The cheapness is likely due to the fact that the conversion of american money to chinese money is something like 8:1. Of course it's cheap- manufacturing there is cheap, labor is cheap. Almost everything is cheaper there.
"In Tianjin, a city of 13 million people, traffic lights display red or green signals in a rectangle that rhythmically shrinks down as the time remaining evaporates. In Beijing, some traffic lights offer a countdown clock for both green and red signals."
Although this is admittedly uncommon, there are lights in america that count down the wait time as well. The only kind I have seen here are audio cues though, with a voice counting down the time.
"Wouldn't it be great to have a single debit card for buses, subways -- and taxis? That's how it works in Shanghai. Passengers don't have to fumble for exact change on buses and subways, or line up to buy tokens or tickets. Taxi drivers don't have to make change, or get ripped off by counterfeit bills, a real plague in China. And they aren't loaded down with cash, which would make them tempting targets for robbery.
(In another transit plus, forget those illegible handwritten taxi receipts we get in Canada. China's taxis automatically print out receipts with date, mileage, taxi medallion number, even the start and end times of the ride. That certainly would help you recover the Stradivarius you inadvertently left in the back seat.)"
Nice idea. Much easier to implement when you have a totalitarian capitalist/communist (it's gonna stuck halfway right now, with gov't still very communist but the people engaging in rampant capitalism) government.
"Adult playgrounds"
Once again, much easier to implement in a totalitarian system. Just tell the people you're installing them, and then make them pay for it.
"Anti-theft slipcovers"
WHOA! CHINA REALLY IS SUPERIOR TO US FOOLISH AMERICANS! But seriously... how did this make the list?
" Daily banking"
I'd love to see this happen in the US. Once again, much easier to do when the gov't can force banks to do it.
"Wireless service bells"
Having trouble getting enthused about this. Might be convenient, I suppose.
The rest aren't even worth commenting on for me. The crux of the matter seems to be that a lot of these depend on the gov't being able to organize all the different service providers into doing the same thing, and that's a product of the huge amount of power their gov't has over the everyday lives of their citizens.
But is it worth the tradeoff, when, for example, they have to obtain the government's permission to move to a new area of the country, and their government actively filters everyone's internet connections?
In a topic about the MPAA suing people for downloading movies instead of seeing them in the theater, I make a post directly addressing the reason that I don't pay to see movies in the theater... and get modded Offtopic.
I always fall asleep in them, and when I don't, it's usually cause somebody nearby is pissing me off with their talking, or I'm getting chewed out cause I'm pissing someone ELSE off somehow. For me, viewing movies outside of a relatively intimate environment like my home, or a friends, is not enjoyable. And anyway, releasing only to theaters initially is essentially just a way to control distribution and inflate ticket costs via artificial scarcity. Why do we put up with this shit?
Oh that's right, we don't, and that's why they're suing us.
And you should learn to quote what you're replying to if you only intend to give a short, ambiguous reply. The parent also said: "but as today as a resident from another country I can tell you you "whiny left wingers" are the only americans for which we keep some respect."...which is what I and apparently several others (you know, us that needs the learnin') thought you replying to.
Yeah, because central and south american countries all love us. Oh wait... Well, certainly middle eastern nations... oh wait. Well, definitely China and India... oh wait.
It seems from the article that the "discrimination" was a personality trait of a character in the game. Would we also riot in response to a sexist character in a novel or movie? Or would we accept it as flavor and atmosphere of the world we were paying to be immersed in?
The one catch I can see is that the female players were actually denied services in the game, which seems to be pretty unfair. Perhaps a better choice would have been to balance the sexism, perhaps creating another trader for females to use, that would not be available to males?
Wouldn't one of the chief advantages of scanning it be OCR'ing it, and then being able to translate it using software assistance? It sounds like anyone could benefit from this.
No, I don't think that. I just hadn't verified it either way so I didn't argue with the parent on that particular point. Or perhaps you were meaning to reply to the guy I was replying to, rather than me? Or maybe just a misunderstanding?
There is a lot more to it than that. His problems with his employer stem from a government agency whose role is in part to censor broadcasts. You might have heard of them, they're called the FCC.
Slashdot Mirror
single cases do not necessarily disprove a trend.
(although I doubt the truth of his assertion myself)
So, are you limited to PCI, are do you need to have two AGP ports to do this?
The Steam Forums have been swamped with people now claiming they are unable to play, many claiming they have had their accounts disabled for no reason.
Because I'm sure most software pirates would go to the forum and instead post remorsefully about how they tried to the steal HL2 and Valve caught em and they got what they deserved. Right.
It's possible that some legit folks got canned, but I bought the game and my account is still active.
I'd be interested in hearing the methods they used to catch people.
The essence of which boiled down to this for me; pay $50 for a game, then download it at 30-50K/s (on a line capable of 200K/s).
I had no qualms whatsoever with Steam. Since I pre-ordered the game via Steam, I already had the entire game downloaded when it released at midnight on the 15th. All it had to do was unlock the content. I was playing within five minutes.
Death also requires a reload of the previous checkpoint. This is all stuff that Bungie figgured out for Halo 2, if only Valve could watch and learn.
You can quicksave at any time to avoid going all the way to back to a checkpoint after death.
Also: Half-Life 2, like Halo 2, mostly had it's level breaks in long corridors and such rather than in the middle of an action sequence. If you were loading during an action sequence you had probably led the enemies pretty far away from their spawn points.
And Bungie's solution to loading a new zone seems to be to remove the player from the game entirely to start a new "level" wherein the player's health/armor and weapons are reset. Talk about breaking up the game play...
Mod parent down- ignorant.
