Thankyou for posting this. If the head of Microsoft or the RIAA was trying to claim sympathy for breaking the law because they had a medical condition, the slashdot crowd will be going ballistic. This person may well be entirely innocent, but whether they are guilty r innocent is totally fucking separate from what their current state of health is.
It just makes legitimate complaints about tactics used by the RIAA look juvenile and silly when people start posting "OMGZ! They sued a ILL PERSON!!!!111"
If people want to read nothing but rants about TEH EVIL RIAA, they could join digg or torrentfreak.
wow. so shall I email Jonathan and tell him he should work for free? the guy spent a quarter of a million dollars of his own money to make a game that he hoped would make enough to pay him back. Sounds like you reckon he should have just done that for nothing, and lived on food stamps. What an asshole.
If you really think we would be better off having only hobbyist content (check out youtube dude!!!!) and stuff patronised by billionaires, then you are fucking delusional.
I respect copyright and patent and trademark law. what's your problem? nice attempt at a pathetic straw man there, I notice you didn't even pretend to defend your silly argument that your infants scrawl is as worthy in cultural terms as the stuff people pay for.
enjoy your ideals, because there will be fuck all else to watch or listen to under such a delusional system kid. Us fogies actually appreciate other peoples hard work. You kiddies haven't learned that bit yet have you?
cool. but one minute... if you 4 year olds drawings are better than Spore, Spiderman 3 and Adobe photoshop as content, why the fuck arent they the #1 downloaded item at torrent sites? because 99.99999999% of the population think that your kids 'content' is crap in comparison. Nobody puts a gun to peoples head and forces them to buy big budget content, they do it freely, despite it being pirated. So to suggest that eliminating the content that 99.99999999% of people prefer over your kids sketch will not reduce the sum of human happiness is frankly silly.
But hey, people will trot out all kinds of crap it it makes them feel good about taking stuff for free, as slashdot comments prove time and time again...
sometimes these paintings were done as a hobby. GTA IV and Spore are not done in free time by hobbyists. Other times those paintings were paid for by wealthy patrons. You want billionaires to decide what games get made?
If not, what point were you attempting to make? That game devs by definition should work for free? Why?
Regardless of its legality this is truly self-destructive and silly. I can understand how people want to get stuff for free, even though I fundamnetally disagree with piracy. What I do NOT understand is why those peole cannot see that if everyone does what they do, no new content will be produced. (Mainly thats why piracy is unethical, because it relys on you leeching off everyone else). So where you may have an economic incentive to pirate stuff, there is also a clear incentive not to let anyone else know how to do it. So why as so many hardcore pirates such evangelists for piracy? They are making it easier to get caught (by always seeding and promoting it), inviting much heavier penalties, and ultimately destroying the income of the exact content producers they like. The rational pirate would keep a low profile, or at most, only distribute links to really poor content. It just goes to reinforce my belief that its mainly immature kids who do this kind of thing.
I agree. devs need to be less obsessive about always using all the very latest features in every graphics API. Leave that bleeding edge hell to the guys doing the unreal and quake engines. I only make 2D games, but even then, I stick to directx7. Directx7 WORKS. EVERYONE has drivers for it, and its reliable. People seem more concerned that they MUST have HDR lighting in their game because the other guy had it, than they do about making the game engine stable, and consistently fast on low end PCs. Bah
Or they will decide not to holiday in the USA anymore. That is the very real, very current effect of US airport paranoia. People spending tourist cash in Canada, Europe and even south America rather than go through this shit in the USA...
I've spoken to tons of people who agree that they will simply not visit the USA on vacation until the paranoia levels drop.
before I'd ever read anything about computer science neural networks, I read steve grands book about making a robot chimp, with a very basic explanation of how neurons work. On that basis I wrote Democracy, a computer game based on a neural network. Obviously you will learn a hell of a lot from good books, but there's something to be said for just jumping in and coding it 'your way', to see what happens. It will likely make the (somewhat dry) text books on the subject seem much more relevant when you have already tried to code a similar system without a pre-planned idea of how to go about it. Just an idea.
This is NOT DRM The story is NOT ABOUT DRM. DRM is not the issue. This is about preventing shoplifting.
Is it not possible for there to be ANY story ANYWHERE on-line about games, without people gushing about how they hate DRM, even when the story is NOTHING to do with it?
dude, this is not DRM, this is to stop people shoplifting. You might as well rant and spit about security tags on clothes. try reading the article before you hit the "OH NOES TEH DRM" button.
Plus who the fuck buys games for $60? The only place I ever see $60 mentioned is by people complaining about not buying them.
so removing drm and dropping the price should result in an instant bump in sales yes?
I tried exactly that.
No difference.
People are very good at saying "if you do X, I will stop pirating and buy it", because that makes them feel good about taking stuff for free. The actual hard stats show that this is just self-delusion to make the pirate feel better. You really think if companies could double sales by dropping DRM they wouldn't do it? You really think that they don't study the stats on this stuff. I did. Dropping prices and DRM has zero effect on sales.
