I'm running my last remaining Windows installation less and less by the day but neither have I ever even considered owning a Mac.
The games above all run fine under Wine in Linux, plus Linux has a Steam port coming soon.
The only thing I have done recently to accomodate Linux gaming is to change out my last ATI graphics card for an NVIDIA one. The proprietary ATI drivers in Linux suck for framerates compared to the NVIDIA ones but framerates for an NVIDIA-driven game running in Wine on Linux (or even natively) seem to be pretty much the same as they are on Windows when I've made some tests.
The only thing that might make the comparison slightly unfair is that my Windows installation is 32-bit XP whereas my Linux installations are all 64-bit Gentoo Linux - but even WINE is running in 32-bit emulation mode, as far as I'm aware.
I don't wish to be pedantic but there are all sorts of problems with the above command string:
1. "kill -9" requires a process ID number, it doesn't accept a process name or "all". "killall" will accept process names or do some string matching.
2. Since "kill -9 all" would generate an error, it is that error that would be sorted and sent to/dev/null. It's therefore no surprise to me that you never spotted the problems with this command string since you would never have seen any errors.
My advice is always see what's in STDOUT and STDERR before sending anything to/dev/null.
I don't see in how much more black & white the evidence could be presented to you - unless you are truly in denial of the effect of your own piracy?
FACT: Most gamers have limited budgets for games - i.e. they would like to own more games than they can actually afford.
FACT: Given that game A has no copy protection and game B has copy protection, gamers with limited budgets are therefore more likely to copy game A and buy game B.
FACT: Piracy has an effect on the sales of game A.
...Chuck McBride, a Texas beef farmer and brother to the SCO CEO, has made claims that Linux is responsible for the still-births of two of his calves this year...
The first few installments of that series are quite eye-opening. Media plays the same games today, but does so differently. It's all about population control. In the Stones' case, it was about the secret services handling the creation and distribution of counter-culture thinking, corrupting it and keeping it powerless when it could instead have been a danger to the establishment.
Thanks for the link - it's gone midnight here now but I'll read it sometime during the week and comment. It's always been my perception that the hippy era was perhaps the one and only time when music started to get truly dangerous as an influence in counter-culture - even the punk era was entirely manufactured for profit, although it did produce a few good musicians. But I'm certainly interested to read any commentary with a different view on that.
My thinking is that learning is fun and ignorance can kill you, so I see zero drawback, but whether or not to learn remains one of the most critically defining choices humans ever make in their lives.
I like to keep well informed because, if nothing else, it makes for interesting discussion.:-) I just haven't looked into the background of music and culture particularly deeply, I just enjoy a piece of music for what it is when I decide to listen to it. But, as with the article above, there may be a reason to change that thinking and go read more about it.
I don't know if you contribute into a retirement pension or not, but the value of most peoples' pension funds consists, at least in part, of shares - indirectly, that makes them shareholders.
If a lot of my pension fund is, for example, invested in BP shares, then I would be hoping that the board of BP would be doing their utmost to keep those share values high by plugging that leaking pipe in the Gulf Of Mexico - because if they mess up, the share price drops, so does my pension fund and I get mighty hacked off as a result.
It's therefore entirely reasonable to expect games company shareholders to expect a similar care over maintaining share prices and entirely possible that piracy devalues those shares. But does that make them any more greedy or selfish than you or I with our BP-invested pension funds?
Piracy is a ready-made scapegoat for all the media/software companies. They have fine-tune the scapegoat campaign so much so that they can almost blame everything on piracy.
Yes, I'm sure more than one media company has blamed crap sales on piracy rather than the quality of a product. But if that's the full picture, how come there are more torrent downloads for games, media and music deemed as superb quality? That's where your argument falls to bits.
Ask youself: How many of the singer / actor / movie / album / software on the shelf today are worth the price-tag?
Pretty much all of them, if you're an intelligent honest consumer like me.
For a great album, I have no problem paying £10 for a CD that contains a piece of music that I will thoroughly enjoy for the next 30 years or so (or indeed have already enjoyed for 30 years or so). Because I research my music well, I never buy a bad album - if I know an album will only contain 2 or 3 good tracks, then I wait until I can buy it in a bargain sale or at a car boot sale and pay only a few pounds for it. Based on the lower amount of good music on it, the price is still worth the money.
Exactly the same principle applies to movies and games - do your research, have patience and buy it when it's the price you want to pay for it.
Everything sux and yet they (the movie/music/software companies) expect us to pay and pay and pay through our nose for their wares.
Yes, in which case you exercise some self control and don't buy it - maybe even drop them an email and tell them why. But you don't copy it either because you're strong-willed and realise it's *JUST* entertainment you can find in countless other ways; what you don't do is let their advertising turn you into a frothing-at-the-mouth puppet who just *HAS* to have it, even if it's an illegal copy.
