I'm actually in the midst of a Baldurs Gate 2 game right now. That was a game well worth buying. I think I still have a paper manual and cloth map somewhere. And you could actually back up the discs. So I play right from my original disc images for that warm and fuzzy feeling. Definitely buy Throne of Baal as well. Although you should probably first see if you like Shadows of Amn. If you don't then you certainly won't like ToB expansion. They install together as one (mostly) contiguous game but SoA can be played by itself.
Go to gibberlings 3 for some mods. Definitely at least install the BG2 fixpack and BG2 tweaks. Some other mods to consider are sword coast strategems 2, ascension, unfinished business, longer road, and DAportraits. For web forums definitely check out the BG2 (and BG1) gamebanshee forum and sorcerers.net. I'm not sure BG2 is a game that I would really want to buy from GoG, but neither Interplay nor Black Isle are around anymore so I guess it is your only choice other than torrent sites or ebay and the original game has a CD check so your GOG version will be better in that sense. Still, if you can find an original boxed Baldurs Gate 2 complete with ring bound manual on ebay and it isn't too expensive I would go for it. One of the best computer games ever made. And with mods like SCS2 it is even more fun, although that mod is still a little buggy.
I wonder if you are speaking for yourself here. How are you capable of getting inside someone's head and knowing with 100% certainty all the reasons why they may or may not buy a particular piece of software? Is there some kind of mind reading technology I haven't heard about? I can't speak for other people but the only reason I don't buy games from my favorite developer(s) is due to DRM. Period. I liked Fallout: New Vegas (which I know because I played the free cracked version) and would have bought it except for the DRM.
I used to buy games every time they were released from certain trusted companies like Looking Glass Studios and New World Computing and Black Isle Studios without even reading reviews. I'd just drive to the store and eagerly pick up my shiny new box complete with thick paper manual and maybe a cloth map thrown in. Believe it or not some of us really would like to support our favorite developers. I just feel that I cannot in good conscience reward a publisher who is trying to sell a 3 install game rental that I can only use when I have a reliable internet connection for the price I used to pay for a game that I actually owned. Now that is stealing.
I just can't reward them for their stupid, short sighted, narrowly selfish behavior. I won't. I genuinely see it as wrong to reward them for this pile of shit draconian (and completely useless) DRM. So you can go buy their DRM crap and encourage them to make things even more draconian with their next release. I will sit back and download the cracked version quite happy and even proud of my decision. Despite your rhetoric I call these reasons. Not rationalizations. I used to pay for games back when I could still make backup copies of the discs and only needed to deal with a serial# and maybe a CD check. After things escalated beyond that I just threw up my hands and said enough is enough and started using Edonkey and then Emule and now utorrent or azureus and TPB or Demonoid.
Why would I buy something that I won't even really own? It just makes no sense to me. For my money I get nothing from either the developer or the publisher but distrust. No recognition or any benefit whatsoever for being a paying customer. And if I want a backup copy I have to download a cracked version anyway because the anti-copy protection became too succesful for me to make backups of my own discs. I'm sorry, but that is just completely unacceptable. If the developer were to start some kind of donation fund tied to a specific title I would contribute to it as a reward and to show my support, but I would never ever reward a publisher for this kind of nonsense.
It used to be that you got something of value more than just satisfaction at rewarding your favorite game designers and artists and programmers for making a great game and encouraging them to make more of the same. You had physical copies of discs that were actually useful for something. They worked as genuine backups and you could back them up and keep the originals safe and sound and shiny in the original box. You didn't need to download anything extra at all.
But of course the war of escalation against their own customers continued with publishers raising the ante in the short sighted push for every last dollar. As the war continues to escalate they will continue to lose customers who just cannot take it anymore. At some point it just is no longer worth fighting with them. Everyone has their own limit. I reached mine about 10 years ago. If any publisher ever wants to see money from this individual again they are the ones who will have to cry uncle. Not me. I'm not going to argue with people who want to punish me for paying them for their work.
even bethesda has now succumbed to this, fallout: nv is essentially the same engine with about the same features that shipped in morrowind, except in morrowind there was much more scripting and love put to the world itself. it's like if they're not even trying to do more than level packs now, when they used to do things that couldn't be said to have levels at all.
FO:NV was developed by Obsidian and published by Bethesda. Bethesda is both a developer and a publisher but in this case they were only wearing their publisher hat. Bethesda did supply the engine (based on a commercial engine which Bethesda bought the license for), but most of the game elements are pure Obsidian.
I never much cared for Morrowind. I haven't liked any Bethesda game since Daggerfall. They were a different company then with a different owner and very different developers. Morrowind happened during the transition between the old company and the new one. So many of the same developers still worked there I think, but I still was never happy with it.
OTOH, I really like Fallout: New Vegas. That's a game that I would definitely buy if there were a DRM free or at least DRM lite version for sale. Great writing. Great atmosphere. Clever and interesting story. Good game mechanics. All the things that Bethesda is not capable of. Well they used to be able to do game mechanics and atmosphere, but they could never do story or writing. AFAIK Obsidian is the only computer game company with decent writers.
