My first would have been Liz Shaw, although she never had much impact for me. Jo Grant was a bigger hit with me as a kid because she was more familiar to me since she acted like a big kid. Plus I thought she was the hottest woman on TV at the time.
But Sarah Jane was such a strong character, more forthright and proactive than the other two companions I had seen. She also was the first one (for me) to cross the border of regeneration. I think that the warmth of Tom Baker's Doctor may have coloured how I saw Sarah Jane. Perhaps they really weren't as close as I imagined; it is just that their relationship post-regeneration seemed friendlier.
She will be missed indeed. I was very suprised at how much this saddened me. She was but one actor in such a long running show, and yet it is amazing how her character's impact is still felt today (at least for me). I think it was because she was on for so long, and because she had such a warm connection with the Doctor. You could tell they cared for each other, more than with other companions (and without all the stupid sexual angst that the modern series displays).
When she reprised her role in the modern series, it was such a delight to see her again; it was like seeing an old friend. It was nice that this feeling was also displayed by the Doctor, who referred to her fondly as "my Sarah Jane".
I have been watching The Sarah Jane Adventures recently. A lot of the stories are understandably juvenile, but there have been some in the later seasons that really quite good. I still haven't finished watching the show, but it is going to be very sad to do so knowing that Elisabeth Sladen has passed away. I hope that this last season has a fitting finale with which to bid her goodbye.
And new PC games cost far less than new console games
Actually, new PC games have always been cheaper than console games. I have always assumed it was the extra cut that the console makers took from each game.
But with all the bleating about PC games losing billions of dollars due to piracy, it seemed strange that they would not make the games cost the same as consoles to make up this alleged lost.
PC gaming is actually pretty cheap these days, even if you're buying new release games.
I agree. Your comments about Steam (here and another message) were true. There are some great bargains to be had. I usually do not pay more than $5 for a title from Steam (or $7.50 for recent triple-A titles on sales). But I pay more for Indie games to support them.
I can't help but wonder how long they will keep up these sales that reduce games down to a few of dollars (like the recent Max Payne deal). It seems to be pretty unsustainable pricing to me. Already there seems to be fewer of those huge reductions to be had (or those that get reduced are often the usual sale items that we already have nabbed in the past).
As usual people on slashdot will cry over something they'll never intented to play anyway, just because it's DRM and about the used games market.
The problem is not whether you want to play that particular game, but that if this ploy works then it will be extended to other games - and eventually all games. When activation started for PC games I stayed away from those titles. Fine, I said, I will just move on to the next game. But then after a while, the next game (and the one after that) started doing the same thing. Now it is hard to find a big-name title that doesn't use it.
So what happens after people get used to this activation on installation? They start to implement the requirement to be online while playing the game to constantly activate. They have already started down that path, with the inevitable backlash. But then they just tie it to multiplay games, saving to the cloud, and DLC. Eventually this technology sneaks back into the main game. By then we will have already moved onto complaining about having to wear the guillotine on our penises while playing (or whatever the next stage is) and just accept that offline playing is dead.
That is why we need to complain, even for titles that we would not buy.
Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents.
And yet it has never done anything about that. It hasn't sued all the distros to stop the operating system. They did use the claim for a bit of FUDdery, but that is not being a patent troll.
Why Did Microsoft Sell Off 22 'Linux-Related' Patents?
That question was posed two years ago. Has there been an answer? Does posing a question that ultimately proved to be a big pile of nothing have any point other than being a bit of FUD back in the other direction?
TomTom gets allies in Microsoft Linux patent lawsuit fight
Microsoft licenses FAT32 to others. It is one of their products. TomTom used and refused to abide by the terms of the license. If they did a similar thing to the GPL license then nobody would think it wrong to go after them. And since this case, has Microsoft gone after any distros that include the file system?
My rule of thumb is that patent trolls don't have products, they just wait in the wings with their patent portfolio. I recently stated that I don't consider i4i to be a patent troll either, because they actively use their patents in a product of their own. I don't think that it is a good patent, but they got it so they might as well protect their IP.