In my case, I haven't bought ONE SINGLE COPY OF MUSIC CD for the past 5 years. It's not that I do not like music, I do. But the music on the market, oh please !
If you're honest about not downloading music illegally and just listening to the radio, then you have my respect for the strength of your conviction which clearly follows my comment above.
However, many so-called music fans aren't like you, they do not possess the strength of will you or I clearly have. They have not stopped to consider the possibility that it's because enough people like me are prepared to buy music that it gets released in the first place. This makes them freeloaders who crow about how they get all their downloads for free but are so inately stupid that they fail to realise that they would have nothing to download if everyone else was a freeloader like them.
And I have NOT downloaded any music (pay or pirated) either. Turn on the radio and you know what I mean --- same old shit, repackaged.
Can I therefore suggest you change radio stations or use some other legal Internet resources to listen to your music? Most of it is shit but if you consider yourself a true music fan, then you should maybe go spend some time finding other music sources to listen to - maybe then you will, like me, find good musi
1. In my experience, people who pirate games are not people who do not buy any other software. The usual case is they're people with a budget that's not big enough to afford all the games they want to play - therefore from the list of games they want, they pirate what they can and spend their money on a game as a last resort when they cannot get a good working crack of it.
2. The value games depreciates rapidly - a PC game that costs £35 in December can be in a budget range for less than 1/3 of the cost by June the following year. With a limited gaming budget, if you wait 6 months you buy 3 times as many titles for your money, yet people still pirate on the day of release. The conclusion, therefore, is that many pirate due to impatience and needing to be "the first on the street" rather than because they cannot afford the games - otherwise they'd just wait for the games to get cheaper.
3. Why would someone who can afford to buy a high-range gaming PC or a console not realise how much games cost before they bought it, unless they're planning to just pirate games anyway?
4. Justifying your piracy because you "never buy games" is like someone trying to justify driving under the influence because they're an alcoholic.
Just because you cannot see it does not mean it does not exist - and let me put it this way.
Imagine a games company releases a game to disappointing sales. The chances are that the company is already part-way through developing their next release which is being done in secret because they don't want someone else stealing the ideas and getting to release date first.
What happens if those sales are so disappointing that the games company gets wound up through going bankrupt? This has happened to MANY games companies over the past few years, it's a fact.
So what happens to that new game they were developing? Are you going to hear about it? No, because that game will still be important IP that will be owned, and possibly used, by whoever buys the assets of the original company. And maybe the new company doesn't develop it any further and just scratches the whole project? Or just uses some of the ideas or code in a new and completely different game?
If piracy has contributed to the poor sales of a game, as many games companies claim it does, then here is a perfectly reasonable scenario where a creative work may be scrapped because of piracy and why you may never hear about it.
Since you're obviously a Linux expert, you also know that AT&T distributed UNIX freely when it was invented in the 1970s. If you set aside custom OSes that were running on specific hardware platforms and mainframes, then it demonstrates people were giving away software quite a while before others realised they could make money from it.
Linux just preserves that idea of making free software and the part of it that isn't the core OS kernel (i.e. most of it) is GNU software from a time when some people decided to maintain a free version of UNIX after companies like Sun and HP started to charge for their own commercial versions of UNIX.
So please do not reveal your stupidity by trying to justify software piracy using Linux as an example - if anything, Linux creates a genuine free alternative to commercial software, meaning that the people that pirate commercial software just look like even bigger idiots & hyprocrites for not having the patience or strength of character to even try it.
Then this entire discussion is pointless because you really have no connection with the people who play Zygna games.
I hope a few people mod you down for that comment at the implication that because they play Zynga games, they also eat a lot of fast food & enjoy reality TV - because that's how I read it.
You're just standing up to defend someone you don't even know because it seems like a fun past time.
Wrong. Completely. I just take the view that they themselves know best what they consider to be entertainment and not my place to pour scorn on them just because it's not what I consider to be entertainment.
These replies are on par with playing Farmville, there is no point and it is not fun. But at least my fingers get some exercise, I guess.
Your opinion and I would probably agree if I'd ever played it. The closest I got was Mafia Wars, it was fine for a time but got boring for me, so I stopped.
I seem to recall my missus playing Farmville for a while though. She's never played a computer game in her life, goes to the gym five times a week and is a qualified professional accountant and Project Manager. She doesn't eat fast food (I'm the house chef and cook fresh food daily) and watches a few soap operas but hates reality TV.
FAIL = Your sweeping generalisation.
If you took a broad generalization as personal then I really don't know what to say. I guess I'm sorry that I inadvertently offended you.
