I'm recommending to everyone I know that they should buy it and pirate it at the same time. It inflates the piracy numbers making EA slightly more scared, you still show your support for certain aspects of the project (the core game) - and you're protecting your financial investment by future proofing it against EA's decisions.
I'd rather pirate it and then send $50 anonymously to Will Wright, with a note explaining why I did that instead of buying the game. Or pirate it and donate $50 to the EFF in EA's name. Or not play it at all.
The principle that if I own a copy of a game, then I ought to be able to use it without having to get permission from some other party each time, especially since my access to my property could essentially evaporate if Valve went out of business and shut down the authentication servers.
If Valve made a binding contractual agreement (e.g. as part of the Steam user agreement) to provide a patch that removed the need for authentication in the event of it shutting down the servers for any reason, then I would hate it less. Removing authentication for playing games in single-player mode would be even better. But nothing short of disabling authentication to play games both as single-player and online would cause me to stop hating it entirely (authentication would still be okay to buy games and manage the account, however).
This bnetd thing, I don't know, might be ok, might not, but give it's purpose of being able to play net games with hacked versions
No, its purpose was to play games (including legitimately purchased ones) without having to deal with Blizzard's servers. For example, IIRC for a while it was the only way to play Starcraft over a TCP/IP LAN until Blizzard added support in a patch (Starcraft 1.0 could only do IPX LAN games).
bnetd was at least as legitimate as FreeCraft.
Also, the problem with Glider is not about cheating -- if I played WoW, I wouldn't want Glider bots around either. The problem was the argument Blizzard made, that Glider was a DMCA violation. Blizzard should have just kept banning accounts instead of setting a bad precedent for everyone.
...is frequently accompanied by regulated profits.
DING DING DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!
See, that's the thing that people don't seem to get: these telcos got the tax dollars, but aren't being subject to regulations, which is the entire problem!
I contacted them and the reply was to send them the cd & box, along with a proof of purchase (I had bought the games over 8 years before!) and 20 bucks to cover the replacement.
My Steam account got hacked (after my pre-Steam Half Life/Opposing Force/Blue Shift keys were registered with it) and all I had to do was send them a photo of the CDs and the CD keys. No payment was necessary.
'Course, I still hate Steam too, purely on principle.
No, I believe we call that "Microsoft's Tablet PC initiative failing." Microsoft went about it the right way, by creating software while simultaneously partnering with manufacturers to build devices to use it, but it failed to find the killer app for it.
The best shot the Tablet PC had was with OneNote, but it wasn't good enough. Specifically, if the notes people were taking were primarily text, then typing them would be faster than writing them. And if they weren't text, then they were equations or diagrams and OneNote wasn't good enough at recognizing and "cleaning up" equations and diagrams. For example, if Microsoft Equation Writer had been integrated into it (and without the need to explicitly mark the object to be recognized as an equation), and if it had been able to turn squiggly hand-drawn geometric objects into perfect geometric objects, and if it could anchor objects together (so that they stretch instead of separate when one part is moved, like in Visio or Omnigraffle), then it would have been good.
And the fact that the judgment wasn't for more that about 6,750 bucks goes to show that this was about principle, not the money.
$6,750 is what was awarded, not necessarily what was demanded. Although the judge, who did the awarding, obviously determined the amount based on principle, Rowling could have asked for astronomical monetary damages out of greed and been rejected -- we (or at least, I) don't know.
Of course, if EVGA and BFG end up eating the cost of all these failures due to their lifetime warranty policies, it could very well be that we see the end of those policies, or even the end of the companies themselves.
Ah, so maybe I got the etymology wrong. Either way, it's still descriptive of black people/people from the Niger river area, whereas "theft" is not descriptive of copyright infringement.
[T]he ubiquitous use of the word "theft" in the context of p2p file-sharing is a slur, not unlike the use of the "n word" in reference to african americans.
I don't know about that; at least the "n-word" is an accurate description (though poorly enunciated). The non-offensive version equivalent is "negro," which does in fact mean "black." The only offensiveness is in pronouncing it like an inbred redneck (which is a slur itself, but I can get away with it because I'm a white Southerner, just like how black guys are allowed to say the n-word), which recalls memories of oppression and hate crimes against black people perpetrated by inbred rednecks.
In contrast, "theft" doesn't even accurately describe the activity. In a way, it's worse!
And it *sounds* like what the area needs is the exact investors who I singled out for (a) buy, (b) fix, and (c) sell.
Exactly. However, quite a few people have already tried -- and failed -- at exactly that. In fact, one house I was particularly interested in was built in 2006. It was initially offered for sale for the (laughable) price of $200k, but apparently now it's been foreclosed and is on the market for about $50k. There are several houses like that interspersed among the old "shotgun houses" that make up the rest of the neighborhood.
If you could seriously stomach living there, go to the bank and propose to buy one stake of land in the lot you want for yourself and the a couple of ones next to each other in a nearby block. Then, get the permits to demo the buildings in the adjacent lots and build yourself a nice shiny new apartment building to rent out at those wonderful $800/month rates.