Microsoft's Linux patent bingo hits Google's Android
To be fair, the phone industry seems to thrive on cross patent agreements and lawsuits. Who isn't suing everyone else? For example, Microsoft may have done a deal with HTC but Apple did actually sue them. Why does nobody claim that Apple is going after Linux when they do this just as they do about Microsoft?
Surely the onus is on you to prove this claim that the smart phone world is drastically different than prior to the iPhone. In what way was it different? Do you mean technological advancement, or just that there was an explosion of people using smartphones?
If you mean the latter, then I attribute it to the Apple factor. The massive marketing machine and the fanbois (including in the media) who seem to assume that if Apple do it then it must be the first and the best of its kind (simultaneously).
As for technological advancement, the iPhone was not the first phone to use the full screen form factor. It was not the first phone to have decent communications (email, web browser). It was not the first phone to have connectivity to a PC. It was not the first phone to play music (some other phones even had radios built in). It was not the first phone to be able to load third party apps.
It did have a nice screen (although once the keyboard is up the space left is woefully small), and the immediacy of the scrolling interface is a joy; although it is based on the work done by others - including Microsoft Research's work that was popularised by the film Minority Report and which led to the Microsoft Surface.
So it really was just the natural evolution of the phone which followed the trends that other companies had started.
Still though, you can't help but feel a twinge when you see where phones were in 2006 and 2007, see where they are now, see when the change happened and what form it took, and know that the group responsible for the change is supposed to take it well or else get lambasted by people the world over as bullying.
And yet when the iPhone was announced, there were rumours abound that LG would sue Apple due to the similarities of the iPhone with the LG Prada. (Ooh, look! Rectangular with rounded corners!)
I don't think that Apple did steal LG's design, it is just that both the products were natural evolutions of the technology of the time. The iPhone was not the completely radical, unprecendented game-changer that a lot of people like to suggest.
This is a tricky one, but not for the reasons you say. I can't stand patent trolls, but then I don't consider i4i to be one. Sure they have patents, but they also sell a product which uses those patents. For me, a patent troll is a company who sits on a portfolio of patents, produces nothing with them (ie. doesn't sell any products) and then just sues everyone else for coming up with the same ideas.
That said, this patent is complete rubbish. It is not a novel idea. It sits on top of XML, which is an extensible system that can handle custom XML tags. They then have the idea to have a user interface to use that facility. Where is the originality in that? What problem did they need to overcome to produce this feature? They didn't make a Word Processor and they didn't make the extensible file format so why can they control the way these things are linked together?
This just shows that a company that falls outside my personal idea of a patent troll can still come up with lousy patents anyway. The problem is not theirs though, it sits firmly with the patent office. This should never have been approved.
Finally (and more controversially), I also don't consider Microsoft to be evil. Seriously, what evil have they done to you lately?
From the article (above) "when a patent holder accuses someone of infringing a patent, the burden is on the infringer to prove with 'clear and convincing evidence' that the patent is invalid". Surely the burden must be on the patent holder to prove that their patent has been infringed.
You are mixing up two separate arguments:
The patent holder has to show that the patent was infringed. If they can't do this, then it is game over.
If they can show infringement, then the defendant can argue that the patent should not exist in the first place due to being too obvious, or having prior art etc.
Changing the rules for the second part does not affect the first part.
What *is* insanity today, however, is sticking to a yearly or bi-yearly release cycle when the HTML standards evolve faster than that
Seriously? We are still waiting for CSS3 to be finalised 12 years after the first draft was released. The precursor to HTML5 began its life in 2004 and HTML5 itself had its first draft release in 2008.
As a web developer, I wouldn't want to create a site that relied on people using a browser that was only a couple of months old. Sure it might work for Firefox and Chrome users, but what about the smaller browsers that can't keep up or the ones in embedded devices and phones.
On the other side of the coin, as a web user I don't want to have to constantly upgrade my browser to suit the latest whiz-bang HTML requirements of web developers. I upgrade my systems to benefit me, not anyone else.
To the best of my knowledge loaning a legal CD/DVD to someone is not illegal
But that is not what happened here. You are making an argument based on a false premise.
