Every steam game phones home at every start up because you have to log in to your steam account before playing the game. UNLESS, you just put steam in offline mode, and then you can play every game you want - offline.
You are conveniently trying to apply some form of a non existing formula to products such as DVD's only because it suits you. It doesn't make any sense.
Sure, no one is working on making that DVD available but someone, many people, worked on creating the initial product. The method used for distribution is a digital copy. And while you might not like the pricing they put on these products it is still much cheaper than any other form of distribution (for both the creators and the customer). If you deny the creators their profit 2 things can happen:
1) No more DVD's will be created because it has become unprofitable business. 2) The creators will try and protect their DVD's through various copy protection systems, some of which will eventually invade your privacy to assure that protection.
You see, you lose in both cases.
BTW, how do you feel about blog linkjacking? You know, when people take other peoples images and copy them to their blog surrounding them with adsense. That this look moral to you?
What if a Fortune 500 company X takes your photos and uses it in a multi million dollar campaign, not even asking you for your permission. Are you going to be like "good for them, it's their right , it's only a digital copy"? I don't think so.
The air example is pretty much the worst example you can have since their is no one who is actually working on making air available, it's just there. If I was making air and everyone would have just stole it instead of paying me for my work I would simply stop making air.
The only fair analogy would be for you to imagine what would happen if your employer found a way not to pay you for your work and get away with it.
I can understand piracy, I mean, it's easy and chances of being cought are slime to none. But from here to making philosophical or economic arguments about why it is legal is simply hypocrisy.
Because its primary functions are gaming and programming, and neither of those would be seriously enhanced with a better sound card. Looks like someone hasn't left the basement in a while...
I don't think there is any other site in existence that covers Microsoft as throughly as slashdot. Hell, their are more Microsoft posts then Linux posts.
Slashdot has become a twisted version of a Microsoft fan site only instead of attracting fellow fans the goal of all these posts is so that everyone and his grandmother can repeat the same old washed up anti Microsoft slogans.
I love baseball. I view it as a large scale RPG only that I am not the DM nor a player (when I want to actually play I fire up ootp which allows me to play several adventures in a short amount of time or even include some of the heroes from old lore into my adventure.
I don't find baseball on T.V very interesting but it's a fun sport to follow up on
is the biggest problem of the PC gaming industry. Maybe it's just me, but those same hardcore gamers that are the demographics for shiny graphics games, are the same people who pirate games without thinking twice.
People mention that console games are pirated as well but the fact are that: 1)Pirating PC games is so much easier, many times it even gives a better experience than the actual original purchase. 2)The majority of console gamer are not computer savvy and the thought of opening their console and voiding the warranty makes them shiver up their spine and give up the idea of free games. Apart for that, to get free games for the console they will have to either download huge isos or go and purchase them in the local pirate HQ. All this just too complicated to non technical console owners.
From my perspective, it's a war, and every purchase prevented is less resources for the enemy to use against me and mine. What is the goal of the enemy and what is your goal? Are your thoughts the same about software piracy?
Haven't we always said that the rationale behind open source is you can offer the product for free, then offer paid support?
Why is it every time someone actually implements this, they're criticized? Because it (usually ) doesn't work, and when it does (usually) a pay model would have secured a much bigger profit.
Office 2007 Ribbon Bar: Ribbon, Pearl, Quick Access Toolbar, Status Bar, etc.
Office 2003 and XP look: Office-style toolbars and menus, Outlook-style shortcut bar, print preview, live font picker, color picker, etc.
Internet Explorer look: Rebars and task panes.
Visual Studio look: sophisticated docking functionality, auto hide windows, property grids, MDI tabs, tab groups, etc.
Vista theme support: Dynamically switch between themes!
"On the fly" menus and toolbar customization: Users can customize the running application through live drag and drop of menu items and toolbar buttons.
Shell management classes: Use these classes to enumerate folders, drives and items, browse for folders and more.
You can check any firefox related article on slashdot and see that everyone is complaining about the memory usage problems. It looks like you and your friends are the exception and not the norm.
Reading the list, I think there are two major flaws: system requirements, and lack of any killer features for end users. The main feature for the end user is the new user interface (which looks great), but since it requires too many system resources (nothing too staggering IMO. I also believe that people will be catching up soon so that the average newly sold PC will be able to run vista with no problems) , a regular user is left with the notion that Windows just became slower. At the end of the day I don't think that there is something more annoying to users than sluggish performance.
On the positive side, as much as/. has tried, it does look like Vista is a much safer OS than XP.
I don't feel bad about this, it was bound to happen sooner or later. It was more important for me to know when will the first game come out that I will not be able to run at max settings. Now that the Crysis demo is out...
I bought a 8800 GTS 320MB about year after it came out, I don't consider it being an early adopter. Now, Nvidia brings a better card for a lower price. That's very different from the usual price drop on older cards.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe you should give them a link the article and as a tip on how to improve sales.
