Good. PDFs suck. My system is 99% stable, the only two things that lock it and grind it to a halt are Battlefield 2 crashes and opening a sodding PDF file. The sooner that cludgy file format dies the better. Im sick of having to read stuff formatted for print on a computer screen.
I agree with some of the article, but when I read the title I thought he was talking about this cra:
ESRB splash screen "Works best on intel" splash crap "works best on ATI!" splash crap publisher logo video Developer logo video Long tedious and unskippable FMV intro Even longer unskippable and totally patronising tutorial with unfunny zany voiceover reading at one word a minute hideous load time (yes BF2 thats you) hideous CRC checking in case of hot coffee mods... Game!
thats the kind of crap that gets between me and most modern games, and its one reason I favour smaller budget indie games without that crap. Some of it can sometimes be disabled, but often some of it cant, and why the fck should I have to sit through unskippable crap before I can *interact* with my interactive entertainment?
no, the clues in the title. Hes a gamer WITH A JOB. He wants to enjoy the wole game without dedicating his life to it. It's a fair point. Nobody minds there being an uber-difficult level for the hardcore, but people like to think they can get the full enjoyment from a game without it having to take over their life first. With this in mind, difficulty levels are preferable to unlockables.
Whats scary is that someone questioning why special forces troops should be secretly deployed in foreign countries is worried about being called a troll. Of course its a legitimate concern, especially what with the current paranoia about 'sponsoring foreign terrorism'. I doubt these special ops guys are deployed to distribute pro-freedom leaflets. In the UK we'd be moaning about what it will cost.
yes agreed, thats 'fair use', and I'd strongly defend that. but people fighting DRM need to make it clear that sharing on p2p is a different kettle of fish, and that they accept that this is not 'fair use'. Confusion on this issue is just ammunition to the pro-DRM lobby.
how much entertainment would you get in a pub, or a cinema, or in a restaurant for that £14? As a one-off event. We used to pay 10p a game for space invaders, and it was well worth the money. Now we expect 400 hours of amazing 3D entertainment for less than the price of a medium pizza...
1 and 3 are cool, but 2 kinda implies you can freely bung the music you bought onto emule for everyone to enjoy. Thats the bit that has really irked the content providers, and rightly so, as the supply of music is what pays for the whole business, artists included. You have to see it from their POV too. Campaigning for total freedom to distribute music as you see fit will get you nowhere. Campaigning for restrictions on fair use is totally fine, but under no condition is sharing your CD with 6000 people accross the world 'fair use'. Lumping all these claims together devalues the real genuine grievances that people who cant play their CDs or make back up copies have.
Bach had clients. So did Paganinni, so did da vinci. Back them, often a single wealthy guy would commission a piece of work. These people still had to be paid. Pagininni would give free concerts to the poor in graveyards, but he was able to do that because rich gentleman paid a fortune to go see him. In fact he was quite the capitalist, always writing home about how many tickets he had sold. I'm sure many other people we now consider great 'artists' were the same.
Some people *do* love what they do, but they are a small cog in a big system. Peter jackson would have made lord of the rings even if none of us would pay for it, but would the carpenters who built the sets have done it? would the caterers for the film crew done it for love? the lighting guy? the guy who drove the bus for the cast? If you only want cheap $50 movies done by people at the weekends, fine.
And the sunrise is a bad example. the Sun doesnt need to find another job to pay its bills if we dont look at it:D
"P.S.: I know this leaves out a supposedly-important sector: people are ready to pay for the game until they become aware that they can have it for free, and then download it. I'd love a business person's estimate of how often that actually happens."
Those are the people that bother me. I dont care about people who wouldnt buy it anyway, obviously I know that wont matter. However there is a BIG difference between people who *say* they wouldn't have bought it, and people who really wouldn't. If someone has a $600 video card and a disk full of cracked games, they obviously have the desire for games and the cash, they just take the games for free and spend the cash on the card. Thats wrong!