This was a user-generated compilation, meaning it was NOT the original CDs. And who would make up a compilation CD for another person and then just loan it to them? Nobody. There would be no expectation of returning the disc. This is quite clearly a violation of copyright.
Chrome already has "incognito mode," so I'm not sure what more you could want from a browser if there is any concern about privacy.
They all have a version of this feature. Safari started it all off with their Private Browsing back in 2005. Three and a half years later Chrome 1.0 gave us Incognito mode, IE8 then include the InPrivate Browsing. Firefox 3.5 also has Private Browsing while Opera 10.5 has Private Tab / Private Window.
Why would you want to have both systems? Well, why not. Frankly, I don't think you can have too many features to protect your privacy online. This new header is more of a directive to the server not to track the user. Think of it as Incognito Mode for the web server. Whether you trust the web companies to abide by it is left for the reader to decide.
I am lucky that I didn't get screwed with this. I normally do a quick google search on what the DRM of a game is before I buy, and most of the matches were of the announcements that this EA title didn't have SecureROM DRM. There was no mention of the DLC having it. Is this a tactic to look like they are listening to their users' complaints while stabbing them in the back once they have made their purchase?
If you look at the game on Steam (yes, I know that adds its own DRM), there is no mention of the usual EA DRM text on the Ultimate Edition that includes the DLC. They sell that version cheaper than the vanilla edition to suck you in (your local prices may vary). It is obvious which version EA want you to buy!
Pimp the horrible "Games for Windows" service and use their monopoly to hurt Valve.
Microsoft have been doing online stores for years. Windows 98 had Windows Catalog, while Windows Marketplace for the desktop Windows dates back to 2004. In late 2009 they introduced Games on Demand, which later morphed into Games for Windows Marketplace.
Has Microsoft's monopoly managed to hurt Steam in that time? No, and I don't think that this latest attempt will do so either. This is mainly because they just don't get the third party developer support for their online stores. They certainly don't do the specials that Steam do (although I have noticed that Steams specials don't seem as good recently).
I used to think the same as you until Steam came along. I assumed that enough people would boycott it and it would fail. But it didn't. It has been a great success, and in part has revitalised PC gaming. This shows that a huge number of people will accept some levels of DRM in games.
DRM has to work to some extent for virtually all the publishers to continue to use it. The games publishers have access to the real figures, so they have more of an idea of whether it works or not. People posting on slashdot just have their assumptions based on....
Some people, maybe, but I don't think that the number of them is very high (it's a seemingly strange argument to make, after all).
A seemingly strange argument, and yet as I said it is one backed up by experience. I have known the dedicated pirates, including the collectors who seem to want to have a copy of absolutely everything (even the dross). I have also known the non-nerd, non-hardcore gamers who do exactly what I said - copy software if it doesn't seem like they are doing something wrong. Do you think that all people who pirate software also go into department stores and shoplift all their clothes? No. Most would not do that because they think that it is wrong, while others would be afraid of getting caught. Only a small minority would have no problems with taking the step into outright theft. Why is it so hard to understand that the general public (who like to think of themselves as decent people) would not have a line that they would not cross when it comes to copying something.
The majority of people in the world do not visit pirate web sites. It is outside their comfort zone to seek out cracks. In fact, the vast majority of people don't know what DRM is and frankly don't care. If they try to copy something and can't then they are far more likely to decide that it is too hard and just give up. These are the people to whom I refer as the casual pirates. Your circle of friends might be techno-savy and have no problems with hunting down reliable cracks and applying them but they are NOT the majority.
Yes, people will pirate a game because it is free. Hell, I did that a lot when I was a student. Then I started to get some disposable income and I began to buy my games because I knew that it was the right thing to do. There are a lot of people out there who want to do the right thing, but resent being treated like a criminal for wanting to play a game. GOG fills their needs.
There are others reasons to pirate software than DRM, and that is why I said that it drives SOME people to piracy, not all.
And yet, on a console there is nothing preventing me from lending and borrowing games.
Maybe I should have said "lending" in quotes. I meant that you could install the software and then hand out the disc to others while you still played it, which is what happens when there is no DRM. If you lend a console game then you can't play it at the same time.