I don't play the games, why would I take offence? I just don't like people who sneer at others doing the things that make them happy.
But I now see that people who are sensitive about their vice of playing shitty games could have been offended as well.
I do actually feel sorry for you, if I'm honest. You're clearly incapable of holding back on your scorn for others - is it a jealousy thing?
What the *HELL* business is it of yours anyway? The game is available for people to play, clearly a lot of them enjoy playing it. So keep your nose out, it's none of your business.
Heck, I would argue that most new bands which get top billing these days have been manufactured from the ground up.
Whether or not you like them, would you include The Rolling Stones in that description? I like the Stones without them being one my favourite bands (I don't want the discussion to generate into an "I like, you like" argument by using one of my favourite bands as an example) and whilst there's a strong case for arguing whether or not they're over the hill now, the fact is they earned top billing through years of cutting their teeth on the club circuit - unlike Britney Spears who came out of a plastic music mould and was just catapulted to the top overnight.
So in my view, there are artists who have earned a right to top billing and some who haven't - that's the distinction for me, not *just* because a band is mega-popular.
I don't understand the question, and that last line seems really weird to me. It's like you WANT a corporate advertising entity to do your thinking for you. I find exploring to be half the fun. I HATE being told what I am supposed to like and consume. It's offensive to me because I don't want to be treated like a lab rat or a farm animal.
No, advertising doesn't think for me - but I buy at least one music magazine here in the UK that's dedicated to the music I like - so if there's an ad for a new album in there that looks interesting, then it may lead me to check that album out. But at the same time, music is my number one hobby and I spend a lot of time reading reviews and web sites to find interesting music - so I don't just buy stuff that's advertised at me, by any means.
I know you mean this turn of phrase in jest, but dude! I think you need to revisit, "Jagged Little Pill". And Alanis Morissette was by no means an isolated case of industry abuse of a child performer.
I can't claim to be a fan of hers but I respect talent and recognise she's good at what she does. If she was abused by the music industry, isn't it as much the fault of her parents for not protecting her from that? I'm very anti-corporation in my views but there's a big difference between BP fucking up the Gulf Of Mexico and music artists being exploited for money - get a decent lawyer, that's my advice!
You sound pretty much in the dark overall. And there's nothing wrong with that; it means there are a lot of cool and interesting ideas you get to explore. Have fun!
I've never worked in the music industry if that's what you mean. I've read a few music biographies but otherwise consider music to be an "inoffensive" product that isn't messing up the planet or causing world poverty, so I just care about the quality of the end product - so yes, I probably am in the dark but then don't see a reason to be more informed, if I'm honest.
...what about an Eris owner trying to call a left-handed iPhone 4 owning friend who just happens to be holding his iPhone 4 by the wrong corner at that particular moment - they have *NO* hope of talking to each other.
That seems very tenuous - piracy creating freeware???
I think you need to go back and look at your computer history a little - UNIX was created during the 1970s within AT&T as a product that was given away freely to universities and academics, quite a while before anyone decided you could make serious money for software that wasn't tied into a specific hardware platform - i.e. freeware preceded commercial software.
And quite frankly, as an Open Source user (mainly on Linux but also Windows) I take offence at your comments.
Yes, I did go through a phase many years ago of using a bit of copied software, key generators and cracks but gave it up for two reasons - firstly, because it was too time-consuming dealing with all the viruses and malware that was hidden into all these cracks, and, secondly, when I started using "free as in beer" software, it felt hypocritical using cracked software as well.
In addition to that, I actually went and legally purchased quite a few Windows apps that I couldn't do without and I'm pleased I did - I use the all those apps within WINE on Linux also and, as a registered user of the software, the creators of it have invariably been very helpful in getting their stuff to run in WINE, even if they don't directly support it.
People that create free software do it for altruism or because they want to learn about programming and contributing software projects. People that create commercial software do it because they want to make a living from it and cover the costs of supporting it for their users. Some people contribute to both types of software projects but piracy has nothing to do with free software and denies an income to those who want to get financial reward from commercial software.
If anything, free software just shows pirates to be even bigger hypocrites - because those that use it have invariably never even tried to use the legally free alternatives.
Then I apologise in advance for my sentience and reasoning ability as I have always strived to spend my hard earned cash based on informed judgement rather than blindly consuming the crap fed to me in advertising, all of which I consider to be bad.
As far as I'm concerned, if something is good value for money then word will get around and I'll find out about it.
Libraries are a bad analogy because the books are still being paid for under some kind of a license to the publishers, but IANAL (I Am Not A Librarian) - ultimately, I assume, those licenses are paid for by our taxes.
