I too used to pirate software but I am now proud to say that most of the software I use is Open Source, both within Windows XP & Linux.
In addition, because I have learnt to appreciate and understand software much better since using Linux for the 10 years I have done, the 4 or 5 commercial apps I do like on Windows (Alcohol 120%, Tag & Rename, XPLite, GetRight plus a couple of others) are fully registered to me, even though it would have been easy to use them Free Of Charge with a crack or keygen.
I played original and advanced D&D, as well as other RPGs, up until about the time D&D 3E came out - not because of it, just because I'd had enough of role-playing in general.
The thing about Gary Gygax's original D20 system was that it was great for quickly-resolved combats, especially with the good old THAC0 values, which made it great for just dungeon bashing or, with good role players, as a small core set of rules for campaigns where the players were experienced enough to "wing" everything else. If anything, the best campaigns I've played in were 1E or 2E (A)D&D campaigns where the DM just made stuff up when he needed it.
D&D 3E bought in all the rules for skills and that made it far too complex - if you want a great skill system then the straightforward Chaosium percentage system in Runequest, Call Of Cthulhu and Stormbinger was absolutely fine. But if the D20 system had used this, it would then have been accused of plagiarism.
Based on the amount of money the music companies are spending on DRM, copy protection and watermarking research, if they just put the money into making the cost of music a little cheaper, they might end up encouraging more people to legally pay for it in the first place.
I wouldn't have thought that you'd even need to re-encode it - just load it into your favourite audio editor and save it - perhaps make a very tiny adjustment to the normalization, that should kill any watermarking in the file.
It could be argued that because every MTV pretty-boy, corporate-puppet band now looks like every other pretty-boy, corporate band, this has caused a resurgence in good Indie, small-label music.
When MTV does the same magic on games, there may well be a resurgence in original, quirky, bedroom-developer games again, like there was on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64.
I wouldn't know. I hear an old favourite rock tune of mine start up on the radio, start to get a little concerned when I realise it's just a riff from that song being repeated over-and-over again, then some big black bloke starts talking over it... at which point I turn it off and go do something more interesting like clearing out some navel fluff.
I'm both an Apple fanatic and an audiophile, and I can tell you, if you want audiophile-quality playback and without 'missing' anything in the music assuming you've purchased the CD, then you need to be listening to that music on a stereo system of no less than $10,000 (U.S.) purchased from a professional sound shop.
Sorry, but I disagree completely.
A couple of years ago I went out and spent about £600 (= $1200) on a CD player, amplifier and speakers, I spent a lot of time listening to different set ups in that price range and not only was there a definite difference between the systems I listened to, but there was a much greater degree of clarity than on any cheaper system I'd previously owned.
My experience is that once you go beyond this amount of money, the improvements in audio quality lessen the more money you spend. Sure, there may be a lot of merit to spending to $10,000 for a hi-fi but then it's totally pointless unless you put it in an acoustically perfect room.
As for American hifi, go back some 20 years and some of the best priced hifi around was American-made Marantz stuff - I've not kept up with hifi too much in recent years so I don't know how they fare these days.
The point I am making is there is NO conclusive proof that man is the cause of the climatic changes that are currently happening.
I am prepared to listen to BOTH sides of the argument until the actual cause is proven - unfortunately, I considered the factual presentation of "The Great Global Warming Conspiracy" to be far more convincing that Al Gore's manufactured and cleverly edited "An Inconvenient Truth".
Simply because all of the environmentalists will jump on the bandwagon also & naturally rant on (as they have done already) about man-made global warming.
Just because you do not like what I am saying does not give you the right to stop me saying it.
I suggest you Google for "The Great Global Warming Conspiracy", a documentary wherein you will discover that:
1. Climate change is more than likely a solar phenomenon which *causes* more carbon to be released into the atmosphere
2. In "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore frigged his graph figures by about 60 years.
I'm not denying that the climate is changing but the fact is that man being the cause of that is *NOT* proven in any way - plus it's a geological fact that the Earth has been through at least four previous Ice Ages (="climate changes") long before man could have had any influence.
I get sick and tired of hearing teenyboppers moaning about how they don't want to buy entire CDs which contain two or three good tracks and the rest as fillers.
My answer to them is that they're therefore probably listening to entirely the wrong music and are not researching music carefully enough before they part with their money.
To me, as I guess to you also, a CD has always represented *excellent* value for money because before I've bought it I have already heard it and deemed it to be worth buying - yep, even to the point of downloading the album "illegally" from Usenet or Bittorrent, listening to it, then either deleting the downloads or buying the CD.
I hunt for the best prices, I don't consider CDs are overpriced & I'm very selective about my music - but I'm more than happy to pay the money for good music.
I don't for one minute accept that there is this huge horde of paedophile predators on the Internet - sure, they probably exist in small numbers but kids today are far more likely to be mugged for their mobile phones, bullied or be filmed being beaten up by one or more of their peers.
However, assuming that child pornography is manufactured purely because it makes someone rich, if that material is sold over the Internet then it's pretty safe to assume that a bank or credit card company is involved when someone buys that material.
So how about forcing those profiteering banks and credit card companies to police this? Name and shame the banks that provide money transfer facilities for the purchase of illicit material. If you take away the means for someone to collect money for it, surely that goes a hell of a long way to killing off the reasons to make it in the first place.