Given how widespread piracy has gotten, which I believe is a direct response to ever-encroaching abusive DRM, I'm of the opinion that software developers should skip the DRM and simply accept copying as a fact of life.
I disagree that DRM came first and then the piracy. People are happy to share their software around with or without DRM. The ability to quickly and fairly anonymously download games on the Internet meant that simple copying amongst friends suddenly became simple copying amongst anyone with net access. DRM has definitely increased, but that might be because piracy became so much easier. It is similar to the days when CDROM games came out. They had no copy protection because it was impractical to copy the games. CD burners cost hundreds of dollars. Then they became cheap and the copy protection of the old floppy days became the norm on CDs too.
However, I do agree that developers should accept that some people will copy their software. If nothing else, it helps the word of mouth about the game.
I have found that some people can justify it to themselves that they are not doing anything wrong if they can install something on their drive as long as they don't have to crack it. It seems less illegal that way. After all, if all you do is just follow the standard install procedures, then how could that be wrong?
I have seen this plenty of times in business too. There have been many times when people have come into my office to get the MS Office discs so that they can install it on their kid's new laptop. They wouldn't come in and ask for a laptop, but they have no compunction about asking for the software. When they find out that they have to activate the software they go away - even if they have been told that they could crack this. Suddenly it doesn't seem like an innocent action to them.
If I buy a game, why can't I lend it to a friend when I'm done playing it?
That is fine. The problem the publishers have is when people share it before they are done playing it. We used to do that all the time back at school (in addition to completely pirated games). One copy would get used by dozens of people.
That said, they do also have problems with the lending afterwards (and the secondhand market), but that is a separate thing. Locking games to accounts and digital downloads is supposed to combat this. I find this practice to be completely unjustifiable. This is why I would never pay more than the secondhand price for anything that cannot be later sold by me. I try to never pay more than $5 for a game on services like Steam or Direct2Drive (unless it is an indie title who deserve the support).
I am a big fan of GOG.com, but I am not so blind to fail to notice that this whole article is just an advert for them. It is hardly "interesting to see them coming from an online game retail business" when that retail business is dedicated to non-DRM games!
I agree that intrusive DRM will drive some people to piracy, or at least stops people (like me) from buying the products (FU! EA). But I am not convinced that the number of customers lost would be more than the number gained by preventing casual piracy. DRM will never stop the dedicated pirates, it is more aimed at people who do not identify themselves as pirates but who just loan their discs to their mates.
It does help that Google controls the client and server, which Mozilla does not. That said, Mozilla did just come out with "Do not track" feature that is being adopted by the other browsers now.
My problem with these extensions is that they are reminiscent of the race to make up features outside any spec back in the day when Internet Explorer and Netscape duked it out. Javascript, AJAX, SSL and zillions of HTML tags all came from the browser companies making it up as they went along. Some of this was good, others (layers, blink, ActiveX) were not. It does concern me when companies go it alone without consulting with the other browser manufaturers. You end up with situations like AJAX, where the browser that originated the technology used a different launch method than everyone else.
Who controls SPDY? If everyone other than Google decide it should have X feature, what are the chances that this will get adopted by Google as part of the standard?
I think that you are taking this far too seriously. This is just an interesting historical snapshot aimed at those who want to learn new things. Latin and Greek may be of less use today, but the desire to learn is just as important at college today as it was back then.
Could a Harvard graduate from the era be able to send an email from a laptop?
Obviously not. The computers from that era operated on entirely different principles. They were large units that were powered by foot pedals. The software was loaded on rolls of paper with holes punched in them, while the output handled was by mechanically manipulating the manual keyboard input device. That must have been quite confusing.
The addition of string based sound cards on the Pianola brand computers meant that an early use of this device was to download and play music. Interestingly, the musicians of the time also predicted that this would destroy the music industry. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
That's true. I would much rather trust the random, uninformed ramblings of someone posting on a website to someone who actually goes out and tries something for themselves (and who also have a team of researchers to help out).
In this case, what myth that Mythbusters tested was not the same as what happened on Aloha 243 so there really isn't much point arguing about it now.