The problem is some of us are older than 12 years old. We gave up on playing space invaders and donkey kong about the same time that your father did. PC games and console games are not equivalent. They have different demographics and the developers know it. Console games are more arcade-like and often numbingly repetitive. The line has blurred a bit due to the dumbing down of cross platform games (Crysis 2 I'm looking at you), but it is still there.
There have actually been single player games that went over a year without being hacked but they seem to be the exception.
Citation desperately needed here. I've never heard of such a thing. Ever. Are we talking about an incredibly obscure game that no one has ever heard of? In that case it is not a fair comparison because the DRM never mattered. No crackers even bothered to make the attempt. Are we talking about a game from the 1970s or something?
The world of goo is a bad example. It sucked. Who would pay for a game like that? Maybe with monopoly money. Lack of DRM is not the only requirement for selling a game. It also has to be fun to play. A better example would be Crysis. It sold like 3 million copies or so despite the fact that it was ridiculously easy to just download a free-as-in-beer cracked version. The fact is that PC games can make a hell of a lot of money even if they are also massively pirated. So far no DRM (that wasn't backed by proprietary hardware) has stopped piracy for more than maybe a week or so. Usually it takes no more than 24-48 hours from game release day. Of course unpopular, obscure software can remain uncracked for years, but that is because it is too obscure for crackers to care about. Those are the kinds of apps that I am forced to crack myself.
If you choose to not buy something because of DRM or whatever else, that's fine, but then you aren't entitled to then play and enjoy the game.
Why not? Maybe I think I am entitled to play the game, but not to enjoy it. That is easy enough these days with all the dumbed down console ports. I played Crysis 2 for about 15 minutes before nearly falling asleep. I'm sure it's great fun for the console kiddies, but I found it dreadfully boring and rather ugly as well. I wouldn't buy that game even if it were DRM free. The best copy protection, perhaps the only truly effective one, is to make a boring, crappy game. And game developers these days seem to be quite proficient at that.
I would have no problem with DRM that just requires a serial# and that doesn't even try to prevent you from backing up your discs. I would have no problem buying such a game. I haven't seen games like that for more than a decade though. It wouldn't solve the resale problem for the publishers though. They can't stop the new owners from using the serial # from the previous owner. So most publishers would never go for it. Intrusive DRM has too many checked boxes for the publishers.
Last year I was living in a country where I couldn't even get a phone line let alone an internet connection and I played GTA4 all the time. I downloaded the relevant cracks to a usb keychain drive at an internet cafe and then brought it back to my computer. With cracks you definitely don't need an internet connection. If you do then the game hasn't been fully cracked and GTA4 definitely has. It's a fun game. I encourage you to find a crack for it. Unfortunately without your own internet connection you won't be able to use sites like TPB at least not directly. But I think you can download torrents using a java applet from www.bitlet.org. Go over to TPB and copy a URL and then paste it into bitlet. Should work, but I've never tried it.
If you lend a console game then you can't play it at the same time.
Unless you make a copy and lend that. I've never played a console game but aren't they mostly just DVDs? I'm somewhat surprised they don't still use proprietary ROM cartridges or some fancy read only holographic memory chip. Some storage device that is so unique that the only way to "copy" it would be to physically hack the hardware and dump the data to a more traditional device.
As for game price $50 is a good deal compared to other forms of entertainment like movies and live theater.
And how does it compare to a completely DRM-free version that is also free as in beer? Still a good deal?
I am thinking of this scene from The Insider:
So, what you're saying is it wasn't enough to fire me for no good reason. Now you question my integrity? On top of the humiliation of being fired, you threaten me? You threaten my family? It never crossed my mind not to honor my agreement. And I will tell you, Mr. Sandefur... and Brown & Williamson too - fuck me? Well, fuck you!
Great movie. The last sentiment is how I feel about DRM being shoved down my throat. They act like I don't have a choice. They act like their DRM is going to stop me from playing their stupid game. And they expect me to actually go out and pay for the privilege of getting fucked? Sorry. I'm not that much of a masochist. Damn right I am going to download the superior cracked version instead of their DRM-laden piece of shit. And I'm proud of it. The last game I bought was I think pre-millenium. Once the DRM became so "good" that I couldn't make backup copies of my discs any longer I stopped buying software completely. Nowadays I'd rather crack the software myself than pay for DRM infested crapware. It may be more expensive in terms of my time than just handing over the money, but (1) it will be a lower quality product and (2) it feels too much like blood money to me. I won't contribute one cent to the asshole publishers who package malware with their product for no good reason at all.
Another problem they have gotten themselves into is that people like me who used to be paying customers have become habitual pirates solely due to all their DRM. Now I'm so used to not paying for software that I don't know how I'd feel if a publisher with software that I wanted offered a DRM-free product. I suppose I would pay for it, but it would feel very weird. Hell, it has been like 10 years! Once something becomes a habit, well good luck fighting it. Even buying laws won't help you at that point.