The only way I can see to make a truly safe system is to run each driver in its own VM, and create a virtual network between the drivers and the core OS.
But wouldn't that make your nice shiny new Windows system slow to the speed of a 386 33Mhz?
Slashdot Mirror
I too used to pirate software but I am now proud to say that most of the software I use is Open Source, both within Windows XP & Linux.
In addition, because I have learnt to appreciate and understand software much better since using Linux for the 10 years I have done, the 4 or 5 commercial apps I do like on Windows (Alcohol 120%, Tag & Rename, XPLite, GetRight plus a couple of others) are fully registered to me, even though it would have been easy to use them Free Of Charge with a crack or keygen.
The thing about Gary Gygax's original D20 system was that it was great for quickly-resolved combats, especially with the good old THAC0 values, which made it great for just dungeon bashing or, with good role players, as a small core set of rules for campaigns where the players were experienced enough to "wing" everything else. If anything, the best campaigns I've played in were 1E or 2E (A)D&D campaigns where the DM just made stuff up when he needed it.
D&D 3E bought in all the rules for skills and that made it far too complex - if you want a great skill system then the straightforward Chaosium percentage system in Runequest, Call Of Cthulhu and Stormbinger was absolutely fine. But if the D20 system had used this, it would then have been accused of plagiarism.
Based on the amount of money the music companies are spending on DRM, copy protection and watermarking research, if they just put the money into making the cost of music a little cheaper, they might end up encouraging more people to legally pay for it in the first place.
I wouldn't have thought that you'd even need to re-encode it - just load it into your favourite audio editor and save it - perhaps make a very tiny adjustment to the normalization, that should kill any watermarking in the file.
...and each one with an Avril Lavigne soundtrack.
It could be argued that because every MTV pretty-boy, corporate-puppet band now looks like every other pretty-boy, corporate band, this has caused a resurgence in good Indie, small-label music.
When MTV does the same magic on games, there may well be a resurgence in original, quirky, bedroom-developer games again, like there was on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64.
Jet Set Willy, here I come!
I wouldn't know. I hear an old favourite rock tune of mine start up on the radio, start to get a little concerned when I realise it's just a riff from that song being repeated over-and-over again, then some big black bloke starts talking over it... at which point I turn it off and go do something more interesting like clearing out some navel fluff.
...not satisfied with killing proper music, they now want to kill games.
...what's the speed of dark?
With a girl, it's depth of wallet.
Sorry, but I disagree completely.
A couple of years ago I went out and spent about £600 (= $1200) on a CD player, amplifier and speakers, I spent a lot of time listening to different set ups in that price range and not only was there a definite difference between the systems I listened to, but there was a much greater degree of clarity than on any cheaper system I'd previously owned.
My experience is that once you go beyond this amount of money, the improvements in audio quality lessen the more money you spend. Sure, there may be a lot of merit to spending to $10,000 for a hi-fi but then it's totally pointless unless you put it in an acoustically perfect room.
As for American hifi, go back some 20 years and some of the best priced hifi around was American-made Marantz stuff - I've not kept up with hifi too much in recent years so I don't know how they fare these days.
I am prepared to listen to BOTH sides of the argument until the actual cause is proven - unfortunately, I considered the factual presentation of "The Great Global Warming Conspiracy" to be far more convincing that Al Gore's manufactured and cleverly edited "An Inconvenient Truth".
Just because you do not like what I am saying does not give you the right to stop me saying it.
Cool! Where can i get some of that?
...if we all burn, then Microsoft burns too!
1. Climate change is more than likely a solar phenomenon which *causes* more carbon to be released into the atmosphere
2. In "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore frigged his graph figures by about 60 years.
I'm not denying that the climate is changing but the fact is that man being the cause of that is *NOT* proven in any way - plus it's a geological fact that the Earth has been through at least four previous Ice Ages (="climate changes") long before man could have had any influence.
Awww! How can anyone hurt a lickle mouse called "Grompee"!
My answer to them is that they're therefore probably listening to entirely the wrong music and are not researching music carefully enough before they part with their money.
To me, as I guess to you also, a CD has always represented *excellent* value for money because before I've bought it I have already heard it and deemed it to be worth buying - yep, even to the point of downloading the album "illegally" from Usenet or Bittorrent, listening to it, then either deleting the downloads or buying the CD.
I hunt for the best prices, I don't consider CDs are overpriced & I'm very selective about my music - but I'm more than happy to pay the money for good music.
Here we go again... of course, it can *never* be the fault of Apple!
Yawn!
However, assuming that child pornography is manufactured purely because it makes someone rich, if that material is sold over the Internet then it's pretty safe to assume that a bank or credit card company is involved when someone buys that material.
So how about forcing those profiteering banks and credit card companies to police this? Name and shame the banks that provide money transfer facilities for the purchase of illicit material. If you take away the means for someone to collect money for it, surely that goes a hell of a long way to killing off the reasons to make it in the first place.
But wouldn't that make your nice shiny new Windows system slow to the speed of a 386 33Mhz?
Oh, wait a minute...
A couple of small points:
1. Kiev is in (the capital city of) Ukraine, not Russia.
2. Whilst the former Soviet Republic was Communist, it is now a Democracy.
What's a Mac?
"There is no more pr0n here."
Bad luck, Microsoft, please try harder.