Slashdot Mirror
My first would have been Liz Shaw, although she never had much impact for me. Jo Grant was a bigger hit with me as a kid because she was more familiar to me since she acted like a big kid. Plus I thought she was the hottest woman on TV at the time.
But Sarah Jane was such a strong character, more forthright and proactive than the other two companions I had seen. She also was the first one (for me) to cross the border of regeneration. I think that the warmth of Tom Baker's Doctor may have coloured how I saw Sarah Jane. Perhaps they really weren't as close as I imagined; it is just that their relationship post-regeneration seemed friendlier.
She will be missed indeed. I was very suprised at how much this saddened me. She was but one actor in such a long running show, and yet it is amazing how her character's impact is still felt today (at least for me). I think it was because she was on for so long, and because she had such a warm connection with the Doctor. You could tell they cared for each other, more than with other companions (and without all the stupid sexual angst that the modern series displays).
When she reprised her role in the modern series, it was such a delight to see her again; it was like seeing an old friend. It was nice that this feeling was also displayed by the Doctor, who referred to her fondly as "my Sarah Jane".
I have been watching The Sarah Jane Adventures recently. A lot of the stories are understandably juvenile, but there have been some in the later seasons that really quite good. I still haven't finished watching the show, but it is going to be very sad to do so knowing that Elisabeth Sladen has passed away. I hope that this last season has a fitting finale with which to bid her goodbye.
And new PC games cost far less than new console games
Actually, new PC games have always been cheaper than console games. I have always assumed it was the extra cut that the console makers took from each game.
But with all the bleating about PC games losing billions of dollars due to piracy, it seemed strange that they would not make the games cost the same as consoles to make up this alleged lost.
PC gaming is actually pretty cheap these days, even if you're buying new release games.
I agree. Your comments about Steam (here and another message) were true. There are some great bargains to be had. I usually do not pay more than $5 for a title from Steam (or $7.50 for recent triple-A titles on sales). But I pay more for Indie games to support them.
I can't help but wonder how long they will keep up these sales that reduce games down to a few of dollars (like the recent Max Payne deal). It seems to be pretty unsustainable pricing to me. Already there seems to be fewer of those huge reductions to be had (or those that get reduced are often the usual sale items that we already have nabbed in the past).
They claimed Linux violates their property which may have the effect of scaring off potential users, how is that nothing?
As I said, it is FUD. But it certainly isn't the definition of a Patent Troll.
As usual people on slashdot will cry over something they'll never intented to play anyway, just because it's DRM and about the used games market.
The problem is not whether you want to play that particular game, but that if this ploy works then it will be extended to other games - and eventually all games. When activation started for PC games I stayed away from those titles. Fine, I said, I will just move on to the next game. But then after a while, the next game (and the one after that) started doing the same thing. Now it is hard to find a big-name title that doesn't use it.
So what happens after people get used to this activation on installation? They start to implement the requirement to be online while playing the game to constantly activate. They have already started down that path, with the inevitable backlash. But then they just tie it to multiplay games, saving to the cloud, and DLC. Eventually this technology sneaks back into the main game. By then we will have already moved onto complaining about having to wear the guillotine on our penises while playing (or whatever the next stage is) and just accept that offline playing is dead.
That is why we need to complain, even for titles that we would not buy.
Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents.
And yet it has never done anything about that. It hasn't sued all the distros to stop the operating system. They did use the claim for a bit of FUDdery, but that is not being a patent troll.
Why Did Microsoft Sell Off 22 'Linux-Related' Patents?
That question was posed two years ago. Has there been an answer? Does posing a question that ultimately proved to be a big pile of nothing have any point other than being a bit of FUD back in the other direction?
TomTom gets allies in Microsoft Linux patent lawsuit fight
Microsoft licenses FAT32 to others. It is one of their products. TomTom used and refused to abide by the terms of the license. If they did a similar thing to the GPL license then nobody would think it wrong to go after them. And since this case, has Microsoft gone after any distros that include the file system?
My rule of thumb is that patent trolls don't have products, they just wait in the wings with their patent portfolio. I recently stated that I don't consider i4i to be a patent troll either, because they actively use their patents in a product of their own. I don't think that it is a good patent, but they got it so they might as well protect their IP.