I wouldn't play Fallout3 because I think Bethesda are a bunch of incompetent asses who have no idea how to make a fun game for anyone older than, say, 6, but I quite liked Fallout: New Vegas and would have considered buying it if there had been a DRM free version or something with just a serial # protection. For now I will just wait to support the developers with my purchase until the DRM is removed in a legal patch. If it is never removed then I will continue to play my flawless cracked version quite happily. If they want to play hardball fine. Two can play that game. To be fair I think Bethesda is the publisher and makes all decisions about DRM. So Obsidian isn't at fault in making their game unpurchasable. I don't think Obsidian themselves is at all pro-DRM. Certainly Black Isle wasn't. They are pretty much at the mercy of their publisher when it comes to DRM. If Obsidian ever self publishes a game I suspect we will see much less intrusive DRM if any at all.
Can you be more specific than "it runs like a piece of shit"? I also bought Arx from them back when they were the only ones with an up to date patched version, but I haven't actually installed it yet.
I actually remember when Slashdot was about nerdy things. You know, things like actually doing cool stuff with computers, networks, etc.,and then talking about them here, and not about pissing and moaning about how "The Man" was preventing us from being entertained by things that that others had created to which we felt we were entitled to, simply because we couldn't entertain ourselves, nor create anything nerdy.
Actually I think piracy is pretty nerdy. I have in fact cracked one piece of commercial software all by myself and I didn't feel bad at all. In fact it felt great. I was proud of myself. I can't think of anything more nerdy than cracking DRM. And it's great fun involving computers. Unpacking, decompiling, reading assembly language, all those lovely opcodes... All the raw beauty of information technology spread right out before you. Every computer science major should be required to crack a major piece of commercial software before graduating.
As far as blurays, the hackers at Slysoft have got our backs. They are clever and very skilled and have saved the bluray format for me. Instead of just sticking the disc in a standalone player (which I don't even own) I rip the disc to my drive and start the geeky command line process of demuxing it into its components, messing with the audio in Soundforge and remuxing the result with mkvmerge. Another command line utility. That isn't geeky? Not as geeky as actually writing utilites for the process like the ubergeek madshi did, but more geeky than just placing the disc in a standalone player and watching it on your TV, which is what hollywood wants you to do.
I have a blu-ray player, but I run Linux. Playing Blu-ray in linux is difficult and error prone.
Got news for you. It is difficult and error prone on Windows as well. Although at this point I own quite a few blurays I never play them directly. I'm not even sure I can. I rip each one myself. It's really not that difficult if you are a techie and it is much higher quality than the downloaded versions. Usually the video bitrates are 3-4 times higher and the audio usually has 24 bit lossless compression or sometimes 16 bit PCM. The audio almost always has lossy compression on the downloaded versions.
My workflow is: AnyDVD HD --> eac3to --> Soundforge -->mkvmerge.
Sometimes I recompress the video with staxrip but if you compress too much that kind of ruins the point in ripping it yourself in the first place. So I usually don't. You actually don't need to rip the video with AnyDVD first. eac3to can demux directly from the bluray if AnyDVD is running. Since my computer only has 2 speakers I use Soundforge to downmix to 2 channels from 5.1 etc. This is tricky to do right but makes a big difference in file size and Soundforge 10 does a great job with it. If you like multichannel audio you can skip that step. With the exception of mkvmerge all these apps are windows only. So you'd have to convert from bluray disk to mkv file on windows. If you don't recompress the video the process can take as little as 1-2 hours, but if you want to recompress my 4 Ghz Core 2 CPU takes about 3 days maxing out both cores. The process is embarrassingly parallel so an octocore would be nice in this context. It should only take about 18 hours on one of those.
Mr. Cop: Let me see your license and registration. Citizen: Fuck you.
Cop pulls out taser and shoots the suspect in the face. With his other hand he pulls out blinding device and flashes suspect in eyes. Then he pulls out a microwave active denial gun and aims painful millimeter waves at the suspect's face. Cop wishes he had 3 arms so that he could continuously use all 3 torture noncompliance devices at once. After 5 minutes of electrocution, heating, and blinding cop asks again for license and registration feeling very good about himself and all the power of his new toys. Police work is so much easier when you can force compliance with nonlethal torture devices.
And after we destroy the current system what do we replace it with?
We replace it with version 2 of the original system. We realize that merely dividing the government up into different branches does not significantly slow the process of tyranny. We do everything possible to stop "the people" from removing their own freedoms. We do not allow amendments to the constitution. We do not allow individual "judges" to reinterpret the original intent of the document out of existence. The founders were libertarians and followers of John Locke and that is a fine thing, but they were not perfect. Creating a republic based on a philosophy of individual freedom which actually lasts for generations is not easy.
We should really think of our Noble Experiment (a republic-if you can keep it) as a trial run, to shake out the bugs in the process. We now have the 20/20 vision of hindsight to try to go back and redesign a system where the inevitable creep toward tyranny is not so inevitable. Maybe it truly is unstoppable, like a law of nature, but there may be things we could do to better prevent or slow the eventual decline. It reminds me of one of my favorite ST:TNG episode, Clues (s04ep14), where the crew had to go back and correct their mistakes and try again. That's us. Think of the US Constitution as beta. Now we are out of beta testing and need a complete reboot.