Putting jokes about 3D Realms' development times aside, why would any company with a franchise as huge and as popular as Duke Nukem choose not to develop another game within it, unless it was simply about the fear of not recouping the development costs in actual sales?
At the time DNF development started, in 1997, game sales were a lot higher and piracy far less rife - Duke Nukem 3D was an astounding success for 3D Realms and that came out in 1996, when there was no such thing as high speed Internet and CD recording was expensive and still in its infancy.
Ultimately, 3D Realms wasted a lot of time and money developing DNF as far as they did, and clearly the chopping and changing of things like game engines at several points shows the project was leeching money - but the fact is some 12 years later, in 2009, PC games sales were much lower and piracy has a clear impact on that.
I suspect we'll never know if piracy was the main cause of DNF being abandoned, but certainly its potential effect on final sales must have been a factor in the decision.
It is incredibly difficult to find any artistic merit to them
Why do you need to find "artistic merit" in something that is designed to be simple entertainment?
Personally, I can go to the cinema and enjoy a movie that raises important social issues or splatters blood, gore, big guns and semi-naked women across the screen at me for two hours - the only thing that matters is did I come away feeling that the entertainment value justified the cost and effort.
and on top of that they aren't actually entertaining to the vast majority of people who play these mindless games
You're actually contradicting yourself here. Surely someone who didn't find something entertaining wouldn't do it, the whole purpose of entertainment being to fill some spare time with something amusing? Just because *YOU* consider it mindless does not automatically mean everyone else does.
But there are a lot of things that suck that are still popular, like cheap fast food and reality television.
I myself do not eat fast food or watch reality television because I don't like either. But I've plenty of other things going on around me not to care that much, and if people do enjoy that stuff then let them get on with it. I'm not that self-conscious that I need to find ways to elevate myself above the general populace so I can sneer down at them.
Also the personal attacks on me make it pretty obvious that your post is a troll. But I had fun responding anyways.
I'm afraid you started with the personal attacks by elevating yourself to a sneering position over people who do enjoy those games. Or are they supposed to stop what they're doing and take your opinions as the written law just because you deigned to voice your opinions?
Filesharing is a minor issue compared to industrial counterfeiting
Absolute rubbish!
Industrial counterfeiting creates something tangible with specific groups of people involved in the manufacture, distribution and selling of counterfeit goods. If the law enforcement authorities have a mind to investigate counterfeiting, then it usually does not take them too long to find out the source and who is doing it - the problems come from trying to shut down such operations if they're in other countries and getting local law enforcement involved; even then, they can shut one operation down only for another one to start up because very specific criminals mastermind them.
Filesharing can be done by anyone with an Internet connection and it's difficult to get to the individuals doing it - DHCP IP addresses make it difficult to tie down an individual to an IP address without looking at ISP log files which, in turn, creates issues around privacy.
Go onto any torrent tracker and it's not uncommon to see particular popular music, game or movie title torrents downloaded 10,000+ times or so - plus popular titles probably have a number of different torrents on the go at once.
Then think about what each person does with those files once they're downloaded - gives them to friends, puts them up on Rapidshare or posts them on Usenet.
The entertainment industry does have a lot of questions to answer around the quality and costs of a lot of its products, but you really are fooling yourself if you honestly believe industrial counterfeiting is more of a problem than filesharing.
Just because you don't like or play those games does not mean that other people share that view.
I have a Facebook account, I played Mafia Wars for a couple of weeks, got bored with it and have been nowhere near it, or any other Facebook games, since. Plus when I kept getting updates from those games by friends who were playing them, I just hid the comments. It took me about 2 minutes to do, the people that play the games are happy and I'm happy, problem solved.
You sound like the sort of person that probably needs a new hobby if all you have to do is sit on the fence and sneer at people who don't share your views - or maybe it's insecurity at feeling left out?
And guess what? I don't give a shit... just like no music artist cares what I earn as a lowly technical consultant. You enter the music business, you sort your own contract out...
All I care about is buying a good music CD at a fair price - and if I pay £10 for a CD I'm going to enjoy (or have enjoyed) for 30 plus years, then that's great value for money in my eyes.
You want to get all political about it? Go ahead - me, I'm just an honest music fan and you're a freeloader. Get used to it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm running my last remaining Windows installation less and less by the day but neither have I ever even considered owning a Mac.
The games above all run fine under Wine in Linux, plus Linux has a Steam port coming soon.
The only thing I have done recently to accomodate Linux gaming is to change out my last ATI graphics card for an NVIDIA one. The proprietary ATI drivers in Linux suck for framerates compared to the NVIDIA ones but framerates for an NVIDIA-driven game running in Wine on Linux (or even natively) seem to be pretty much the same as they are on Windows when I've made some tests.