Microsoft's Linux patent bingo hits Google's Android
To be fair, the phone industry seems to thrive on cross patent agreements and lawsuits. Who isn't suing everyone else? For example, Microsoft may have done a deal with HTC but Apple did actually sue them. Why does nobody claim that Apple is going after Linux when they do this just as they do about Microsoft?
Surely the onus is on you to prove this claim that the smart phone world is drastically different than prior to the iPhone. In what way was it different? Do you mean technological advancement, or just that there was an explosion of people using smartphones?
If you mean the latter, then I attribute it to the Apple factor. The massive marketing machine and the fanbois (including in the media) who seem to assume that if Apple do it then it must be the first and the best of its kind (simultaneously).
As for technological advancement, the iPhone was not the first phone to use the full screen form factor. It was not the first phone to have decent communications (email, web browser). It was not the first phone to have connectivity to a PC. It was not the first phone to play music (some other phones even had radios built in). It was not the first phone to be able to load third party apps.
It did have a nice screen (although once the keyboard is up the space left is woefully small), and the immediacy of the scrolling interface is a joy; although it is based on the work done by others - including Microsoft Research's work that was popularised by the film Minority Report and which led to the Microsoft Surface.
So it really was just the natural evolution of the phone which followed the trends that other companies had started.
Still though, you can't help but feel a twinge when you see where phones were in 2006 and 2007, see where they are now, see when the change happened and what form it took, and know that the group responsible for the change is supposed to take it well or else get lambasted by people the world over as bullying.
And yet when the iPhone was announced, there were rumours abound that LG would sue Apple due to the similarities of the iPhone with the LG Prada. (Ooh, look! Rectangular with rounded corners!)
I don't think that Apple did steal LG's design, it is just that both the products were natural evolutions of the technology of the time. The iPhone was not the completely radical, unprecendented game-changer that a lot of people like to suggest.
This is a tricky one, but not for the reasons you say. I can't stand patent trolls, but then I don't consider i4i to be one. Sure they have patents, but they also sell a product which uses those patents. For me, a patent troll is a company who sits on a portfolio of patents, produces nothing with them (ie. doesn't sell any products) and then just sues everyone else for coming up with the same ideas.
That said, this patent is complete rubbish. It is not a novel idea. It sits on top of XML, which is an extensible system that can handle custom XML tags. They then have the idea to have a user interface to use that facility. Where is the originality in that? What problem did they need to overcome to produce this feature? They didn't make a Word Processor and they didn't make the extensible file format so why can they control the way these things are linked together?
This just shows that a company that falls outside my personal idea of a patent troll can still come up with lousy patents anyway. The problem is not theirs though, it sits firmly with the patent office. This should never have been approved.
Finally (and more controversially), I also don't consider Microsoft to be evil. Seriously, what evil have they done to you lately?
From the article (above) "when a patent holder accuses someone of infringing a patent, the burden is on the infringer to prove with 'clear and convincing evidence' that the patent is invalid". Surely the burden must be on the patent holder to prove that their patent has been infringed.
You are mixing up two separate arguments:
Changing the rules for the second part does not affect the first part.
What *is* insanity today, however, is sticking to a yearly or bi-yearly release cycle when the HTML standards evolve faster than that
Seriously? We are still waiting for CSS3 to be finalised 12 years after the first draft was released. The precursor to HTML5 began its life in 2004 and HTML5 itself had its first draft release in 2008.
As a web developer, I wouldn't want to create a site that relied on people using a browser that was only a couple of months old. Sure it might work for Firefox and Chrome users, but what about the smaller browsers that can't keep up or the ones in embedded devices and phones.
On the other side of the coin, as a web user I don't want to have to constantly upgrade my browser to suit the latest whiz-bang HTML requirements of web developers. I upgrade my systems to benefit me, not anyone else.
To the best of my knowledge loaning a legal CD/DVD to someone is not illegal
But that is not what happened here. You are making an argument based on a false premise.