There are a number of obvious and specific suggestions that I would have for the new constitution. The Bill of Rights were one possible mistake which the founders themselves were worried about. Hence the tenth amendment. They didn't foresee that people (and supreme court justices) would just ignore the tenth amendment. Actually I'm not sure that a specific enumeration of individual rights is such a bad thing. The problem is that their system was too dependent on the government itself being filled with fellow libertarians who believed in freedom. You have to assume that your new government will be filled with people who would like to destroy it, at least after a few generations have passed. You simply cannot give such "enemies" of freedom that kind of power. Our founders unfortunately did exactly that. There are lots of specifics that could be discussed, but now we have the benefit of hundreds of years of gradual decline into tyranny to help us devise a more bullet-proof system. One that hopefully doesn't rely on bullets to maintain.
21st century North Americans are very different philosophically from the original freedom loving 18th century colonists. The majority of Americans now don't want freedom. They despise the idea and think it is crazy, forgetting the very heritage of their own country. So what does The Revolution do about them? Should we force them to be free at the point of a gun? That is what our founders did of course, but I think we should give them the option to form their own republic. Our once great "union" of states could be divided up so there are republics for people of every major political philosophy. The US is big. There is enough land for everyone. I am thinking of 2 or 3 different sub-republics, each sovereign countries in their own right. Our republic is now divided up into states, but there is no reason we couldn't divide it into territories or provinces as well. Sort of like Quebec in Canada. Except that these territories or groups of states would be completely autonomous only connected by a very loose union like the EU. Really the only thing connecting the borders of these territories would be the right of anyone born within the old US borders to choose, perhaps at the age of 18, which territory they would like to be a citizen of. Or perhaps it could be like the EU where they would be free to live or work in any of the territories.
If you were in the mood for some old fashioned tyranny you could live in the territory/province modeled after the USSR/Cuba/China, a Marxist society, or at least one that tries t
well, we are orbiting the sun, so just kind of "letting go" of something lighter than ourselves would cause it to shoot off into interstellar space.
What do you mean by "letting go"? Do you mean giving an object escape velocity from the earth? To get to interstellar space it would also have to have enough velocity to escape from the gravity of the sun.
So basically if we had something smaller than the earth moving around the sun at the same velocity as the Earth
You mean like the moon? Or an orbiting spacecraft or satellite?
it would be going fast enough to escape the Sun's gravity, though it would have to avoid a few planets on the way out!
Are you talking about somehow "turning off" the gravity from the sun briefly? What you are saying doesn't make any sense to me. Are you implying that the moon, if it were not so close to the earth would simply automagically leave the solar system rather than staying in orbit around the sun?
This idea of turning off gravity is a curious one. Do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to? If we could somehow turn off the earth's gravity but not the sun's we could all literally jump off the earth (actually since the planet rotates we would presumably be thrown off), but we would still all individually be in orbit about the sun. To get farther away from the sun you have to accelerate either tangentially or directly away from the sun or some combination of the two.
Not only am I envious of his big brain, but he already has a girlfriend at age 12. I just hope he doesn't get so obsessed with pussy that he loses interest in anything else. He's super-intelligent and not ugly. Shouldn't there be a law against that or something? It's so unfair.
They think the law does not or should not apply to them
Or maybe they think some laws are stupid. Like the laws against software cracking and reverse engineering. Are you one of these people that thinks everything legal is right and everything illegal is wrong? For a thinking person one has nothing to do with the other. That is what "makes it okay".
Has it ever occurred to you that people might crack games because it is challenging and fun? Have you ever actually tried to crack software DRM? I did it once with some specialized software that wasn't popular enough to already have a crack and not only was the process itself enjoyable in a puzzle solving sort of way but it's a great feeling when you finally get it cracked. In some cases cracking a game may be a lot more fun than actually playing it. And the fact that it is illegal and forbidden makes it even more fun.
Of course actually releasing the crack is a different story, but wanting to share your hard work with other people who might appreciate it is another possible motivation. Not that there is anything wrong with wanting recognition for having solved an interesting and challenging puzzle. Even if that recognition has to always be anonymous.
Nobody forces anyone to buy a DRM-crippled game, that's entirely a decision made by the customer. And if enough people didn't buy enough games because of DRM crippling, then DRM would disappear overnight as a commercial failure and none of us would ever hear of it again.
But would it disappear? Would the publisher not just blame the less than expected sales on piracy? Now if not a single person bought the game and it was not even available at torrent sites then maybe they would conclude that their DRM is too draconian. But back in the real world I can't think of a single scenario where a game publisher would conclude that they are losing business because of DRM that turns their game from a purchase into a rental. It's hard to infer very much from sales of a game anyway. It's an experiment without a control.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm actually in the midst of a Baldurs Gate 2 game right now. That was a game well worth buying. I think I still have a paper manual and cloth map somewhere. And you could actually back up the discs. So I play right from my original disc images for that warm and fuzzy feeling. Definitely buy Throne of Baal as well. Although you should probably first see if you like Shadows of Amn. If you don't then you certainly won't like ToB expansion. They install together as one (mostly) contiguous game but SoA can be played by itself.
