I have no real problem with the steam "product activation", if it prevents piracy and doesn't cause a major problem for the user then thats good news isn't it?
I agree with you 100%. Steam "product activation" doesn't prevent piracy because it will be cracked, and it created a major problem for the legitimate user in that you can't re-install the software a few years later. It seems like we're in agreement then, steam is the worst thing to ever happen to gaming.
Extra trouble? You only have to enter your CD key once to associate your purchase with your steam username and password, you can then install steam on any computer
Yes, not being able to play a game I've legally purchased is extra trouble. If you bought the original HL would you enjoy going back and playing it now? With HL2 you can't (at least not legally).
Linking the software purchase to your account presents even bigger problems. Can you resell the game? Copyright law explicitly allows you to transfer a software license. If I buy a game that turns out out I hate it, I know I can resell it on eBay for about 70% of what I paid, then I'm only out $15 instead of $50.
The only concern I have with steam is if valve drop support for it, leaving my HL2 game unplayable, but I could easily go download a crack and continue to play should that happen.
So you agree it will be cracked and therefore this will do nothing to decrease piracy, and you also agree that they could drop support for it and then you're out all the money you've spent on their crippled games unless you pirate it...So the legal customers are left out in the cold while the pirated play the game.
The advantages of having the return in a soft format is it's easy to search through it to find out what's going on, if the numbers don't add up and the IRS wants to know why, it's a lot easier to track the number through in the software. That's the whole purpose for having the software.
If you're going to have to do it with the paper copy of the return instead, then why in the world would you buy the software in the first place? It defeats the whole purpose.
Would you buy a word processor that wouldn't let you edit a document after 6 months, instead you have to print it out and manually cross out and correct the errors? Even if they claimed that restriction would prevent piracy?
You know, the year after quicktax destroyed their product with product activation, turbotax had a huge ad campaign about how their product wasn't rendered useless that way, so I bought turbotax that year, then the next year they added the same crippling. I think after that I hate turbotax even more.
For most users who aren't super-careful with their discs, the odds of losing or damaging a CD over a few years are greater than the odds of Valve going under.
I don't think the odds of most poeple losing or damaging their discs are greater than 99%. That's where I'd estimate the odds of Valve going under in the next few years. This is a direct attack on their customer base and they don't have a monopoly on games like MS did on the OS; this will hurt their sales a lot.
Why would you think they'll have a no-actication patch? What's in it for them? When do companies disable CD checks on older products? I've never heard a company doing that.
I'm not offended that I need to activate a game, I'm disgusted by it. How is this a benefit to consumers while MS doing the same thing is not? Just because you're already used to them pulling crap?.
If I buy software it better have guarantees that I can install it on as many machines as I want for as far into the future as I want.
We will not see online games require activation in the future because (a) it's too easy to crack. There's cracks for every product activation piece of software ever made including windows, and (b) it is too damaging to the product for users to accept, so it will reduce the number of paying customers.
From that developer's point of view, what good is it to cut down piracy 90% if it also cuts down sales 20%? Here's a great way to cut piracy 100%; don't create the game and nobody will pirate it. IMO product activation is a very tiny step beyond the product not existing at all.
I spent quite a bit on games, and no product activation software will ever get a cent of my money. I'm hardly the only one who feels that way.
I resent that. I've been protesting it since XP came out. The first time QuickTax included product activation I didn't notice and bought it. I sent it back under their 100% satisfaction guarantee. I'd had a registered copy every year from 1992 (when it was cantax) until that happened in 2002, so they knew exactly how good a customer I was.
Now as far as "relatively-harmless one-time online activation", that's total BS. It's one-time in the sense that you can only play the game one time. You can't re-install it on a new computer or even the same one without the blessing the of the company. That is incredibly intrusive and harmful to the point that the software is useless garbarge.
It also will be cracked, that's a given. So this only hurts the legit customers.
The issue is not a tin foil hat about sending data to the mothership. It's that the software won't work in a few years.
Let's say you do your taxes with turbotax online and in 5 years you get audited but still have the soft copy of your return...a lot of good that does you; you have to go beg turbotax to let you access the 5 year old software...assuming they even exist anymore. There is no way I'd pay for such a broken "service".
By authorize do you mean like typical software where it runs a check locally or product activation? I have no problem with the former (though it seems silly to force legitimate users to go to the extra trouble), but I would never buy any software with product activation.
So you wont buy a game that needs to be activated online, but you will pay a monthly fee in addition to around 60$ at the register for a game that can ONLY be played online?
I'll pay a monthly fee for a service. It costs to run those servers and it is an online game. I'm not too happy about the initial fee.