The suffragettes used to chain themselves to railings. This also caused disruption. I'm sure there was some 'trade disruption' from civil rights protests in the US too.
So fuck it. Lets take away a womans right to vote and send black people to the ghettos yes? After all, anyone protesting about stuff is just a terrorist. Especially that martin Luther King. Maybe you agree with Donald Rumsfeld, who thought Nelson mandela was a terrorist?
wow. this shit is modded informative? gimme a break. Perhaps you would like to go back to a time where asbestos and lead paint was used in school buildings and companies had carte blanche to put whatever the fuck they wanted in food. Why don't we just hunt a few species to extinction while we are about it.
I don't see whats 'eco-terrorist' about trying to get less toxic chemicals used in making equipment that most geeks have in their homes. But then, in the UK it's not as common for us to hurl 'terrorist' as an insult against anyone who we have no idea how to argue against.
"I want this game, and I took it for free. If you can find a more secure drm, you will make more money from me"
If you really wanted t protest DRM, you would NOT play the game at all, whilst emailing them to say so. When you pirate the game, you just get chalked up by the publisher as another pirate, not as some sort of anti-drm protest vote.
The people who pirated my games achieved fuck all in terms of removing DRM. I did that because people emailed me and made rational arguments about being in favour of drm-free games. If you actually want rockstar to ditch DRM, you need to tell them, not just act like the pirates who just want free stuff.
oh dear. I bet you are the sort of fruitcake that thinks everyone should have the right to own machineguns and keep them in their homes too? I'm glad people like you stay in the USA.
cool. You don't mind if we remove regulation on what meat is fit for human consumption then? And you think its fine if people put asbestos and arsenic in food if it makes it taste better? You realise dog food is cheaper than beefburgers right? just think of the profit margins!
Don't be silly, of course you need regulation of what companies can put in food. Are you some kind of ron-paul libertarian freak? What are you? six?
Slashdot Mirror
Great post, oh for the mod the points...
Thankyou for posting this. If the head of Microsoft or the RIAA was trying to claim sympathy for breaking the law because they had a medical condition, the slashdot crowd will be going ballistic. This person may well be entirely innocent, but whether they are guilty r innocent is totally fucking separate from what their current state of health is.
It just makes legitimate complaints about tactics used by the RIAA look juvenile and silly when people start posting "OMGZ! They sued a ILL PERSON!!!!111"
If people want to read nothing but rants about TEH EVIL RIAA, they could join digg or torrentfreak.
wow. so shall I email Jonathan and tell him he should work for free? the guy spent a quarter of a million dollars of his own money to make a game that he hoped would make enough to pay him back. Sounds like you reckon he should have just done that for nothing, and lived on food stamps.
What an asshole.
If you really think we would be better off having only hobbyist content (check out youtube dude!!!!) and stuff patronised by billionaires, then you are fucking delusional.
I respect copyright and patent and trademark law. what's your problem? nice attempt at a pathetic straw man there, I notice you didn't even pretend to defend your silly argument that your infants scrawl is as worthy in cultural terms as the stuff people pay for.
enjoy your ideals, because there will be fuck all else to watch or listen to under such a delusional system kid.
Us fogies actually appreciate other peoples hard work. You kiddies haven't learned that bit yet have you?
Those kids need to move to North Korea. It is run along similar lines.
Or they can stay here, and grow up.
cool.
but one minute...
if you 4 year olds drawings are better than Spore, Spiderman 3 and Adobe photoshop as content, why the fuck arent they the #1 downloaded item at torrent sites?
because 99.99999999% of the population think that your kids 'content' is crap in comparison. Nobody puts a gun to peoples head and forces them to buy big budget content, they do it freely, despite it being pirated. So to suggest that eliminating the content that 99.99999999% of people prefer over your kids sketch will not reduce the sum of human happiness is frankly silly.
But hey, people will trot out all kinds of crap it it makes them feel good about taking stuff for free, as slashdot comments prove time and time again...
sometimes these paintings were done as a hobby. GTA IV and Spore are not done in free time by hobbyists.
Other times those paintings were paid for by wealthy patrons.
You want billionaires to decide what games get made?
If not, what point were you attempting to make? That game devs by definition should work for free?
Why?
Regardless of its legality this is truly self-destructive and silly. I can understand how people want to get stuff for free, even though I fundamnetally disagree with piracy. What I do NOT understand is why those peole cannot see that if everyone does what they do, no new content will be produced. (Mainly thats why piracy is unethical, because it relys on you leeching off everyone else).
So where you may have an economic incentive to pirate stuff, there is also a clear incentive not to let anyone else know how to do it.
So why as so many hardcore pirates such evangelists for piracy?
They are making it easier to get caught (by always seeding and promoting it), inviting much heavier penalties, and ultimately destroying the income of the exact content producers they like.