Go to gibberlings 3 for some mods. Definitely at least install the BG2 fixpack and BG2 tweaks. Some other mods to consider are sword coast strategems 2, ascension, unfinished business, longer road, and DAportraits. For web forums definitely check out the BG2 (and BG1) gamebanshee forum and sorcerers.net. I'm not sure BG2 is a game that I would really want to buy from GoG, but neither Interplay nor Black Isle are around anymore so I guess it is your only choice other than torrent sites or ebay and the original game has a CD check so your GOG version will be better in that sense. Still, if you can find an original boxed Baldurs Gate 2 complete with ring bound manual on ebay and it isn't too expensive I would go for it. One of the best computer games ever made. And with mods like SCS2 it is even more fun, although that mod is still a little buggy.
I wonder if you are speaking for yourself here. How are you capable of getting inside someone's head and knowing with 100% certainty all the reasons why they may or may not buy a particular piece of software? Is there some kind of mind reading technology I haven't heard about? I can't speak for other people but the only reason I don't buy games from my favorite developer(s) is due to DRM. Period. I liked Fallout: New Vegas (which I know because I played the free cracked version) and would have bought it except for the DRM.
I used to buy games every time they were released from certain trusted companies like Looking Glass Studios and New World Computing and Black Isle Studios without even reading reviews. I'd just drive to the store and eagerly pick up my shiny new box complete with thick paper manual and maybe a cloth map thrown in. Believe it or not some of us really would like to support our favorite developers. I just feel that I cannot in good conscience reward a publisher who is trying to sell a 3 install game rental that I can only use when I have a reliable internet connection for the price I used to pay for a game that I actually owned. Now that is stealing.
I just can't reward them for their stupid, short sighted, narrowly selfish behavior. I won't. I genuinely see it as wrong to reward them for this pile of shit draconian (and completely useless) DRM. So you can go buy their DRM crap and encourage them to make things even more draconian with their next release. I will sit back and download the cracked version quite happy and even proud of my decision. Despite your rhetoric I call these reasons. Not rationalizations. I used to pay for games back when I could still make backup copies of the discs and only needed to deal with a serial# and maybe a CD check. After things escalated beyond that I just threw up my hands and said enough is enough and started using Edonkey and then Emule and now utorrent or azureus and TPB or Demonoid.
Why would I buy something that I won't even really own? It just makes no sense to me. For my money I get nothing from either the developer or the publisher but distrust. No recognition or any benefit whatsoever for being a paying customer. And if I want a backup copy I have to download a cracked version anyway because the anti-copy protection became too succesful for me to make backups of my own discs. I'm sorry, but that is just completely unacceptable. If the developer were to start some kind of donation fund tied to a specific title I would contribute to it as a reward and to show my support, but I would never ever reward a publisher for this kind of nonsense.
It used to be that you got something of value more than just satisfaction at rewarding your favorite game designers and artists and programmers for making a great game and encouraging them to make more of the same. You had physical copies of discs that were actually useful for something. They worked as genuine backups and you could back them up and keep the originals safe and sound and shiny in the original box. You didn't need to download anything extra at all.
But of course the war of escalation against their own customers continued with publishers raising the ante in the short sighted push for every last dollar. As the war continues to escalate they will continue to lose customers who just cannot take it anymore. At some point it just is no longer worth fighting with them. Everyone has their own limit. I reached mine about 10 years ago. If any publisher ever wants to see money from this individual again they are the ones who will have to cry uncle. Not me. I'm not going to argue with people who want to punish me for paying them for their work.
even bethesda has now succumbed to this, fallout: nv is essentially the same engine with about the same features that shipped in morrowind, except in morrowind there was much more scripting and love put to the world itself. it's like if they're not even trying to do more than level packs now, when they used to do things that couldn't be said to have levels at all.
FO:NV was developed by Obsidian and published by Bethesda. Bethesda is both a developer and a publisher but in this case they were only wearing their publisher hat. Bethesda did supply the engine (based on a commercial engine which Bethesda bought the license for), but most of the game elements are pure Obsidian.
I never much cared for Morrowind. I haven't liked any Bethesda game since Daggerfall. They were a different company then with a different owner and very different developers. Morrowind happened during the transition between the old company and the new one. So many of the same developers still worked there I think, but I still was never happy with it.
OTOH, I really like Fallout: New Vegas. That's a game that I would definitely buy if there were a DRM free or at least DRM lite version for sale. Great writing. Great atmosphere. Clever and interesting story. Good game mechanics. All the things that Bethesda is not capable of. Well they used to be able to do game mechanics and atmosphere, but they could never do story or writing. AFAIK Obsidian is the only computer game company with decent writers.