The only thing that might make the comparison slightly unfair is that my Windows installation is 32-bit XP whereas my Linux installations are all 64-bit Gentoo Linux - but even WINE is running in 32-bit emulation mode, as far as I'm aware.
Sorry, but despite your lengthy comment, it's far more basic than that.
If you want the freedom to run entirely what software you want then you will choose a Linux or Android based tablet.
If you're prepared to compromise on freedom a little for the sake of familiarity, then you will choose a Windows based tablet.
If you have far too much money, have lost your mind and need one vendor to nursemaid your computing experience, you will buy an iPad.
...can we not sue Kevin McBride because, as Darl's brother, some of Darl's genetic code was copied into him without our permission?
Or send him a "With Deepest Sympathy" card or something?
Kill -9 all | sort > /dev/null
I don't wish to be pedantic but there are all sorts of problems with the above command string:
1. "kill -9" requires a process ID number, it doesn't accept a process name or "all". "killall" will accept process names or do some string matching.
2. Since "kill -9 all" would generate an error, it is that error that would be sorted and sent to /dev/null. It's therefore no surprise to me that you never spotted the problems with this command string since you would never have seen any errors.
My advice is always see what's in STDOUT and STDERR before sending anything to /dev/null.
I don't see in how much more black & white the evidence could be presented to you - unless you are truly in denial of the effect of your own piracy?
FACT: Most gamers have limited budgets for games - i.e. they would like to own more games than they can actually afford.
FACT: Given that game A has no copy protection and game B has copy protection, gamers with limited budgets are therefore more likely to copy game A and buy game B.
FACT: Piracy has an effect on the sales of game A.
...Chuck McBride, a Texas beef farmer and brother to the SCO CEO, has made claims that Linux is responsible for the still-births of two of his calves this year...
The first few installments of that series are quite eye-opening. Media plays the same games today, but does so differently. It's all about population control. In the Stones' case, it was about the secret services handling the creation and distribution of counter-culture thinking, corrupting it and keeping it powerless when it could instead have been a danger to the establishment.
Thanks for the link - it's gone midnight here now but I'll read it sometime during the week and comment. It's always been my perception that the hippy era was perhaps the one and only time when music started to get truly dangerous as an influence in counter-culture - even the punk era was entirely manufactured for profit, although it did produce a few good musicians. But I'm certainly interested to read any commentary with a different view on that.
My thinking is that learning is fun and ignorance can kill you, so I see zero drawback, but whether or not to learn remains one of the most critically defining choices humans ever make in their lives.
I like to keep well informed because, if nothing else, it makes for interesting discussion. :-) I just haven't looked into the background of music and culture particularly deeply, I just enjoy a piece of music for what it is when I decide to listen to it. But, as with the article above, there may be a reason to change that thinking and go read more about it.
1. Shareholders.
I don't know if you contribute into a retirement pension or not, but the value of most peoples' pension funds consists, at least in part, of shares - indirectly, that makes them shareholders.
If a lot of my pension fund is, for example, invested in BP shares, then I would be hoping that the board of BP would be doing their utmost to keep those share values high by plugging that leaking pipe in the Gulf Of Mexico - because if they mess up, the share price drops, so does my pension fund and I get mighty hacked off as a result.
It's therefore entirely reasonable to expect games company shareholders to expect a similar care over maintaining share prices and entirely possible that piracy devalues those shares. But does that make them any more greedy or selfish than you or I with our BP-invested pension funds?
Piracy is a ready-made scapegoat for all the media/software companies. They have fine-tune the scapegoat campaign so much so that they can almost blame everything on piracy.
Yes, I'm sure more than one media company has blamed crap sales on piracy rather than the quality of a product. But if that's the full picture, how come there are more torrent downloads for games, media and music deemed as superb quality? That's where your argument falls to bits.
Ask youself: How many of the singer / actor / movie / album / software on the shelf today are worth the price-tag?
Pretty much all of them, if you're an intelligent honest consumer like me.
For a great album, I have no problem paying £10 for a CD that contains a piece of music that I will thoroughly enjoy for the next 30 years or so (or indeed have already enjoyed for 30 years or so). Because I research my music well, I never buy a bad album - if I know an album will only contain 2 or 3 good tracks, then I wait until I can buy it in a bargain sale or at a car boot sale and pay only a few pounds for it. Based on the lower amount of good music on it, the price is still worth the money.
Exactly the same principle applies to movies and games - do your research, have patience and buy it when it's the price you want to pay for it.
Everything sux and yet they (the movie/music/software companies) expect us to pay and pay and pay through our nose for their wares.