Nobody can be sure how much business is lost to piracy. Most music business estimates are way too high, but just because the RIAA etc make silly claims, that doesnt mean the real figure isn't significant. I'd guess that its 25% at least. ie: if the games were uncopyable I'd expect a 25% rise in sales. That's based on my own observation of the hits on pages purporting to hold cracks and the number of downloads and sales I get normally. 25% is a big deal, it can be the diff between profitability and a career change.
it sounds catastrophically bleak, but unless information CAN be made a viable market, I think you are right. What irks me is the scr1pt k1ddi3s who think they are so l33t because they constantly pirate and crack everything are pushing us more rapidly in that direction. The ultimate consequences of this obsession with 'free' music,games,dvds etc, is that the industries behind popular entertainment will fall to pieces. You might think the music industry is doing fine now, but lets fast forward 20 years, when a whole generation who are used to 'free everything' make up the majority of the market. A single hacker, working away on a piece of software that cracks DRM, *may* be a hero to some, but he may also be putting several hundred or even thousand people out of a job. Its not fashionable to think this way, but its neccesary to start doing so. DVDs and Software arent food and shelter, we dont have any *rights* to them.
I understand what you say, and agree when it comes to music, TV shows and films, that this needs to happen. You sound like someone whos generally honest, like a good chunk of people are. But a good chunk of people are not! Myself and quite a few other people sell shareware games online. There are free demos, and the games are reasonably priced, and you can buy online with a direct, fast and reliable download in a DRM-free format. Guess what? People STILL pirate the games. Even if it will take them 10 times as long to get a possibly dubious copy from a torrent or p2p, there are still people who obviously want the full version, but refuse to pay for it. No doubt they rationalise it by some juvenile "sticking it to the man" philosophy, or maybe like one of the more clueless posters here, they think "its only information, why should I pay for it". But these people are not a small minority, and they are killing off producers, and forcing others to adopt eye-watering DRM. If everyone had your attitude there would be no need for DRM at all, but sadly, they don't.
oh jeez. is this really how you rationalise copyright theft? I guess you dont care if the people who make the information content can pay the bills, and therefore, by definition, you would rather no more proffessional content was ever produced? or are you just content to leech free content off the backs of those who actually pay people who entertain them?
"(think of all the goods one can buy a a dollar store for a dollar). "
god are you really this deluded? So basically if you cant make a movie that earns its money back selling for a dollar a pop, you dont bother. Goodbye Lord of the rings then. I hope you dont use any commericial software (pirated or not) that wouldnt break even on a dollar a sale, because that would make you a total hypocrite wouldnt it?
The economics surey dictate that everyone should pay for what they consume. By this system we encourage artists to produce content that people like. If the people who make content arent paid, even if they are wildly popular, then the market cannot react to demand. Thats not good news. I'm glad Half Life 2 made money, that sends a signal to game makers that this is what gamers want. If we had been able to download high quality DRM-free copies of the first ever series of star trek, and none of us had paid a penny for them, then the show would have made a huge loss. No series II, no Next Gen, No Voyager. Apply this to whatever music / movie / book you really like.
DRM sucks, but people enjoying content they dont pay for also sucks. In a capitalist system, its the payment in dollars from the consumer to the producer that enables the market to function. Take that away and the system will mean no more production.
Until now, its been academic, because with physical goods, free-riding wasnt possible. Now we live in an age where it IS possible for people not to pay for what they consume in some industries. There has to be a solution. I think DRM is a crap solution, but unfortunately I can't think of a better one that actually works, and removes the free-rider problem.
This is one of those moves thats so over the top you mentally check for april fools dates. This kind of thing always seems a bit far-fetched in sci-fi movies, let alone modern-day America. I hope some big names kick up a fuss over this, because whatever insane big brother actions the USA takes, our useless govt here in the UK copies soon afterwards.
whats new? my sony vaio running XP works beautifully like this. It only ever reboots if a critical update demands it. My main PC, a mesh desktop PC does the same, Its perfectly happy going to standby and abck 20-30 times before needing a reboot after some game crashes it. I dont care about a new 3D GUI, its an O/S for christs sake, but anything that reduces power consumption is most welcome.