I will not ask a company for permission to run a game locally on my own computer after I've already paid for it.
I agree with most of what you said. It is sheet film, not paper we're using though, so the development times are for film. It depends heavily on the chemicals, but for the infosol I'm used to, it's around 8 minutes for developer and about the same for fixer.
Also, you're right about film being cheaper and better, but I just don't have the time anymore. I am really interested in the process this film uses.
I love the idea, but 2x3" plates are a bit on the small side, I've always done 4x5s. I sort of lost interest in holography because of lack of time to develop the film, so I might have to pick up this kit.
My question is do/will you have larger plates, and in the kit, is the laser diode and optics suitable to cover the larger area?
This kit uses a laser diode, not a NeNe laser. As far as I know the laser diodes just aren't as good. They also use some sort of instant film, which has its perks; I don't have the time to spend in the darkroom anymore, but I'll believe the quality when I see it, though I am quite interested in seeing it. I wonder if anyone who doesn't have fond memories of making holograms would be at all interested in this kit. It seems to me like more of a nostalgia thing like tbose old video games than a cool new thing.
It is ordinary film (in a sheet film format, I used to use black and white 4x5" film that's about $1/sheet in 25 packs.
Basically, to make a hologram you start with a single source of monochromatic and in phase light (a laser), split the beam into two so they will still be in phase and at the same frequency. Then use one beam to illuminate the film directly (referrence beam) and the other to illuminate the object and then the film after bouncing off the object (subject beam).
The result is that you create an interference pattern of lightwaves on the film, and depending on the shape of the object, the waves in the subject beam are delayed by various amounts.
The result is that when light passes through this interference pattern on the film, it forms a real (3D) image of the original object that caused the interferrence pattern.
Popular Electronics had a great article on making your own holograms in 1992, and it was nothing new then exept that lasers were getting cheap enough to be practical.
There's even lots of websites now on using a laser pointer to do it, but that doesn't seem to work as well.
The most difficuilt part of the process is getting the table to be vibration free enough since a montion of less than a wavelength (~0.6 microns) will spoil the hologram.
"According to Gladstone, the audience does not notice the scanning progress. "The impulses are only 20 ms in length. Neurons in the brain need about 40 ms to recognize the light source. And the head normally will turn after 200 ms"
An electronic camera flash strobe has a duration of about 40 microseconds, about 1000 times shorter than the time the "nuurons in the brain need to recognize the light source". Last time I checked, I can certainly see a camera flash when it goes off.
I have built a stoboscope that pulses LEDs for 20 microseconds at a few hertz to a few hundred hertz. It is very visable.
Liquid gasoline is quite stable. You can put out a lit match in a vat of gasoline, it's only the vapor that is flamable, and the gas tank on a car is carefully designed to keep the gas from getting out and vaporizing.
I've seen someone throw a lit cigaratte into an open steel drum of gasoline and the cigarette just went out when it submerged. (He thought it was water and turned white as a sheet when he realized what he'd done).
Note, this deliberately ignores the fact that most salespeople probably wouldn't be able to help you even if you did know what you wanted to do with the computer. That's a completely different issue.
I don't think that's a different issue. Most computer sales drones can't or don't want to help a customer pick out the best computer for them. They'll just influence them to get the one that gives them the highest commission.
Part of the problem is that these 'average' users will go to stores like best buy or compusa. Think of how crappy the selection is there, there's about 10 pre-bundled systems and none of them are customized to any user's needs, so no matter what the user wants it for, it would be specifically suitable.
When I buy a computer, I know exactly what I want, and I go to the little stores where they offer no advice and I just buy the components to put together. At that type of store, I can get exactly what I want but there's nobody to ask what I need it for.
I agree that the "What do you want to use the computer for?" question from a salesperson is pretty stupid, but you should know before you go into the store. At least in the slashdot crowd, we keep up on what's out there and have a pretty good idea what we want to do. As far as Aunt Millie doing video editing, she should know she wants to do that before she enters the store.
The top-of-the-range stuff is the biggest rip-off in terms of price per length of time you get to use it. I discovered that a long time ago. I bought a high-end ATI 9600 baud modem for $600 because it had all sorts of great features. I could have bought a cheap one for $300, but I figured I use my modem a lot and I want the best. A year later, I replaced it with a 14.4k modem that cost $150 and didn't have the nice features but it was 50% faster so it was unambiguously better. It just doesn't pay to get the bells and whistles because the core features get stale so fast.
Does it matter if your CD-RW drive can burn at 8x or 40x when the DVD+-RW drives are under $100?