China is now part of the WTO. Although piracy is still rampant there, the government has been slowly stepping up enforcement against large-scale operations and that is only going to increase.
Search tests were conducted on five criteria: an obscure fact; multiple meanings of "raleigh"; speed; and current time in Sydney.
Am I missing something or is this only 4 things? Maybe the "multiple meanings of raleigh" counts as two?
Never shall I allow actors, competitive or not, to evaluate the... value... of stuff.
"You can use them in elevators, subways and parking garages."
So, is the author claiming that China's cell technology is so awesome that it has overcome interference? Because I'm better that there are indeed elevators and parking garages, likely cased in concrete, steel, etc. wherein those cell phones indeed do not work.
"It's a cheap, pay-as-you-go system, with no stupid monthly contracts or credit checks. The phones are so cheap -- even sidewalk cabbage vendors have them -- that China is now the biggest cellphone market in the world."
America has pay-as-you-go cellphones. not sure if canada does, though.
The cheapness is likely due to the fact that the conversion of american money to chinese money is something like 8:1. Of course it's cheap- manufacturing there is cheap, labor is cheap. Almost everything is cheaper there.
"In Tianjin, a city of 13 million people, traffic lights display red or green signals in a rectangle that rhythmically shrinks down as the time remaining evaporates. In Beijing, some traffic lights offer a countdown clock for both green and red signals."
Although this is admittedly uncommon, there are lights in america that count down the wait time as well. The only kind I have seen here are audio cues though, with a voice counting down the time.
"Wouldn't it be great to have a single debit card for buses, subways -- and taxis? That's how it works in Shanghai. Passengers don't have to fumble for exact change on buses and subways, or line up to buy tokens or tickets. Taxi drivers don't have to make change, or get ripped off by counterfeit bills, a real plague in China. And they aren't loaded down with cash, which would make them tempting targets for robbery.
(In another transit plus, forget those illegible handwritten taxi receipts we get in Canada. China's taxis automatically print out receipts with date, mileage, taxi medallion number, even the start and end times of the ride. That certainly would help you recover the Stradivarius you inadvertently left in the back seat.)"
Nice idea. Much easier to implement when you have a totalitarian capitalist/communist (it's gonna stuck halfway right now, with gov't still very communist but the people engaging in rampant capitalism) government.
"Adult playgrounds"
Once again, much easier to implement in a totalitarian system. Just tell the people you're installing them, and then make them pay for it.
"Anti-theft slipcovers"
WHOA! CHINA REALLY IS SUPERIOR TO US FOOLISH AMERICANS!
But seriously... how did this make the list?
" Daily banking"
I'd love to see this happen in the US. Once again, much easier to do when the gov't can force banks to do it.
"Wireless service bells"
Having trouble getting enthused about this. Might be convenient, I suppose.
The rest aren't even worth commenting on for me.
The crux of the matter seems to be that a lot of these depend on the gov't being able to organize all the different service providers into doing the same thing, and that's a product of the huge amount of power their gov't has over the everyday lives of their citizens.
But is it worth the tradeoff, when, for example, they have to obtain the government's permission to move to a new area of the country, and their government actively filters everyone's internet connections?
But a lot of us like changing batteries quite a bit less, and remembering to put the device back into it's charger only marginally less.
Perhaps we need some tesla-style wireless power delivery system...
Your reply was ambiguous.
In a topic about the MPAA suing people for downloading movies instead of seeing them in the theater, I make a post directly addressing the reason that I don't pay to see movies in the theater... and get modded Offtopic.
Thanks, slashdot.
I always fall asleep in them, and when I don't, it's usually cause somebody nearby is pissing me off with their talking, or I'm getting chewed out cause I'm pissing someone ELSE off somehow. For me, viewing movies outside of a relatively intimate environment like my home, or a friends, is not enjoyable.
And anyway, releasing only to theaters initially is essentially just a way to control distribution and inflate ticket costs via artificial scarcity. Why do we put up with this shit?
Oh that's right, we don't, and that's why they're suing us.
And you should learn to quote what you're replying to if you only intend to give a short, ambiguous reply. ...which is what I and apparently several others (you know, us that needs the learnin') thought you replying to.
The parent also said:
"but as today as a resident from another country I can tell you you "whiny left wingers" are the only americans for which we keep some respect."
firefly!
Yeah, because central and south american countries all love us. Oh wait...
Well, certainly middle eastern nations... oh wait.
Well, definitely China and India... oh wait.
That still doesn't support the "32,000/yr" comment, which is all we asked for.
I am interested in a citation for the 32,000/yr killed under saddam. a link or book/article reference?
ironic that your sig is an MS-sponsored publicity stunt.
Roleplaying game. Not to be nitpicky. But there is a world of difference in that one letter ;)
It seems from the article that the "discrimination" was a personality trait of a character in the game. Would we also riot in response to a sexist character in a novel or movie? Or would we accept it as flavor and atmosphere of the world we were paying to be immersed in? The one catch I can see is that the female players were actually denied services in the game, which seems to be pretty unfair. Perhaps a better choice would have been to balance the sexism, perhaps creating another trader for females to use, that would not be available to males?
CS:Source multiplayer hacks don't have much bearing on HL2, which is a singleplayer game...
Wouldn't one of the chief advantages of scanning it be OCR'ing it, and then being able to translate it using software assistance?
It sounds like anyone could benefit from this.
No, I don't think that. I just hadn't verified it either way so I didn't argue with the parent on that particular point. Or perhaps you were meaning to reply to the guy I was replying to, rather than me? Or maybe just a misunderstanding?
There is a lot more to it than that. His problems with his employer stem from a government agency whose role is in part to censor broadcasts. You might have heard of them, they're called the FCC.