So how can i make a living through sales under copyright, if copyright is not enforced? or are you one of these people who supports a two tier system where some people pay for the product, and you and your friends convenientyly ignore copyright and just take it? piracy is widespread, as the percentage of piracy to legit sales goes up, nobody will make a living. surely this is obvious?
hey coward, ever considered that someone who disagrees with you MIGHT not be an employee of the MPAA? And whats with the "Ill buy if if i make money with it" defense? So productivity software is fine, but entertainment products must be free to everyone? that justification is so flimsy its laughable.
"There are a lot of things I value which I will never buy"
yet somehow you believe you are entitled to own them. Ill wager this isnt true of physical goods. So basically you will pay people to make physical goods, but not any goods that can be stored digitally. Are computer programmers so beneath carpenters in your estimation for a reason?
so if theres a freely available demo of a product, then you CAN sample it, and have no rights or justification for taking it without payment. agreed? So if there is a demo of photoshop, getting a warez copy is totally unjustfied. Besides, if the customer cant tell how good the product is, thats the sellers problem. I cant justify stealing a ferrari to give it a test drive. Its the ferrari owners discretion as to under what conditions he lets people sample HIS product. Nobody owes you a ferrari test drive.
You cant criticise lawyers AND use legal fine print in the same argument. Argue semantics all you like, but downloading a full copy of something that you have not paid for and which is not free sounds like theft to everyone except the downloader trying to justify his actions.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought slashdot would be the one place us geeks could get away from this football-talk.
Yawn.
Good. PDFs suck. My system is 99% stable, the only two things that lock it and grind it to a halt are Battlefield 2 crashes and opening a sodding PDF file. The sooner that cludgy file format dies the better.
Im sick of having to read stuff formatted for print on a computer screen.
but they can both play games, and enjoy democracy! look->!
http://www.democracygame.com/
You cant expect me to resist a plugging opportunity this rich can you?
Lol. yeah right. you think all cars are tracked by satelites in the UK? Step AWAY from the tom clancy novels.
I agree with some of the article, but when I read the title I thought he was talking about this cra:
...
ESRB splash screen
"Works best on intel" splash crap
"works best on ATI!" splash crap
publisher logo video
Developer logo video
Long tedious and unskippable FMV intro
Even longer unskippable and totally patronising tutorial with unfunny zany voiceover reading at one word a minute
hideous load time (yes BF2 thats you)
hideous CRC checking in case of hot coffee mods
Game!
thats the kind of crap that gets between me and most modern games, and its one reason I favour smaller budget indie games without that crap.
Some of it can sometimes be disabled, but often some of it cant, and why the fck should I have to sit through unskippable crap before I can *interact* with my interactive entertainment?
no, the clues in the title. Hes a gamer WITH A JOB. He wants to enjoy the wole game without dedicating his life to it. It's a fair point. Nobody minds there being an uber-difficult level for the hardcore, but people like to think they can get the full enjoyment from a game without it having to take over their life first. With this in mind, difficulty levels are preferable to unlockables.
Whats scary is that someone questioning why special forces troops should be secretly deployed in foreign countries is worried about being called a troll. Of course its a legitimate concern, especially what with the current paranoia about 'sponsoring foreign terrorism'. I doubt these special ops guys are deployed to distribute pro-freedom leaflets.
In the UK we'd be moaning about what it will cost.
yes agreed, thats 'fair use', and I'd strongly defend that. but people fighting DRM need to make it clear that sharing on p2p is a different kettle of fish, and that they accept that this is not 'fair use'. Confusion on this issue is just ammunition to the pro-DRM lobby.
how much entertainment would you get in a pub, or a cinema, or in a restaurant for that £14? As a one-off event.