The problem is some of us are older than 12 years old. We gave up on playing space invaders and donkey kong about the same time that your father did. PC games and console games are not equivalent. They have different demographics and the developers know it. Console games are more arcade-like and often numbingly repetitive. The line has blurred a bit due to the dumbing down of cross platform games (Crysis 2 I'm looking at you), but it is still there.
There have actually been single player games that went over a year without being hacked but they seem to be the exception.
Citation desperately needed here. I've never heard of such a thing. Ever. Are we talking about an incredibly obscure game that no one has ever heard of? In that case it is not a fair comparison because the DRM never mattered. No crackers even bothered to make the attempt. Are we talking about a game from the 1970s or something?
The world of goo is a bad example. It sucked. Who would pay for a game like that? Maybe with monopoly money. Lack of DRM is not the only requirement for selling a game. It also has to be fun to play. A better example would be Crysis. It sold like 3 million copies or so despite the fact that it was ridiculously easy to just download a free-as-in-beer cracked version. The fact is that PC games can make a hell of a lot of money even if they are also massively pirated. So far no DRM (that wasn't backed by proprietary hardware) has stopped piracy for more than maybe a week or so. Usually it takes no more than 24-48 hours from game release day. Of course unpopular, obscure software can remain uncracked for years, but that is because it is too obscure for crackers to care about. Those are the kinds of apps that I am forced to crack myself.
If you choose to not buy something because of DRM or whatever else, that's fine, but then you aren't entitled to then play and enjoy the game.
Why not? Maybe I think I am entitled to play the game, but not to enjoy it. That is easy enough these days with all the dumbed down console ports. I played Crysis 2 for about 15 minutes before nearly falling asleep. I'm sure it's great fun for the console kiddies, but I found it dreadfully boring and rather ugly as well. I wouldn't buy that game even if it were DRM free. The best copy protection, perhaps the only truly effective one, is to make a boring, crappy game. And game developers these days seem to be quite proficient at that.
I would have no problem with DRM that just requires a serial# and that doesn't even try to prevent you from backing up your discs. I would have no problem buying such a game. I haven't seen games like that for more than a decade though. It wouldn't solve the resale problem for the publishers though. They can't stop the new owners from using the serial # from the previous owner. So most publishers would never go for it. Intrusive DRM has too many checked boxes for the publishers.
Last year I was living in a country where I couldn't even get a phone line let alone an internet connection and I played GTA4 all the time. I downloaded the relevant cracks to a usb keychain drive at an internet cafe and then brought it back to my computer. With cracks you definitely don't need an internet connection. If you do then the game hasn't been fully cracked and GTA4 definitely has. It's a fun game. I encourage you to find a crack for it. Unfortunately without your own internet connection you won't be able to use sites like TPB at least not directly. But I think you can download torrents using a java applet from www.bitlet.org. Go over to TPB and copy a URL and then paste it into bitlet. Should work, but I've never tried it.
You play PC games on your couch? Seriously?
If you lend a console game then you can't play it at the same time.
Unless you make a copy and lend that. I've never played a console game but aren't they mostly just DVDs? I'm somewhat surprised they don't still use proprietary ROM cartridges or some fancy read only holographic memory chip. Some storage device that is so unique that the only way to "copy" it would be to physically hack the hardware and dump the data to a more traditional device.
As for game price $50 is a good deal compared to other forms of entertainment like movies and live theater.
And how does it compare to a completely DRM-free version that is also free as in beer? Still a good deal?
I am thinking of this scene from The Insider:
So, what you're saying is it wasn't enough to fire me for no good reason. Now you question my integrity? On top of the humiliation of being fired, you threaten me? You threaten my family? It never crossed my mind not to honor my agreement. And I will tell you, Mr. Sandefur... and Brown & Williamson too - fuck me? Well, fuck you!
Great movie. The last sentiment is how I feel about DRM being shoved down my throat. They act like I don't have a choice. They act like their DRM is going to stop me from playing their stupid game. And they expect me to actually go out and pay for the privilege of getting fucked? Sorry. I'm not that much of a masochist. Damn right I am going to download the superior cracked version instead of their DRM-laden piece of shit. And I'm proud of it. The last game I bought was I think pre-millenium. Once the DRM became so "good" that I couldn't make backup copies of my discs any longer I stopped buying software completely. Nowadays I'd rather crack the software myself than pay for DRM infested crapware. It may be more expensive in terms of my time than just handing over the money, but (1) it will be a lower quality product and (2) it feels too much like blood money to me. I won't contribute one cent to the asshole publishers who package malware with their product for no good reason at all.
Another problem they have gotten themselves into is that people like me who used to be paying customers have become habitual pirates solely due to all their DRM. Now I'm so used to not paying for software that I don't know how I'd feel if a publisher with software that I wanted offered a DRM-free product. I suppose I would pay for it, but it would feel very weird. Hell, it has been like 10 years! Once something becomes a habit, well good luck fighting it. Even buying laws won't help you at that point.
