The SDL is a good start. However, I do believe it doesn't do absolutely everything DX does. For instance I don't believe it supports 5.1 digital surround sound.
Not only is the principal absurd, the only way they'd truly get easy wiretapping is to make all free software/open source illegal, regulate compilers, etc. This is because as long as someone can modify a program they can remove back doors, use encryption and boom, the government won't be able to decode shit.
Granted, you'd want to use something heavy-duty, like RSA 4096-bit encryption or so.
Quite simple, sue/bribe/threaten/etc anyone who dares to challenge their "right" to patent it. I imagine enough money will keep anyone with the power to change things from considering revoking the patent. After all, considering Nintendo's history with questionable tactics in the console industry, I wouldn't put it past them.
Honestly, what good is an expensive guard robot that just alerts you? If I spent tens of thousands on a robot to protect my house from intruders, I want it to be able to tear any woodbee burglars to shreds.
There are actually two methods to buy it over steam. You can pay for HL2 itself and get the Full Retail pack, just only over steam, but you'll always own it.
The other Option, is if you subscribe for 10$ per month to Steam, you'll get access to all Valve games you have not purchased, so you could play Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike: Condition Zero, and anything else they released, so long as you subscribed. Of course if you bought any game before or during you'd still keep it after your subscription ended.
Well that's because back when HL was made, OpenGL was king and DX sucked the big one, oh my how the tables have turned since. Although, if we ever get to see OGL 2.0 it might go back to how it was, only time will tell.
I truly hope this move is reconsidered, and if they do make this move, I hope everyone who's makes use of mp3 decoding/encoding refuses to add this. The public DOES NOT want DRM, and I can only hope that enough people in the right places will at the very least make this sort of move as painful and slow as possible.
The mp3 format was the one "standard" you knew would always be DRM free, I truly hope it continues to be that way.
The SDL's a start, however it can't do everything OpenGL or OpenAL can do, so while it's got the all encompassing part, it lacks all the latest high-tech features to be quite up to par with the rest.
I should also note I forgot to add DirectPlay, which allows for easy handling of networking.
Before you can expect more developers, *nix needs a direct competitor to ALL of DirectX. Currently there's OpenGL and OpenAL, currently though OGL's a bit out of it (once they finally release 2.0 to the public it'll be back in the game), however DirectX is more then just D3D.
There's DirectMusic, DirectInput, DirectSound, DirectShow AND Direct3D. If someone can make a single unified programing library that can do all those sorts of things for *nix, then I think it'd make the platform ten times more attractive to develop for. The problem right now is really there are only two libraries which pose competition to parts of DirectX, not the whole. If that situation were rectified things would be on a definite path to change I think.
The only way you'd be able to serve all that content would be to get a video card with TV output, and a soundcard that could do some sort of component audio output to your sound system, rip everything to your PC, then get some remote control setup (like with WinDVD Platinum) to control the computer, which in turn outputs audio and video to your home theater system.
It's a messy solution, however the best you're probably likely to get in a long time.
You can never stop piracy or someone intent on cracking your software. However a robust server-side key engine and file hash verification system such as what's used by MMOs are generally difficult enough to crack that they discourage most people.
How does this sort of a system work? it's really rather simple. Every key you print for a CD you have listed in a database, when a user enters a key it's checked for a presence in the database, then mapped to that user's account. The account usually requires some form of personally identifiable information. In the rare instance a keygen is made and the pirate gets a valid unused key printed on a CD, if the real customer ever gets that box and finds their CD key doesn't work, they can contact the MMO company, prove they bought it and that is their CD key, then say goodbye to Mr. Pirate.
Since they know the pirate had that CD key and have a method of identifying him, that paints a bulls-eye on his ass begging for legal action. Now, MMOs require online play so for steam it's a bit different. You could hack the binaries so that you could have only LAN play with other hacked binaries, however to play online you'd run into problems with both a similar CD key style database as well as hash verification to ensure files aren't hacked (what do you think the.gcf's were for?).
It won't stop most pirates, but it will reduce the playability of the game, steam hacking may also remove the ability to load mods, which may or may not be part of steam and not the game engine itself. Were this the case you'd essentially be getting a value similar to a pirated Tribes 2, yes there was single player and LAN, but the meat and potatoes of the game was online, and you couldn't get on without a legit CD key. Half-Life 2 and Steam will present a very similar problem for pirates, with the slight difference being Half-Life 2's single player will be generally better then Tribes 2 SP.:p
Going to be hard to pirate anything other then the half-life 2 single player only edition, since all multi-player and the mod interface is going to go through steam.:p
Steam may eventually not require a connection to the internet but it's going to most likely discourage a lot of pirates, as even if they managed to seperate any sort of callback or key verifacation, the best you'd get is a LAN only option. I don't know about you but playing online's a big draw for me.
Of course, I'd be likely to buy the HL2 collector's edition even if I could pirate it fully featured, since I really want to support Valve for all the hard work they're doing for the fan community.