We used to pay 10p a game for space invaders, and it was well worth the money. Now we expect 400 hours of amazing 3D entertainment for less than the price of a medium pizza...
1 and 3 are cool, but 2 kinda implies you can freely bung the music you bought onto emule for everyone to enjoy. Thats the bit that has really irked the content providers, and rightly so, as the supply of music is what pays for the whole business, artists included.
You have to see it from their POV too. Campaigning for total freedom to distribute music as you see fit will get you nowhere. Campaigning for restrictions on fair use is totally fine, but under no condition is sharing your CD with 6000 people accross the world 'fair use'. Lumping all these claims together devalues the real genuine grievances that people who cant play their CDs or make back up copies have.
Bach had clients. So did Paganinni, so did da vinci. Back them, often a single wealthy guy would commission a piece of work. These people still had to be paid. Pagininni would give free concerts to the poor in graveyards, but he was able to do that because rich gentleman paid a fortune to go see him. In fact he was quite the capitalist, always writing home about how many tickets he had sold. I'm sure many other people we now consider great 'artists' were the same.
:D
Some people *do* love what they do, but they are a small cog in a big system. Peter jackson would have made lord of the rings even if none of us would pay for it, but would the carpenters who built the sets have done it? would the caterers for the film crew done it for love? the lighting guy? the guy who drove the bus for the cast? If you only want cheap $50 movies done by people at the weekends, fine.
And the sunrise is a bad example. the Sun doesnt need to find another job to pay its bills if we dont look at it
"P.S.: I know this leaves out a supposedly-important sector: people are ready to pay for the game until they become aware that they can have it for free, and then download it. I'd love a business person's estimate of how often that actually happens."
Those are the people that bother me. I dont care about people who wouldnt buy it anyway, obviously I know that wont matter. However there is a BIG difference between people who *say* they wouldn't have bought it, and people who really wouldn't. If someone has a $600 video card and a disk full of cracked games, they obviously have the desire for games and the cash, they just take the games for free and spend the cash on the card. Thats wrong!
Nobody can be sure how much business is lost to piracy. Most music business estimates are way too high, but just because the RIAA etc make silly claims, that doesnt mean the real figure isn't significant. I'd guess that its 25% at least. ie: if the games were uncopyable I'd expect a 25% rise in sales. That's based on my own observation of the hits on pages purporting to hold cracks and the number of downloads and sales I get normally. 25% is a big deal, it can be the diff between profitability and a career change.
it sounds catastrophically bleak, but unless information CAN be made a viable market, I think you are right.
What irks me is the scr1pt k1ddi3s who think they are so l33t because they constantly pirate and crack everything are pushing us more rapidly in that direction. The ultimate consequences of this obsession with 'free' music,games,dvds etc, is that the industries behind popular entertainment will fall to pieces. You might think the music industry is doing fine now, but lets fast forward 20 years, when a whole generation who are used to 'free everything' make up the majority of the market.
A single hacker, working away on a piece of software that cracks DRM, *may* be a hero to some, but he may also be putting several hundred or even thousand people out of a job. Its not fashionable to think this way, but its neccesary to start doing so. DVDs and Software arent food and shelter, we dont have any *rights* to them.
I understand what you say, and agree when it comes to music, TV shows and films, that this needs to happen. You sound like someone whos generally honest, like a good chunk of people are. But a good chunk of people are not!
Myself and quite a few other people sell shareware games online. There are free demos, and the games are reasonably priced, and you can buy online with a direct, fast and reliable download in a DRM-free format.
Guess what?
People STILL pirate the games. Even if it will take them 10 times as long to get a possibly dubious copy from a torrent or p2p, there are still people who obviously want the full version, but refuse to pay for it. No doubt they rationalise it by some juvenile "sticking it to the man" philosophy, or maybe like one of the more clueless posters here, they think "its only information, why should I pay for it". But these people are not a small minority, and they are killing off producers, and forcing others to adopt eye-watering DRM.