I wouldn't play Fallout3 because I think Bethesda are a bunch of incompetent asses who have no idea how to make a fun game for anyone older than, say, 6, but I quite liked Fallout: New Vegas and would have considered buying it if there had been a DRM free version or something with just a serial # protection. For now I will just wait to support the developers with my purchase until the DRM is removed in a legal patch. If it is never removed then I will continue to play my flawless cracked version quite happily. If they want to play hardball fine. Two can play that game. To be fair I think Bethesda is the publisher and makes all decisions about DRM. So Obsidian isn't at fault in making their game unpurchasable. I don't think Obsidian themselves is at all pro-DRM. Certainly Black Isle wasn't. They are pretty much at the mercy of their publisher when it comes to DRM. If Obsidian ever self publishes a game I suspect we will see much less intrusive DRM if any at all.
Can you be more specific than "it runs like a piece of shit"? I also bought Arx from them back when they were the only ones with an up to date patched version, but I haven't actually installed it yet.
I actually remember when Slashdot was about nerdy things. You know, things like actually doing cool stuff with computers, networks, etc.,and then talking about them here, and not about pissing and moaning about how "The Man" was preventing us from being entertained by things that that others had created to which we felt we were entitled to, simply because we couldn't entertain ourselves, nor create anything nerdy.
Actually I think piracy is pretty nerdy. I have in fact cracked one piece of commercial software all by myself and I didn't feel bad at all. In fact it felt great. I was proud of myself. I can't think of anything more nerdy than cracking DRM. And it's great fun involving computers. Unpacking, decompiling, reading assembly language, all those lovely opcodes... All the raw beauty of information technology spread right out before you. Every computer science major should be required to crack a major piece of commercial software before graduating.
As far as blurays, the hackers at Slysoft have got our backs. They are clever and very skilled and have saved the bluray format for me. Instead of just sticking the disc in a standalone player (which I don't even own) I rip the disc to my drive and start the geeky command line process of demuxing it into its components, messing with the audio in Soundforge and remuxing the result with mkvmerge. Another command line utility. That isn't geeky? Not as geeky as actually writing utilites for the process like the ubergeek madshi did, but more geeky than just placing the disc in a standalone player and watching it on your TV, which is what hollywood wants you to do.
I have a blu-ray player, but I run Linux. Playing Blu-ray in linux is difficult and error prone.
Got news for you. It is difficult and error prone on Windows as well. Although at this point I own quite a few blurays I never play them directly. I'm not even sure I can. I rip each one myself. It's really not that difficult if you are a techie and it is much higher quality than the downloaded versions. Usually the video bitrates are 3-4 times higher and the audio usually has 24 bit lossless compression or sometimes 16 bit PCM. The audio almost always has lossy compression on the downloaded versions.
My workflow is: AnyDVD HD --> eac3to --> Soundforge -->mkvmerge.
Sometimes I recompress the video with staxrip but if you compress too much that kind of ruins the point in ripping it yourself in the first place. So I usually don't. You actually don't need to rip the video with AnyDVD first. eac3to can demux directly from the bluray if AnyDVD is running. Since my computer only has 2 speakers I use Soundforge to downmix to 2 channels from 5.1 etc. This is tricky to do right but makes a big difference in file size and Soundforge 10 does a great job with it. If you like multichannel audio you can skip that step. With the exception of mkvmerge all these apps are windows only. So you'd have to convert from bluray disk to mkv file on windows. If you don't recompress the video the process can take as little as 1-2 hours, but if you want to recompress my 4 Ghz Core 2 CPU takes about 3 days maxing out both cores. The process is embarrassingly parallel so an octocore would be nice in this context. It should only take about 18 hours on one of those.
When did Rockstar ever have interest in the PC? I thought they were primarily a console developer? Perhaps you are thinking of Crytek?
Routine traffic stop in 2015:
Mr. Cop: Let me see your license and registration.
Citizen: Fuck you.
Cop pulls out taser and shoots the suspect in the face. With his other hand he pulls out blinding device and flashes suspect in eyes. Then he pulls out a microwave active denial gun and aims painful millimeter waves at the suspect's face. Cop wishes he had 3 arms so that he could continuously use all 3 torture noncompliance devices at once. After 5 minutes of electrocution, heating, and blinding cop asks again for license and registration feeling very good about himself and all the power of his new toys. Police work is so much easier when you can force compliance with nonlethal torture devices.
And after we destroy the current system what do we replace it with?
We replace it with version 2 of the original system. We realize that merely dividing the government up into different branches does not significantly slow the process of tyranny. We do everything possible to stop "the people" from removing their own freedoms. We do not allow amendments to the constitution. We do not allow individual "judges" to reinterpret the original intent of the document out of existence. The founders were libertarians and followers of John Locke and that is a fine thing, but they were not perfect. Creating a republic based on a philosophy of individual freedom which actually lasts for generations is not easy.
We should really think of our Noble Experiment (a republic-if you can keep it) as a trial run, to shake out the bugs in the process. We now have the 20/20 vision of hindsight to try to go back and redesign a system where the inevitable creep toward tyranny is not so inevitable. Maybe it truly is unstoppable, like a law of nature, but there may be things we could do to better prevent or slow the eventual decline. It reminds me of one of my favorite ST:TNG episode, Clues (s04ep14), where the crew had to go back and correct their mistakes and try again. That's us. Think of the US Constitution as beta. Now we are out of beta testing and need a complete reboot.