This was a user-generated compilation, meaning it was NOT the original CDs. And who would make up a compilation CD for another person and then just loan it to them? Nobody. There would be no expectation of returning the disc. This is quite clearly a violation of copyright.
Chrome already has "incognito mode," so I'm not sure what more you could want from a browser if there is any concern about privacy.
They all have a version of this feature. Safari started it all off with their Private Browsing back in 2005. Three and a half years later Chrome 1.0 gave us Incognito mode, IE8 then include the InPrivate Browsing. Firefox 3.5 also has Private Browsing while Opera 10.5 has Private Tab / Private Window.
Why would you want to have both systems? Well, why not. Frankly, I don't think you can have too many features to protect your privacy online. This new header is more of a directive to the server not to track the user. Think of it as Incognito Mode for the web server. Whether you trust the web companies to abide by it is left for the reader to decide.
I am lucky that I didn't get screwed with this. I normally do a quick google search on what the DRM of a game is before I buy, and most of the matches were of the announcements that this EA title didn't have SecureROM DRM. There was no mention of the DLC having it. Is this a tactic to look like they are listening to their users' complaints while stabbing them in the back once they have made their purchase?
If you look at the game on Steam (yes, I know that adds its own DRM), there is no mention of the usual EA DRM text on the Ultimate Edition that includes the DLC. They sell that version cheaper than the vanilla edition to suck you in (your local prices may vary). It is obvious which version EA want you to buy!
Pimp the horrible "Games for Windows" service and use their monopoly to hurt Valve.
Microsoft have been doing online stores for years. Windows 98 had Windows Catalog, while Windows Marketplace for the desktop Windows dates back to 2004. In late 2009 they introduced Games on Demand, which later morphed into Games for Windows Marketplace.
Has Microsoft's monopoly managed to hurt Steam in that time? No, and I don't think that this latest attempt will do so either. This is mainly because they just don't get the third party developer support for their online stores. They certainly don't do the specials that Steam do (although I have noticed that Steams specials don't seem as good recently).
I used to think the same as you until Steam came along. I assumed that enough people would boycott it and it would fail. But it didn't. It has been a great success, and in part has revitalised PC gaming. This shows that a huge number of people will accept some levels of DRM in games.
DRM has to work to some extent for virtually all the publishers to continue to use it. The games publishers have access to the real figures, so they have more of an idea of whether it works or not. People posting on slashdot just have their assumptions based on....
Some people, maybe, but I don't think that the number of them is very high (it's a seemingly strange argument to make, after all).
A seemingly strange argument, and yet as I said it is one backed up by experience. I have known the dedicated pirates, including the collectors who seem to want to have a copy of absolutely everything (even the dross). I have also known the non-nerd, non-hardcore gamers who do exactly what I said - copy software if it doesn't seem like they are doing something wrong. Do you think that all people who pirate software also go into department stores and shoplift all their clothes? No. Most would not do that because they think that it is wrong, while others would be afraid of getting caught. Only a small minority would have no problems with taking the step into outright theft. Why is it so hard to understand that the general public (who like to think of themselves as decent people) would not have a line that they would not cross when it comes to copying something.
The majority of people in the world do not visit pirate web sites. It is outside their comfort zone to seek out cracks. In fact, the vast majority of people don't know what DRM is and frankly don't care. If they try to copy something and can't then they are far more likely to decide that it is too hard and just give up. These are the people to whom I refer as the casual pirates. Your circle of friends might be techno-savy and have no problems with hunting down reliable cracks and applying them but they are NOT the majority.
Yes, people will pirate a game because it is free. Hell, I did that a lot when I was a student. Then I started to get some disposable income and I began to buy my games because I knew that it was the right thing to do. There are a lot of people out there who want to do the right thing, but resent being treated like a criminal for wanting to play a game. GOG fills their needs.
There are others reasons to pirate software than DRM, and that is why I said that it drives SOME people to piracy, not all.
And yet, on a console there is nothing preventing me from lending and borrowing games.
Maybe I should have said "lending" in quotes. I meant that you could install the software and then hand out the disc to others while you still played it, which is what happens when there is no DRM. If you lend a console game then you can't play it at the same time.