First Dell offers the cheapest crap of the week they can find especially in their low end lines, and if you buy one of their machines, you're looking for trouble.
If we ignore that, which Dell can you buy for under $1200 (the 17" iMac with student discount), that includes a very high quality 17" LCD display (oops, Dell doesn't sell good displays), and can outperform a 1.6 GHz G5 with 533 MHz frontside bus, GeForce FX 5200, and 80 Gig SATA HD.
I hope you realize that clockspeed is a useless way to meausre CPU performance. My powerbook with a 1.33GHz G4 runs rings around my desktop Athlon XP 2600+, even on video compression. So with a Mac, you pay LESS for a machine that runs FASTER.
Besides that, windows has a lot of problems with drivers because it tries to support so many different pieces of hardware, most of which don't even follow the specs. Since Apple makes the system and the OS, they make sure they work together. I have an uptime of 152 days on my powerbook let's see you top that in windows.
The Mac wins in IT familiarity; that's why I bought it. It's BSD, how can you say windows beats BSD in IT familiarity with a straight face? Less applications is a non-issue. Do you really need to choose between 40 programs for any basic function, a choice of 3-4 like on the Mac is fine. You do lose out on video games, but that's what a console is for.
I don't think it more expensive than Wintel anymore. The notebooks have been quite competitive for years. When you take a look at what the 12" iBook gives you for $1000 ($900 with student/teacher discount), it's wintel that looks overpriced.
For desktops, have a look at the iMac for $1300 including a beautiful 17" flat panel screen. Considering the flat panel display alone will cost around $400-$500 for a PC, unless you're looking at cheap crap on the PC side, that's quite competitive.
There's more than just the two options. There's also MacOS which is at least as good.
The main problems with the mac arise from its lack of popularity, even even factoring that in, it's still does the desktop job better than windows.
I think your argument is that if an item is going to be brought to market, it will be made in the most efficient way..it doesn't follow that the market picks the best item.
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I have no real problem with the steam "product activation", if it prevents piracy and doesn't cause a major problem for the user then thats good news isn't it?
I agree with you 100%. Steam "product activation" doesn't prevent piracy because it will be cracked, and it created a major problem for the legitimate user in that you can't re-install the software a few years later. It seems like we're in agreement then, steam is the worst thing to ever happen to gaming.
Extra trouble? You only have to enter your CD key once to associate your purchase with your steam username and password, you can then install steam on any computer
Yes, not being able to play a game I've legally purchased is extra trouble. If you bought the original HL would you enjoy going back and playing it now? With HL2 you can't (at least not legally).
Linking the software purchase to your account presents even bigger problems. Can you resell the game? Copyright law explicitly allows you to transfer a software license. If I buy a game that turns out out I hate it, I know I can resell it on eBay for about 70% of what I paid, then I'm only out $15 instead of $50.
The only concern I have with steam is if valve drop support for it, leaving my HL2 game unplayable, but I could easily go download a crack and continue to play should that happen.
So you agree it will be cracked and therefore this will do nothing to decrease piracy, and you also agree that they could drop support for it and then you're out all the money you've spent on their crippled games unless you pirate it...So the legal customers are left out in the cold while the pirated play the game.
Why are you arguing that this is okay???
The advantages of having the return in a soft format is it's easy to search through it to find out what's going on, if the numbers don't add up and the IRS wants to know why, it's a lot easier to track the number through in the software. That's the whole purpose for having the software.
If you're going to have to do it with the paper copy of the return instead, then why in the world would you buy the software in the first place? It defeats the whole purpose.
Would you buy a word processor that wouldn't let you edit a document after 6 months, instead you have to print it out and manually cross out and correct the errors? Even if they claimed that restriction would prevent piracy?
You know, the year after quicktax destroyed their product with product activation, turbotax had a huge ad campaign about how their product wasn't rendered useless that way, so I bought turbotax that year, then the next year they added the same crippling. I think after that I hate turbotax even more.
For most users who aren't super-careful with their discs, the odds of losing or damaging a CD over a few years are greater than the odds of Valve going under.
I don't think the odds of most poeple losing or damaging their discs are greater than 99%. That's where I'd estimate the odds of Valve going under in the next few years. This is a direct attack on their customer base and they don't have a monopoly on games like MS did on the OS; this will hurt their sales a lot.
Why would you think they'll have a no-actication patch? What's in it for them? When do companies disable CD checks on older products? I've never heard a company doing that.
I'm not offended that I need to activate a game, I'm disgusted by it. How is this a benefit to consumers while MS doing the same thing is not? Just because you're already used to them pulling crap?.