There are a number of obvious and specific suggestions that I would have for the new constitution. The Bill of Rights were one possible mistake which the founders themselves were worried about. Hence the tenth amendment. They didn't foresee that people (and supreme court justices) would just ignore the tenth amendment. Actually I'm not sure that a specific enumeration of individual rights is such a bad thing. The problem is that their system was too dependent on the government itself being filled with fellow libertarians who believed in freedom. You have to assume that your new government will be filled with people who would like to destroy it, at least after a few generations have passed. You simply cannot give such "enemies" of freedom that kind of power. Our founders unfortunately did exactly that. There are lots of specifics that could be discussed, but now we have the benefit of hundreds of years of gradual decline into tyranny to help us devise a more bullet-proof system. One that hopefully doesn't rely on bullets to maintain.
21st century North Americans are very different philosophically from the original freedom loving 18th century colonists. The majority of Americans now don't want freedom. They despise the idea and think it is crazy, forgetting the very heritage of their own country. So what does The Revolution do about them? Should we force them to be free at the point of a gun? That is what our founders did of course, but I think we should give them the option to form their own republic. Our once great "union" of states could be divided up so there are republics for people of every major political philosophy. The US is big. There is enough land for everyone. I am thinking of 2 or 3 different sub-republics, each sovereign countries in their own right. Our republic is now divided up into states, but there is no reason we couldn't divide it into territories or provinces as well. Sort of like Quebec in Canada. Except that these territories or groups of states would be completely autonomous only connected by a very loose union like the EU. Really the only thing connecting the borders of these territories would be the right of anyone born within the old US borders to choose, perhaps at the age of 18, which territory they would like to be a citizen of. Or perhaps it could be like the EU where they would be free to live or work in any of the territories.
If you were in the mood for some old fashioned tyranny you could live in the territory/province modeled after the USSR/Cuba/China, a Marxist society, or at least one that tries t
well, we are orbiting the sun, so just kind of "letting go" of something lighter than ourselves would cause it to shoot off into interstellar space.
What do you mean by "letting go"? Do you mean giving an object escape velocity from the earth? To get to interstellar space it would also have to have enough velocity to escape from the gravity of the sun.
So basically if we had something smaller than the earth moving around the sun at the same velocity as the Earth
You mean like the moon? Or an orbiting spacecraft or satellite?
it would be going fast enough to escape the Sun's gravity, though it would have to avoid a few planets on the way out!
Are you talking about somehow "turning off" the gravity from the sun briefly? What you are saying doesn't make any sense to me. Are you implying that the moon, if it were not so close to the earth would simply automagically leave the solar system rather than staying in orbit around the sun?
This idea of turning off gravity is a curious one. Do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to? If we could somehow turn off the earth's gravity but not the sun's we could all literally jump off the earth (actually since the planet rotates we would presumably be thrown off), but we would still all individually be in orbit about the sun. To get farther away from the sun you have to accelerate either tangentially or directly away from the sun or some combination of the two.
Not only am I envious of his big brain, but he already has a girlfriend at age 12. I just hope he doesn't get so obsessed with pussy that he loses interest in anything else. He's super-intelligent and not ugly. Shouldn't there be a law against that or something? It's so unfair.
Someones going to be a virgin til their 40
You missed the part about him already having a girlfriend at age 12.
They think the law does not or should not apply to them
Or maybe they think some laws are stupid. Like the laws against software cracking and reverse engineering. Are you one of these people that thinks everything legal is right and everything illegal is wrong? For a thinking person one has nothing to do with the other. That is what "makes it okay".
Has it ever occurred to you that people might crack games because it is challenging and fun? Have you ever actually tried to crack software DRM? I did it once with some specialized software that wasn't popular enough to already have a crack and not only was the process itself enjoyable in a puzzle solving sort of way but it's a great feeling when you finally get it cracked. In some cases cracking a game may be a lot more fun than actually playing it. And the fact that it is illegal and forbidden makes it even more fun.
Of course actually releasing the crack is a different story, but wanting to share your hard work with other people who might appreciate it is another possible motivation. Not that there is anything wrong with wanting recognition for having solved an interesting and challenging puzzle. Even if that recognition has to always be anonymous.
Nobody forces anyone to buy a DRM-crippled game, that's entirely a decision made by the customer. And if enough people didn't buy enough games because of DRM crippling, then DRM would disappear overnight as a commercial failure and none of us would ever hear of it again.
But would it disappear? Would the publisher not just blame the less than expected sales on piracy? Now if not a single person bought the game and it was not even available at torrent sites then maybe they would conclude that their DRM is too draconian. But back in the real world I can't think of a single scenario where a game publisher would conclude that they are losing business because of DRM that turns their game from a purchase into a rental. It's hard to infer very much from sales of a game anyway. It's an experiment without a control.