I've got a bit of a plan of that sort in the works, actually... (but without immediately replacing the houses with apartments as you suggest, and with a twist that I would hope would cause me to be more successful than the other investors in the neighborhood).
Also, in order for people to move into the apartment building you'll want to make sure that there are jobs in the area... if there aren't then the hopes of "turning the area around" are more like false hope.
The neighborhood is surrounded on three sides by the main commercial district of the city, a major research university, and a new major transit/parks development. It's got jobs. Well, there aren't jobs in the neighborhood itself, in walking distance, but there are jobs all around the rest of the city and this neighborhood is right in the middle of it.
And regarding deferring your college loans... I am under the impression that you can only do that while you are still in school and that deferment does not stop the juice from running in the form of interest. At the same time, while banks are struggling and the stock market is stagnant, it makes paying off debt seem like a better use of your money than investing.
Investing in stocks would be a bad idea right now, I agree, but the slump in real estate makes it ripe for investment.
I hope you were looking in the mirror when you said that. Buying a house - or ANYTHING that expensive, really, but a house in particular - on the off chance you'll be able to afford it in 5 years is unmitigated stupidity and should be dealt with as such.
Actually, I omitted the fact that I'd actually be looking for a house within my current means (and therefore way below my future means. Also, it's not an issue of being able to afford it in 5 years; my income should approximately double when I graduate 1 (one) year from now.
Now, if I could guess at something... you are dreading the student loans that you'll have to pay back.
Not really; I'm an engineering major at a good school, so I shouldn't have a problem. Don't get me wrong -- obviously, it would be better if tuition and whatnot had been cheaper, but I don't think it's that bad.
If you are unfortunate enough to have students loans at greater than 8%, you have my sympathies. In the meantime, please direct your angst towards the unfair student loan providers and the rising cost of American tuition. Average students have $20k in debt, but $60-80k in loans are not unheard of. This takes $300-500 per month for 30 years to pay back... and I know there are "amnesty laws" which forgive loans after 20 years in place, but affording to pay back an education (in my opinion) is a much bigger crisis in America than affording a place to live.
All I know is, for me housing is a bigger deal: I can defer my student loan payments, but I can't defer rent!
Of course, the thing that really irks me is that I could quarter my monthly housing costs by buying a house (I currently rent for $800/month; a house in the area I'm interested in would have a $200/month mortgage*), but I can't get a loan for it! It's not an issue of credit rating or the ability to pay, it's an issue of down payment and the fact that the loan amount would be too small to be worth it for the lender.
(*I'm interested in a really bad area -- but I'd be able to stomach living there because I feel that it's about to turn around and would be a very good, albeit high-risk, investment.)
Having good credit isn't hard, just pay your bills on time and keep a close eye on your spending. Anyone with good credit and sufficient income can still get a loan to buy a house, it's just the people who suck at paying their bills who are getting left in the cold.
I do have good credit, and enough income; what I don't have is savings. And it's the "zero-down payment"-type loans that they've stopped issuing.
Also, I want to buy a house in the ghetto next to campus for $20-$50k, and I haven't yet been able to find any lender willing to make a loan for less than $100k (because they don't make enough profit off it).
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I'd rather pirate it and then send $50 anonymously to Will Wright, with a note explaining why I did that instead of buying the game. Or pirate it and donate $50 to the EFF in EA's name. Or not play it at all.
The principle that if I own a copy of a game, then I ought to be able to use it without having to get permission from some other party each time, especially since my access to my property could essentially evaporate if Valve went out of business and shut down the authentication servers.
If Valve made a binding contractual agreement (e.g. as part of the Steam user agreement) to provide a patch that removed the need for authentication in the event of it shutting down the servers for any reason, then I would hate it less. Removing authentication for playing games in single-player mode would be even better. But nothing short of disabling authentication to play games both as single-player and online would cause me to stop hating it entirely (authentication would still be okay to buy games and manage the account, however).
No, its purpose was to play games (including legitimately purchased ones) without having to deal with Blizzard's servers. For example, IIRC for a while it was the only way to play Starcraft over a TCP/IP LAN until Blizzard added support in a patch (Starcraft 1.0 could only do IPX LAN games).
bnetd was at least as legitimate as FreeCraft.
Also, the problem with Glider is not about cheating -- if I played WoW, I wouldn't want Glider bots around either. The problem was the argument Blizzard made, that Glider was a DMCA violation. Blizzard should have just kept banning accounts instead of setting a bad precedent for everyone.
DING DING DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!
See, that's the thing that people don't seem to get: these telcos got the tax dollars, but aren't being subject to regulations, which is the entire problem!
Blizzard is also evil w.r.t. things like bnetd, FreeCraft, and WoW Glider.