If I buy software it better have guarantees that I can install it on as many machines as I want for as far into the future as I want.
We will not see online games require activation in the future because (a) it's too easy to crack. There's cracks for every product activation piece of software ever made including windows, and (b) it is too damaging to the product for users to accept, so it will reduce the number of paying customers.
From that developer's point of view, what good is it to cut down piracy 90% if it also cuts down sales 20%? Here's a great way to cut piracy 100%; don't create the game and nobody will pirate it. IMO product activation is a very tiny step beyond the product not existing at all.
I spent quite a bit on games, and no product activation software will ever get a cent of my money. I'm hardly the only one who feels that way.
I resent that. I've been protesting it since XP came out. The first time QuickTax included product activation I didn't notice and bought it. I sent it back under their 100% satisfaction guarantee. I'd had a registered copy every year from 1992 (when it was cantax) until that happened in 2002, so they knew exactly how good a customer I was.
Now as far as "relatively-harmless one-time online activation", that's total BS. It's one-time in the sense that you can only play the game one time. You can't re-install it on a new computer or even the same one without the blessing the of the company. That is incredibly intrusive and harmful to the point that the software is useless garbarge.
It also will be cracked, that's a given. So this only hurts the legit customers.
Absolutely right. It will be the Mac for me.
The issue is not a tin foil hat about sending data to the mothership. It's that the software won't work in a few years.
Let's say you do your taxes with turbotax online and in 5 years you get audited but still have the soft copy of your return...a lot of good that does you; you have to go beg turbotax to let you access the 5 year old software...assuming they even exist anymore. There is no way I'd pay for such a broken "service".
By authorize do you mean like typical software where it runs a check locally or product activation? I have no problem with the former (though it seems silly to force legitimate users to go to the extra trouble), but I would never buy any software with product activation.
So you wont buy a game that needs to be activated online, but you will pay a monthly fee in addition to around 60$ at the register for a game that can ONLY be played online?
I'll pay a monthly fee for a service. It costs to run those servers and it is an online game. I'm not too happy about the initial fee.
I will not ask a company for permission to run a game locally on my own computer after I've already paid for it.
The game has to be activated via STEAM before you can play it. Even for single player
...and this is why I wouldn't even consider buying the game.
Besides, just 10 more days until WoW.
I agree with most of what you said. It is sheet film, not paper we're using though, so the development times are for film. It depends heavily on the chemicals, but for the infosol I'm used to, it's around 8 minutes for developer and about the same for fixer. Also, you're right about film being cheaper and better, but I just don't have the time anymore. I am really interested in the process this film uses.
You can't show a hologram on a CRT. The film stores an interference patten, not actual pixels.
Hopefully he will read this.
I love the idea, but 2x3" plates are a bit on the small side, I've always done 4x5s. I sort of lost interest in holography because of lack of time to develop the film, so I might have to pick up this kit.
My question is do/will you have larger plates, and in the kit, is the laser diode and optics suitable to cover the larger area?
Jason
ProfQuotes
This kit uses a laser diode, not a NeNe laser. As far as I know the laser diodes just aren't as good. They also use some sort of instant film, which has its perks; I don't have the time to spend in the darkroom anymore, but I'll believe the quality when I see it, though I am quite interested in seeing it. I wonder if anyone who doesn't have fond memories of making holograms would be at all interested in this kit. It seems to me like more of a nostalgia thing like tbose old video games than a cool new thing.
Jason
ProfQuotes
It is ordinary film (in a sheet film format, I used to use black and white 4x5" film that's about $1/sheet in 25 packs.
Basically, to make a hologram you start with a single source of monochromatic and in phase light (a laser), split the beam into two so they will still be in phase and at the same frequency. Then use one beam to illuminate the film directly (referrence beam) and the other to illuminate the object and then the film after bouncing off the object (subject beam).
The result is that you create an interference pattern of lightwaves on the film, and depending on the shape of the object, the waves in the subject beam are delayed by various amounts.
The result is that when light passes through this interference pattern on the film, it forms a real (3D) image of the original object that caused the interferrence pattern.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Popular Electronics had a great article on making your own holograms in 1992, and it was nothing new then exept that lasers were getting cheap enough to be practical.
There's even lots of websites now on using a laser pointer to do it, but that doesn't seem to work as well.
The most difficuilt part of the process is getting the table to be vibration free enough since a montion of less than a wavelength (~0.6 microns) will spoil the hologram.
Jason
ProfQuotes
This looks like serious competition for Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum.
The Science Fiction Museum has much more realistic content.