The rational pirate would keep a low profile, or at most, only distribute links to really poor content. It just goes to reinforce my belief that its mainly immature kids who do this kind of thing.
I agree. devs need to be less obsessive about always using all the very latest features in every graphics API. Leave that bleeding edge hell to the guys doing the unreal and quake engines. I only make 2D games, but even then, I stick to directx7. Directx7 WORKS. EVERYONE has drivers for it, and its reliable.
People seem more concerned that they MUST have HDR lighting in their game because the other guy had it, than they do about making the game engine stable, and consistently fast on low end PCs.
Bah
Or they will decide not to holiday in the USA anymore.
That is the very real, very current effect of US airport paranoia. People spending tourist cash in Canada, Europe and even south America rather than go through this shit in the USA...
I've spoken to tons of people who agree that they will simply not visit the USA on vacation until the paranoia levels drop.
before I'd ever read anything about computer science neural networks, I read steve grands book about making a robot chimp, with a very basic explanation of how neurons work. On that basis I wrote Democracy, a computer game based on a neural network.
Obviously you will learn a hell of a lot from good books, but there's something to be said for just jumping in and coding it 'your way', to see what happens. It will likely make the (somewhat dry) text books on the subject seem much more relevant when you have already tried to code a similar system without a pre-planned idea of how to go about it.
Just an idea.
this is to stop shoplifting
*HEAVY SIGH*
This is NOT DRM The story is NOT ABOUT DRM. DRM is not the issue.
This is about preventing shoplifting.
Is it not possible for there to be ANY story ANYWHERE on-line about games, without people gushing about how they hate DRM, even when the story is NOTHING to do with it?
dude, this is not DRM, this is to stop people shoplifting. You might as well rant and spit about security tags on clothes.
try reading the article before you hit the "OH NOES TEH DRM" button.
Plus who the fuck buys games for $60? The only place I ever see $60 mentioned is by people complaining about not buying them.
Blah blah. All software devs are twits and idiots.
Do you think any developer bothers reading past the abuse you type?
Hint: All the emails I got from pirates that were abusive got deleted. I didn't bother reading past the insults and the sarcastic crap.
so removing drm and dropping the price should result in an instant bump in sales yes?
I tried exactly that.
No difference.
People are very good at saying "if you do X, I will stop pirating and buy it", because that makes them feel good about taking stuff for free. The actual hard stats show that this is just self-delusion to make the pirate feel better. You really think if companies could double sales by dropping DRM they wouldn't do it? You really think that they don't study the stats on this stuff. I did. Dropping prices and DRM has zero effect on sales.
So this shit is insightful?
Official : slashdot is no home to the truly fucking ignorant, and nobody else.
If you think greenpeace spend money on luxury cars for their 'executives' I don't think you have ANY idea how they work.
wow.
I mean WOW.
The suffragettes used to chain themselves to railings. This also caused disruption. I'm sure there was some 'trade disruption' from civil rights protests in the US too.
So fuck it. Lets take away a womans right to vote and send black people to the ghettos yes? After all, anyone protesting about stuff is just a terrorist. Especially that martin Luther King. Maybe you agree with Donald Rumsfeld, who thought Nelson mandela was a terrorist?
And you call OTHER people whackjobs?
wow. this shit is modded informative? gimme a break. Perhaps you would like to go back to a time where asbestos and lead paint was used in school buildings and companies had carte blanche to put whatever the fuck they wanted in food. Why don't we just hunt a few species to extinction while we are about it.
I don't see whats 'eco-terrorist' about trying to get less toxic chemicals used in making equipment that most geeks have in their homes.
But then, in the UK it's not as common for us to hurl 'terrorist' as an insult against anyone who we have no idea how to argue against.
pirating the game just makes one statement:
"I want this game, and I took it for free. If you can find a more secure drm, you will make more money from me"
If you really wanted t protest DRM, you would NOT play the game at all, whilst emailing them to say so.
When you pirate the game, you just get chalked up by the publisher as another pirate, not as some sort of anti-drm protest vote.
The people who pirated my games achieved fuck all in terms of removing DRM. I did that because people emailed me and made rational arguments about being in favour of drm-free games. If you actually want rockstar to ditch DRM, you need to tell them, not just act like the pirates who just want free stuff.
oh dear. I bet you are the sort of fruitcake that thinks everyone should have the right to own machineguns and keep them in their homes too?
I'm glad people like you stay in the USA.
you want to start a thermonuclear war because of a DDOS attempt?
get real.
cool. You don't mind if we remove regulation on what meat is fit for human consumption then? And you think its fine if people put asbestos and arsenic in food if it makes it taste better?
You realise dog food is cheaper than beefburgers right? just think of the profit margins!
Don't be silly, of course you need regulation of what companies can put in food. Are you some kind of ron-paul libertarian freak?
What are you? six?