Yes, in which case you exercise some self control and don't buy it - maybe even drop them an email and tell them why. But you don't copy it either because you're strong-willed and realise it's *JUST* entertainment you can find in countless other ways; what you don't do is let their advertising turn you into a frothing-at-the-mouth puppet who just *HAS* to have it, even if it's an illegal copy.
In my case, I haven't bought ONE SINGLE COPY OF MUSIC CD for the past 5 years. It's not that I do not like music, I do. But the music on the market, oh please !
If you're honest about not downloading music illegally and just listening to the radio, then you have my respect for the strength of your conviction which clearly follows my comment above.
However, many so-called music fans aren't like you, they do not possess the strength of will you or I clearly have. They have not stopped to consider the possibility that it's because enough people like me are prepared to buy music that it gets released in the first place. This makes them freeloaders who crow about how they get all their downloads for free but are so inately stupid that they fail to realise that they would have nothing to download if everyone else was a freeloader like them.
And I have NOT downloaded any music (pay or pirated) either. Turn on the radio and you know what I mean --- same old shit, repackaged.
Can I therefore suggest you change radio stations or use some other legal Internet resources to listen to your music? Most of it is shit but if you consider yourself a true music fan, then you should maybe go spend some time finding other music sources to listen to - maybe then you will, like me, find good musi
1. In my experience, people who pirate games are not people who do not buy any other software. The usual case is they're people with a budget that's not big enough to afford all the games they want to play - therefore from the list of games they want, they pirate what they can and spend their money on a game as a last resort when they cannot get a good working crack of it.
2. The value games depreciates rapidly - a PC game that costs £35 in December can be in a budget range for less than 1/3 of the cost by June the following year. With a limited gaming budget, if you wait 6 months you buy 3 times as many titles for your money, yet people still pirate on the day of release. The conclusion, therefore, is that many pirate due to impatience and needing to be "the first on the street" rather than because they cannot afford the games - otherwise they'd just wait for the games to get cheaper.
3. Why would someone who can afford to buy a high-range gaming PC or a console not realise how much games cost before they bought it, unless they're planning to just pirate games anyway?
4. Justifying your piracy because you "never buy games" is like someone trying to justify driving under the influence because they're an alcoholic.
Just because you cannot see it does not mean it does not exist - and let me put it this way.
Imagine a games company releases a game to disappointing sales. The chances are that the company is already part-way through developing their next release which is being done in secret because they don't want someone else stealing the ideas and getting to release date first.
What happens if those sales are so disappointing that the games company gets wound up through going bankrupt? This has happened to MANY games companies over the past few years, it's a fact.
So what happens to that new game they were developing? Are you going to hear about it? No, because that game will still be important IP that will be owned, and possibly used, by whoever buys the assets of the original company. And maybe the new company doesn't develop it any further and just scratches the whole project? Or just uses some of the ideas or code in a new and completely different game?
If piracy has contributed to the poor sales of a game, as many games companies claim it does, then here is a perfectly reasonable scenario where a creative work may be scrapped because of piracy and why you may never hear about it.
Free software != pirated software.
Since you're obviously a Linux expert, you also know that AT&T distributed UNIX freely when it was invented in the 1970s. If you set aside custom OSes that were running on specific hardware platforms and mainframes, then it demonstrates people were giving away software quite a while before others realised they could make money from it.
Linux just preserves that idea of making free software and the part of it that isn't the core OS kernel (i.e. most of it) is GNU software from a time when some people decided to maintain a free version of UNIX after companies like Sun and HP started to charge for their own commercial versions of UNIX.
So please do not reveal your stupidity by trying to justify software piracy using Linux as an example - if anything, Linux creates a genuine free alternative to commercial software, meaning that the people that pirate commercial software just look like even bigger idiots & hyprocrites for not having the patience or strength of character to even try it.
Then this entire discussion is pointless because you really have no connection with the people who play Zygna games.
I hope a few people mod you down for that comment at the implication that because they play Zynga games, they also eat a lot of fast food & enjoy reality TV - because that's how I read it.
You're just standing up to defend someone you don't even know because it seems like a fun past time.
Wrong. Completely. I just take the view that they themselves know best what they consider to be entertainment and not my place to pour scorn on them just because it's not what I consider to be entertainment.
These replies are on par with playing Farmville, there is no point and it is not fun. But at least my fingers get some exercise, I guess.
Your opinion and I would probably agree if I'd ever played it. The closest I got was Mafia Wars, it was fine for a time but got boring for me, so I stopped.
I seem to recall my missus playing Farmville for a while though. She's never played a computer game in her life, goes to the gym five times a week and is a qualified professional accountant and Project Manager. She doesn't eat fast food (I'm the house chef and cook fresh food daily) and watches a few soap operas but hates reality TV.