Given how widespread piracy has gotten, which I believe is a direct response to ever-encroaching abusive DRM, I'm of the opinion that software developers should skip the DRM and simply accept copying as a fact of life.
I disagree that DRM came first and then the piracy. People are happy to share their software around with or without DRM. The ability to quickly and fairly anonymously download games on the Internet meant that simple copying amongst friends suddenly became simple copying amongst anyone with net access. DRM has definitely increased, but that might be because piracy became so much easier. It is similar to the days when CDROM games came out. They had no copy protection because it was impractical to copy the games. CD burners cost hundreds of dollars. Then they became cheap and the copy protection of the old floppy days became the norm on CDs too.
However, I do agree that developers should accept that some people will copy their software. If nothing else, it helps the word of mouth about the game.
I have found that some people can justify it to themselves that they are not doing anything wrong if they can install something on their drive as long as they don't have to crack it. It seems less illegal that way. After all, if all you do is just follow the standard install procedures, then how could that be wrong?
I have seen this plenty of times in business too. There have been many times when people have come into my office to get the MS Office discs so that they can install it on their kid's new laptop. They wouldn't come in and ask for a laptop, but they have no compunction about asking for the software. When they find out that they have to activate the software they go away - even if they have been told that they could crack this. Suddenly it doesn't seem like an innocent action to them.
If I buy a game, why can't I lend it to a friend when I'm done playing it?
That is fine. The problem the publishers have is when people share it before they are done playing it. We used to do that all the time back at school (in addition to completely pirated games). One copy would get used by dozens of people.
That said, they do also have problems with the lending afterwards (and the secondhand market), but that is a separate thing. Locking games to accounts and digital downloads is supposed to combat this. I find this practice to be completely unjustifiable. This is why I would never pay more than the secondhand price for anything that cannot be later sold by me. I try to never pay more than $5 for a game on services like Steam or Direct2Drive (unless it is an indie title who deserve the support).
I am a big fan of GOG.com, but I am not so blind to fail to notice that this whole article is just an advert for them. It is hardly "interesting to see them coming from an online game retail business" when that retail business is dedicated to non-DRM games!
I agree that intrusive DRM will drive some people to piracy, or at least stops people (like me) from buying the products (FU! EA). But I am not convinced that the number of customers lost would be more than the number gained by preventing casual piracy. DRM will never stop the dedicated pirates, it is more aimed at people who do not identify themselves as pirates but who just loan their discs to their mates.
It does help that Google controls the client and server, which Mozilla does not. That said, Mozilla did just come out with "Do not track" feature that is being adopted by the other browsers now.
My problem with these extensions is that they are reminiscent of the race to make up features outside any spec back in the day when Internet Explorer and Netscape duked it out. Javascript, AJAX, SSL and zillions of HTML tags all came from the browser companies making it up as they went along. Some of this was good, others (layers, blink, ActiveX) were not. It does concern me when companies go it alone without consulting with the other browser manufaturers. You end up with situations like AJAX, where the browser that originated the technology used a different launch method than everyone else.
Who controls SPDY? If everyone other than Google decide it should have X feature, what are the chances that this will get adopted by Google as part of the standard?
What use is Latin and Greek today?
I think that you are taking this far too seriously. This is just an interesting historical snapshot aimed at those who want to learn new things. Latin and Greek may be of less use today, but the desire to learn is just as important at college today as it was back then.
Could a Harvard graduate from the era be able to send an email from a laptop?
Obviously not. The computers from that era operated on entirely different principles. They were large units that were powered by foot pedals. The software was loaded on rolls of paper with holes punched in them, while the output handled was by mechanically manipulating the manual keyboard input device. That must have been quite confusing.
The addition of string based sound cards on the Pianola brand computers meant that an early use of this device was to download and play music. Interestingly, the musicians of the time also predicted that this would destroy the music industry. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
That's true. I would much rather trust the random, uninformed ramblings of someone posting on a website to someone who actually goes out and tries something for themselves (and who also have a team of researchers to help out).
In this case, what myth that Mythbusters tested was not the same as what happened on Aloha 243 so there really isn't much point arguing about it now.