CreateHeaven()
Every steam game phones home at every start up because you have to log in to your steam account before playing the game. UNLESS, you just put steam in offline mode, and then you can play every game you want - offline.
Agreed. I could understand if it was bashing Microsoft in some away but it doesn't... /. editors, is that too much to ask?
But even they haven't managed to eliminate those who try to get their comments to the top by adding it as a reply to the first comment.
You are conveniently trying to apply some form of a non existing formula to products such as DVD's only because it suits you. It doesn't make any sense.
Sure, no one is working on making that DVD available but someone, many people, worked on creating the initial product. The method used for distribution is a digital copy. And while you might not like the pricing they put on these products it is still much cheaper than any other form of distribution (for both the creators and the customer). If you deny the creators their profit 2 things can happen:
1) No more DVD's will be created because it has become unprofitable business.
2) The creators will try and protect their DVD's through various copy protection systems, some of which will eventually invade your privacy to assure that protection.
You see, you lose in both cases.
BTW, how do you feel about blog linkjacking? You know, when people take other peoples images and copy them to their blog surrounding them with adsense. That this look moral to you?
What if a Fortune 500 company X takes your photos and uses it in a multi million dollar campaign, not even asking you for your permission. Are you going to be like "good for them, it's their right , it's only a digital copy"? I don't think so.
The air example is pretty much the worst example you can have since their is no one who is actually working on making air available, it's just there. If I was making air and everyone would have just stole it instead of paying me for my work I would simply stop making air.
The only fair analogy would be for you to imagine what would happen if your employer found a way not to pay you for your work and get away with it.
I can understand piracy, I mean, it's easy and chances of being cought are slime to none. But from here to making philosophical or economic arguments about why it is legal is simply hypocrisy.
I don't think there is any other site in existence that covers Microsoft as throughly as slashdot. Hell, their are more Microsoft posts then Linux posts.
Slashdot has become a twisted version of a Microsoft fan site only instead of attracting fellow fans the goal of all these posts is so that everyone and his grandmother can repeat the same old washed up anti Microsoft slogans.
Aren't you bored already?
I love baseball. I view it as a large scale RPG only that I am not the DM nor a player (when I want to actually play I fire up ootp which allows me to play several adventures in a short amount of time or even include some of the heroes from old lore into my adventure.
I don't find baseball on T.V very interesting but it's a fun sport to follow up on
is the biggest problem of the PC gaming industry. Maybe it's just me, but those same hardcore gamers that are the demographics for shiny graphics games, are the same people who pirate games without thinking twice.
People mention that console games are pirated as well but the fact are that:
1)Pirating PC games is so much easier, many times it even gives a better experience than the actual original purchase.
2)The majority of console gamer are not computer savvy and the thought of opening their console and voiding the warranty makes them shiver up their spine and give up the idea of free games. Apart for that, to get free games for the console they will have to either download huge isos or go and purchase them in the local pirate HQ. All this just too complicated to non technical console owners.
I don't really care, I just want the free karma.
And what if 90% of the population already had the special bottle-opener at home anyway?
I also find your post unusual as it made go back and check the links in the original /. post.
You've just become the main suspect.
Take a look at your spam inbox and see where those sites are hosted.
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2389517&SiteID=1
Office 2007 Ribbon Bar: Ribbon, Pearl, Quick Access Toolbar, Status Bar, etc.
Office 2003 and XP look: Office-style toolbars and menus, Outlook-style shortcut bar, print preview, live font picker, color picker, etc.
Internet Explorer look: Rebars and task panes.
Visual Studio look: sophisticated docking functionality, auto hide windows, property grids, MDI tabs, tab groups, etc.
Vista theme support: Dynamically switch between themes!
"On the fly" menus and toolbar customization: Users can customize the running application through live drag and drop of menu items and toolbar buttons.
Shell management classes: Use these classes to enumerate folders, drives and items, browse for folders and more.
+ many additional controls
Please?
You can check any firefox related article on slashdot and see that everyone is complaining about the memory usage problems. It looks like you and your friends are the exception and not the norm.
There is a nice summery of Vista criticism on wikipedia After reading a lot of /. I felt the same as you.
/. has tried, it does look like Vista is a much safer OS than XP.
Reading the list, I think there are two major flaws: system requirements, and lack of any killer features for end users. The main feature for the end user is the new user interface (which looks great), but since it requires too many system resources (nothing too staggering IMO. I also believe that people will be catching up soon so that the average newly sold PC will be able to run vista with no problems) , a regular user is left with the notion that Windows just became slower. At the end of the day I don't think that there is something more annoying to users than sluggish performance.
On the positive side, as much as
I don't feel bad about this, it was bound to happen sooner or later. It was more important for me to know when will the first game come out that I will not be able to run at max settings. Now that the Crysis demo is out...
I bought a 8800 GTS 320MB about year after it came out, I don't consider it being an early adopter. Now, Nvidia brings a better card for a lower price. That's very different from the usual price drop on older cards.
And the latest PDT and Pydev make Eclipse the best (free) IDE for PHP and Python development.