FAIL = Your sweeping generalisation.
If you took a broad generalization as personal then I really don't know what to say. I guess I'm sorry that I inadvertently offended you.
I don't play the games, why would I take offence? I just don't like people who sneer at others doing the things that make them happy.
But I now see that people who are sensitive about their vice of playing shitty games could have been offended as well.
I do actually feel sorry for you, if I'm honest. You're clearly incapable of holding back on your scorn for others - is it a jealousy thing?
What the *HELL* business is it of yours anyway? The game is available for people to play, clearly a lot of them enjoy playing it. So keep your nose out, it's none of your business.
Heck, I would argue that most new bands which get top billing these days have been manufactured from the ground up.
Whether or not you like them, would you include The Rolling Stones in that description? I like the Stones without them being one my favourite bands (I don't want the discussion to generate into an "I like, you like" argument by using one of my favourite bands as an example) and whilst there's a strong case for arguing whether or not they're over the hill now, the fact is they earned top billing through years of cutting their teeth on the club circuit - unlike Britney Spears who came out of a plastic music mould and was just catapulted to the top overnight.
So in my view, there are artists who have earned a right to top billing and some who haven't - that's the distinction for me, not *just* because a band is mega-popular.
I don't understand the question, and that last line seems really weird to me. It's like you WANT a corporate advertising entity to do your thinking for you. I find exploring to be half the fun. I HATE being told what I am supposed to like and consume. It's offensive to me because I don't want to be treated like a lab rat or a farm animal.
No, advertising doesn't think for me - but I buy at least one music magazine here in the UK that's dedicated to the music I like - so if there's an ad for a new album in there that looks interesting, then it may lead me to check that album out. But at the same time, music is my number one hobby and I spend a lot of time reading reviews and web sites to find interesting music - so I don't just buy stuff that's advertised at me, by any means.
I know you mean this turn of phrase in jest, but dude! I think you need to revisit, "Jagged Little Pill". And Alanis Morissette was by no means an isolated case of industry abuse of a child performer.
I can't claim to be a fan of hers but I respect talent and recognise she's good at what she does. If she was abused by the music industry, isn't it as much the fault of her parents for not protecting her from that? I'm very anti-corporation in my views but there's a big difference between BP fucking up the Gulf Of Mexico and music artists being exploited for money - get a decent lawyer, that's my advice!
You sound pretty much in the dark overall. And there's nothing wrong with that; it means there are a lot of cool and interesting ideas you get to explore. Have fun!
I've never worked in the music industry if that's what you mean. I've read a few music biographies but otherwise consider music to be an "inoffensive" product that isn't messing up the planet or causing world poverty, so I just care about the quality of the end product - so yes, I probably am in the dark but then don't see a reason to be more informed, if I'm honest.
...what about an Eris owner trying to call a left-handed iPhone 4 owning friend who just happens to be holding his iPhone 4 by the wrong corner at that particular moment - they have *NO* hope of talking to each other.
Good one, I never thought of that! :-)
Being friendless, I have no need to make any calls, therefore the problem does not exist for me! Thanks for fixing it for me.
That seems very tenuous - piracy creating freeware???
I think you need to go back and look at your computer history a little - UNIX was created during the 1970s within AT&T as a product that was given away freely to universities and academics, quite a while before anyone decided you could make serious money for software that wasn't tied into a specific hardware platform - i.e. freeware preceded commercial software.
And quite frankly, as an Open Source user (mainly on Linux but also Windows) I take offence at your comments.
Yes, I did go through a phase many years ago of using a bit of copied software, key generators and cracks but gave it up for two reasons - firstly, because it was too time-consuming dealing with all the viruses and malware that was hidden into all these cracks, and, secondly, when I started using "free as in beer" software, it felt hypocritical using cracked software as well.
In addition to that, I actually went and legally purchased quite a few Windows apps that I couldn't do without and I'm pleased I did - I use the all those apps within WINE on Linux also and, as a registered user of the software, the creators of it have invariably been very helpful in getting their stuff to run in WINE, even if they don't directly support it.
People that create free software do it for altruism or because they want to learn about programming and contributing software projects. People that create commercial software do it because they want to make a living from it and cover the costs of supporting it for their users. Some people contribute to both types of software projects but piracy has nothing to do with free software and denies an income to those who want to get financial reward from commercial software.
If anything, free software just shows pirates to be even bigger hypocrites - because those that use it have invariably never even tried to use the legally free alternatives.
So you know how to cut and paste in your browser - but your point is precisely what?
Then I apologise in advance for my sentience and reasoning ability as I have always strived to spend my hard earned cash based on informed judgement rather than blindly consuming the crap fed to me in advertising, all of which I consider to be bad.