My Steam account got hacked (after my pre-Steam Half Life/Opposing Force/Blue Shift keys were registered with it) and all I had to do was send them a photo of the CDs and the CD keys. No payment was necessary.
'Course, I still hate Steam too, purely on principle.
Nah, Starcraft had plenty of color. You're thinking of Diablo 3. Starcraft 2 is just going to have better resolution.
They could at least get it to work with XMPP (i.e., Jabber), though!
No, I believe we call that "Microsoft's Tablet PC initiative failing." Microsoft went about it the right way, by creating software while simultaneously partnering with manufacturers to build devices to use it, but it failed to find the killer app for it.
The best shot the Tablet PC had was with OneNote, but it wasn't good enough. Specifically, if the notes people were taking were primarily text, then typing them would be faster than writing them. And if they weren't text, then they were equations or diagrams and OneNote wasn't good enough at recognizing and "cleaning up" equations and diagrams. For example, if Microsoft Equation Writer had been integrated into it (and without the need to explicitly mark the object to be recognized as an equation), and if it had been able to turn squiggly hand-drawn geometric objects into perfect geometric objects, and if it could anchor objects together (so that they stretch instead of separate when one part is moved, like in Visio or Omnigraffle), then it would have been good.
You joke, but I for one really would like a device the same size and thickness as a PADD (i.e., about 6" by 8" by 1/4").
"Hear, hear."
And if your digitizer is an electromagnetic resonance type (i.e., Wacom-type) rather than a pressure-sensitive one (i.e., like most PDA touchscreens).
Because the manufacturers aren't stupid, and therefore aren't going to build a computer that has no useful software.
$6,750 is what was awarded, not necessarily what was demanded. Although the judge, who did the awarding, obviously determined the amount based on principle, Rowling could have asked for astronomical monetary damages out of greed and been rejected -- we (or at least, I) don't know.
Of course, if EVGA and BFG end up eating the cost of all these failures due to their lifetime warranty policies, it could very well be that we see the end of those policies, or even the end of the companies themselves.
Ah, so maybe I got the etymology wrong. Either way, it's still descriptive of black people/people from the Niger river area, whereas "theft" is not descriptive of copyright infringement.
I don't know about that; at least the "n-word" is an accurate description (though poorly enunciated). The non-offensive version equivalent is "negro," which does in fact mean "black." The only offensiveness is in pronouncing it like an inbred redneck (which is a slur itself, but I can get away with it because I'm a white Southerner, just like how black guys are allowed to say the n-word), which recalls memories of oppression and hate crimes against black people perpetrated by inbred rednecks.
In contrast, "theft" doesn't even accurately describe the activity. In a way, it's worse!
I'd wager that's due more to Cocoa than anything else.
Oh, I agree completely! But Scientology is worse right now.
That was my second bullet point: being sued for copyright violation is the means of suppressing free speech.
Exactly. However, quite a few people have already tried -- and failed -- at exactly that. In fact, one house I was particularly interested in was built in 2006. It was initially offered for sale for the (laughable) price of $200k, but apparently now it's been foreclosed and is on the market for about $50k. There are several houses like that interspersed among the old "shotgun houses" that make up the rest of the neighborhood.
I've got a bit of a plan of that sort in the works, actually... (but without immediately replacing the houses with apartments as you suggest, and with a twist that I would hope would cause me to be more successful than the other investors in the neighborhood).
The neighborhood is surrounded on three sides by the main commercial district of the city, a major research university, and a new major transit/parks development. It's got jobs. Well, there aren't jobs in the neighborhood itself, in walking distance, but there are jobs all around the rest of the city and this neighborhood is right in the middle of it.
Investing in stocks would be a bad idea right now, I agree, but the slump in real estate makes it ripe for investment.
Actually, I omitted the fact that I'd actually be looking for a house within my current means (and therefore way below my future means. Also, it's not an issue of being able to afford it in 5 years; my income should approximately double when I graduate 1 (one) year from now.
Not really; I'm an engineering major at a good school, so I shouldn't have a problem. Don't get me wrong -- obviously, it would be better if tuition and whatnot had been cheaper, but I don't think it's that bad.
All I know is, for me housing is a bigger deal: I can defer my student loan payments, but I can't defer rent!
Of course, the thing that really irks me is that I could quarter my monthly housing costs by buying a house (I currently rent for $800/month; a house in the area I'm interested in would have a $200/month mortgage*), but I can't get a loan for it! It's not an issue of credit rating or the ability to pay, it's an issue of down payment and the fact that the loan amount would be too small to be worth it for the lender.
(*I'm interested in a really bad area -- but I'd be able to stomach living there because I feel that it's about to turn around and would be a very good, albeit high-risk, investment.)
I do have good credit, and enough income; what I don't have is savings. And it's the "zero-down payment"-type loans that they've stopped issuing.
Also, I want to buy a house in the ghetto next to campus for $20-$50k, and I haven't yet been able to find any lender willing to make a loan for less than $100k (because they don't make enough profit off it).