If everyone had your attitude there would be no need for DRM at all, but sadly, they don't.
oh jeez. is this really how you rationalise copyright theft? I guess you dont care if the people who make the information content can pay the bills, and therefore, by definition, you would rather no more proffessional content was ever produced?
or are you just content to leech free content off the backs of those who actually pay people who entertain them?
"(think of all the goods one can buy a a dollar store for a dollar). "
god are you really this deluded?
So basically if you cant make a movie that earns its money back selling for a dollar a pop, you dont bother.
Goodbye Lord of the rings then.
I hope you dont use any commericial software (pirated or not) that wouldnt break even on a dollar a sale, because that would make you a total hypocrite wouldnt it?
The economics surey dictate that everyone should pay for what they consume. By this system we encourage artists to produce content that people like. If the people who make content arent paid, even if they are wildly popular, then the market cannot react to demand. Thats not good news. I'm glad Half Life 2 made money, that sends a signal to game makers that this is what gamers want.
If we had been able to download high quality DRM-free copies of the first ever series of star trek, and none of us had paid a penny for them, then the show would have made a huge loss. No series II, no Next Gen, No Voyager. Apply this to whatever music / movie / book you really like.
DRM sucks, but people enjoying content they dont pay for also sucks. In a capitalist system, its the payment in dollars from the consumer to the producer that enables the market to function. Take that away and the system will mean no more production.
Until now, its been academic, because with physical goods, free-riding wasnt possible. Now we live in an age where it IS possible for people not to pay for what they consume in some industries. There has to be a solution. I think DRM is a crap solution, but unfortunately I can't think of a better one that actually works, and removes the free-rider problem.
This is one of those moves thats so over the top you mentally check for april fools dates. This kind of thing always seems a bit far-fetched in sci-fi movies, let alone modern-day America. I hope some big names kick up a fuss over this, because whatever insane big brother actions the USA takes, our useless govt here in the UK copies soon afterwards.
whats new? my sony vaio running XP works beautifully like this. It only ever reboots if a critical update demands it. My main PC, a mesh desktop PC does the same, Its perfectly happy going to standby and abck 20-30 times before needing a reboot after some game crashes it.
I dont care about a new 3D GUI, its an O/S for christs sake, but anything that reduces power consumption is most welcome.
sorry pal, but posts from anonymous cowards that are just full of abuse arent worth the time if takes to read.
So how can i make a living through sales under copyright, if copyright is not enforced? or are you one of these people who supports a two tier system where some people pay for the product, and you and your friends convenientyly ignore copyright and just take it?
piracy is widespread, as the percentage of piracy to legit sales goes up, nobody will make a living. surely this is obvious?
hey coward, ever considered that someone who disagrees with you MIGHT not be an employee of the MPAA?
And whats with the "Ill buy if if i make money with it" defense? So productivity software is fine, but entertainment products must be free to everyone? that justification is so flimsy its laughable.
"There are a lot of things I value which I will never buy"
yet somehow you believe you are entitled to own them. Ill wager this isnt true of physical goods. So basically you will pay people to make physical goods, but not any goods that can be stored digitally. Are computer programmers so beneath carpenters in your estimation for a reason?
part of the real value of art is paying for the artists food and rent. Artists arent all independently wealthy.
so if theres a freely available demo of a product, then you CAN sample it, and have no rights or justification for taking it without payment. agreed? So if there is a demo of photoshop, getting a warez copy is totally unjustfied.
Besides, if the customer cant tell how good the product is, thats the sellers problem. I cant justify stealing a ferrari to give it a test drive. Its the ferrari owners discretion as to under what conditions he lets people sample HIS product. Nobody owes you a ferrari test drive.
You cant criticise lawyers AND use legal fine print in the same argument. Argue semantics all you like, but downloading a full copy of something that you have not paid for and which is not free sounds like theft to everyone except the downloader trying to justify his actions.