Jason
ProfQuotes
"According to Gladstone, the audience does not notice the scanning progress. "The impulses are only 20 ms in length. Neurons in the brain need about 40 ms to recognize the light source. And the head normally will turn after 200 ms"
An electronic camera flash strobe has a duration of about 40 microseconds, about 1000 times shorter than the time the "nuurons in the brain need to recognize the light source". Last time I checked, I can certainly see a camera flash when it goes off. I have built a stoboscope that pulses LEDs for 20 microseconds at a few hertz to a few hundred hertz. It is very visable.
Liquid gasoline is quite stable. You can put out a lit match in a vat of gasoline, it's only the vapor that is flamable, and the gas tank on a car is carefully designed to keep the gas from getting out and vaporizing.
I've seen someone throw a lit cigaratte into an open steel drum of gasoline and the cigarette just went out when it submerged. (He thought it was water and turned white as a sheet when he realized what he'd done).
Note, this deliberately ignores the fact that most salespeople probably wouldn't be able to help you even if you did know what you wanted to do with the computer. That's a completely different issue.
I don't think that's a different issue. Most computer sales drones can't or don't want to help a customer pick out the best computer for them. They'll just influence them to get the one that gives them the highest commission.
Part of the problem is that these 'average' users will go to stores like best buy or compusa. Think of how crappy the selection is there, there's about 10 pre-bundled systems and none of them are customized to any user's needs, so no matter what the user wants it for, it would be specifically suitable.
When I buy a computer, I know exactly what I want, and I go to the little stores where they offer no advice and I just buy the components to put together. At that type of store, I can get exactly what I want but there's nobody to ask what I need it for.
I agree that the "What do you want to use the computer for?" question from a salesperson is pretty stupid, but you should know before you go into the store. At least in the slashdot crowd, we keep up on what's out there and have a pretty good idea what we want to do. As far as Aunt Millie doing video editing, she should know she wants to do that before she enters the store.
The top-of-the-range stuff is the biggest rip-off in terms of price per length of time you get to use it. I discovered that a long time ago. I bought a high-end ATI 9600 baud modem for $600 because it had all sorts of great features. I could have bought a cheap one for $300, but I figured I use my modem a lot and I want the best. A year later, I replaced it with a 14.4k modem that cost $150 and didn't have the nice features but it was 50% faster so it was unambiguously better. It just doesn't pay to get the bells and whistles because the core features get stale so fast.
Does it matter if your CD-RW drive can burn at 8x or 40x when the DVD+-RW drives are under $100?
Jason
ProfQuotes
If your computer still does everything you want it to, don't upgrade.
Jason
ProfQuotes
First Dell offers the cheapest crap of the week they can find especially in their low end lines, and if you buy one of their machines, you're looking for trouble.
If we ignore that, which Dell can you buy for under $1200 (the 17" iMac with student discount), that includes a very high quality 17" LCD display (oops, Dell doesn't sell good displays), and can outperform a 1.6 GHz G5 with 533 MHz frontside bus, GeForce FX 5200, and 80 Gig SATA HD.
I hope you realize that clockspeed is a useless way to meausre CPU performance. My powerbook with a 1.33GHz G4 runs rings around my desktop Athlon XP 2600+, even on video compression. So with a Mac, you pay LESS for a machine that runs FASTER.
Besides that, windows has a lot of problems with drivers because it tries to support so many different pieces of hardware, most of which don't even follow the specs. Since Apple makes the system and the OS, they make sure they work together. I have an uptime of 152 days on my powerbook let's see you top that in windows.
The Mac wins in IT familiarity; that's why I bought it. It's BSD, how can you say windows beats BSD in IT familiarity with a straight face? Less applications is a non-issue. Do you really need to choose between 40 programs for any basic function, a choice of 3-4 like on the Mac is fine. You do lose out on video games, but that's what a console is for.
I don't think it more expensive than Wintel anymore. The notebooks have been quite competitive for years. When you take a look at what the 12" iBook gives you for $1000 ($900 with student/teacher discount), it's wintel that looks overpriced.
For desktops, have a look at the iMac for $1300 including a beautiful 17" flat panel screen. Considering the flat panel display alone will cost around $400-$500 for a PC, unless you're looking at cheap crap on the PC side, that's quite competitive.
There's more than just the two options. There's also MacOS which is at least as good.
The main problems with the mac arise from its lack of popularity, even even factoring that in, it's still does the desktop job better than windows.
I think your argument is that if an item is going to be brought to market, it will be made in the most efficient way..it doesn't follow that the market picks the best item.