As far as I'm concerned, if something is good value for money then word will get around and I'll find out about it.
Libraries are a bad analogy because the books are still being paid for under some kind of a license to the publishers, but IANAL (I Am Not A Librarian) - ultimately, I assume, those licenses are paid for by our taxes.
As they say, "Many a true word spoken in jest".
Putting jokes about 3D Realms' development times aside, why would any company with a franchise as huge and as popular as Duke Nukem choose not to develop another game within it, unless it was simply about the fear of not recouping the development costs in actual sales?
At the time DNF development started, in 1997, game sales were a lot higher and piracy far less rife - Duke Nukem 3D was an astounding success for 3D Realms and that came out in 1996, when there was no such thing as high speed Internet and CD recording was expensive and still in its infancy.
Ultimately, 3D Realms wasted a lot of time and money developing DNF as far as they did, and clearly the chopping and changing of things like game engines at several points shows the project was leeching money - but the fact is some 12 years later, in 2009, PC games sales were much lower and piracy has a clear impact on that.
I suspect we'll never know if piracy was the main cause of DNF being abandoned, but certainly its potential effect on final sales must have been a factor in the decision.
Then I respect your greater tolerance and patience with them! I myself tend to manage enough time for two words, the second one usually being "off".
It is incredibly difficult to find any artistic merit to them
Why do you need to find "artistic merit" in something that is designed to be simple entertainment?
Personally, I can go to the cinema and enjoy a movie that raises important social issues or splatters blood, gore, big guns and semi-naked women across the screen at me for two hours - the only thing that matters is did I come away feeling that the entertainment value justified the cost and effort.
and on top of that they aren't actually entertaining to the vast majority of people who play these mindless games
You're actually contradicting yourself here. Surely someone who didn't find something entertaining wouldn't do it, the whole purpose of entertainment being to fill some spare time with something amusing? Just because *YOU* consider it mindless does not automatically mean everyone else does.
But there are a lot of things that suck that are still popular, like cheap fast food and reality television.
I myself do not eat fast food or watch reality television because I don't like either. But I've plenty of other things going on around me not to care that much, and if people do enjoy that stuff then let them get on with it. I'm not that self-conscious that I need to find ways to elevate myself above the general populace so I can sneer down at them.
Also the personal attacks on me make it pretty obvious that your post is a troll. But I had fun responding anyways.
I'm afraid you started with the personal attacks by elevating yourself to a sneering position over people who do enjoy those games. Or are they supposed to stop what they're doing and take your opinions as the written law just because you deigned to voice your opinions?
Filesharing is a minor issue compared to industrial counterfeiting
Absolute rubbish!
Industrial counterfeiting creates something tangible with specific groups of people involved in the manufacture, distribution and selling of counterfeit goods. If the law enforcement authorities have a mind to investigate counterfeiting, then it usually does not take them too long to find out the source and who is doing it - the problems come from trying to shut down such operations if they're in other countries and getting local law enforcement involved; even then, they can shut one operation down only for another one to start up because very specific criminals mastermind them.
Filesharing can be done by anyone with an Internet connection and it's difficult to get to the individuals doing it - DHCP IP addresses make it difficult to tie down an individual to an IP address without looking at ISP log files which, in turn, creates issues around privacy.
Go onto any torrent tracker and it's not uncommon to see particular popular music, game or movie title torrents downloaded 10,000+ times or so - plus popular titles probably have a number of different torrents on the go at once.
Then think about what each person does with those files once they're downloaded - gives them to friends, puts them up on Rapidshare or posts them on Usenet.
The entertainment industry does have a lot of questions to answer around the quality and costs of a lot of its products, but you really are fooling yourself if you honestly believe industrial counterfeiting is more of a problem than filesharing.
And your point is what, precisely?
Just because you don't like or play those games does not mean that other people share that view.
I have a Facebook account, I played Mafia Wars for a couple of weeks, got bored with it and have been nowhere near it, or any other Facebook games, since. Plus when I kept getting updates from those games by friends who were playing them, I just hid the comments. It took me about 2 minutes to do, the people that play the games are happy and I'm happy, problem solved.
You sound like the sort of person that probably needs a new hobby if all you have to do is sit on the fence and sneer at people who don't share your views - or maybe it's insecurity at feeling left out?
And guess what? I don't give a shit... just like no music artist cares what I earn as a lowly technical consultant. You enter the music business, you sort your own contract out...
All I care about is buying a good music CD at a fair price - and if I pay £10 for a CD I'm going to enjoy (or have enjoyed) for 30 plus years, then that's great value for money in my eyes.
You want to get all political about it? Go ahead - me, I'm just an honest music fan and you're a freeloader. Get used to it.