There is nothing "stopping" anyone. There are a lot of "free" modifacations for commercial games too, those have lots of artists and art. However the majority (there are exceptions) of those modifacations have art assets that are usually inferrior in comparison to the game their modding for. A lot of the stuff is very fun, but generally not of a quality you'd deem on the same level as the 40/50$ game you are getting it for.
Not to rag on anyone or anyone's work, but frankly I think OSS has a ways to go before the concept of "free" is enticing enough to get free games that can compare with their commercially successful bretheren such as UT2K3 or Quake III. It can go there and may eventually do so, but it's got a big hurdle to overcome in the art area, especially with ever increasing quality standards (meaning more time required per art asset).
The day "free" can compete in terms of quality on all levels with commercial games is a day I'd welcome, however it's going to take a long while to get there.
First of all, your comparison to SUVs is like apples to Oranges. an SUV is a tangible physical good, software is entirely intellectual property. As well, I know this is probably the billionth time it's been said. Piracy is not theft, it is copyright infringement, there is a world of difference.
Secondly, most applications, such as the ones you mention, have more then enough business customers that every person who needed it for a hobby or curiosity pirated it, they'd barely see a difference in profits.
I also highly doubt OSS will ever fit the need for games anytime in the next 20 to 30 years, especially with the increased demands for higher and higher quality models/textures/other art stuff. You could be the best programmer in the world, have an engine and all the code finished, and not be able to make a good game merely because you lack good artists/modelers/etc willing to contribute to a "free" game.
Most laws go much farther then just simply restricting sale to minors, as well there's also the fact that the majority of game purchases for minors are made by parents. In effect you'd be enacting a useless ban that'd take up taxpayer dollars just to give you that "warm and fuzzy feeling when you go to sleep at night." I don't know about you, but I'd rather have my tax dollars spent on something more useful, maybe enforcing existing laws that make sense.
A parent is in charge of keeping track of their child and what their child does. If the parent lets their 16 or 17-year old have a job and have money of their own, then they should either keep track of what they're buying or realize the things they might get. A 7-year old isn't going to have cash to get into a movie or buy a game unless he/she stole it, or the parent was extremely irresponsible. If a parent isn't responsible, punish the parent, not everyone else.
I also fail to see how seeing the human body or violence depicted on the screen will cause any real harm to anyone.
I seriously hope someone at this panel makes the RIAA look like the fools they are. Suing their user-base, charging ridiculous prices, forcing draconian DRM (in non US countries) on people, and stiffing the artist.
And yet they wonder why they have such a piracy epidemic on their hands? Someone really needs to say/do something at the event to make a spectacle of the RIAA and how ridiculous what they're saying and doing is.
Why does everyone insist steam is subscription based? Here's the low down in case someone told you something else.
You can use steam with any retail valve product you bought, it's yours forever once you buy it. You can also purchase online and its yours for good. Now there IS a subscription OPTION, where you pay 10$ per month and you have access to all games valve has released. If they release more games you instantly get those too.
So say they started this right now, and then released HL2 and TF2, I have Half-life. Suddenly I can play that AND half-life 2 and TF2. I can cancel my subscription at any time and still have access to Half-Life, which I previously bought.
Also, please stop the ranting about HL2 on non windows boxes. The simple fact is that it's not going to happen, the client was made based on Direct3D because OpenGL 1.x sucks, and 2.0 is nowhere near completed.
What about the levies though? I mean honestly, aren't these levies supposed to prevent exactly this type of behavior by the CRIA? If not, then I'd ask they take away those before the CRIA goes sue happy like the RIAA did. If I were Canadian I wouldn't accept a tax to compensate a corrupt oligopoly unless it had something in it for me (legalization of file-sharing).
T'is truly a sad day to both see Black Isle close out and hear that the much anticipated Fallout 3 was canned. I can only hope the IP is sold to someone else who WILL make the next game, and hopefully a good one that lives up to the last two.
From what I remember, the 21 drinking age was actually the work of a soccer mom. A group of 18 year olds got drunk and plowed their car into her house, running over her young daughter (think she was in the neighborhood of five years old). After this she set out to make it illegal to drink at 18 nationally because of this incident.
The typical soccer-mom activist routine. Naturally, the federal government does not have a say over the drinking age, each state does. So with her lobbying the feds basically dangled a figurative carrot. If the state has a drinking age lower then 21 they do not receive federal highway funding
I could be wrong, I'm trying to remember a few years back to the text in my AP government book in HS, that's the best I can remember of it.
Can you quite honestly say you think it's good to set a trend of censoring all anime to broadcast it?
Cartoon network, even in its famed adult swim, does very much so censor anime. I really don't like the trend this sets, in fact I've refused to watch their network on a whole after how horribly they butchered Tenchi Muyo! back several years ago.
So I personally would prefer anime just not be broadcast to this, as I detest censorship of any kind and the effects it has are often very wide reaching. Tenchi Muyo had its plot blurred and obfuscated because of it, and other animes suffered a similar fate and yet more may as well if this sort of thing continues. Just say no to censorship, hold out for the ideal, uncut anime.
Slashdot Mirror
The SDL is a good start. However, I do believe it doesn't do absolutely everything DX does. For instance I don't believe it supports 5.1 digital surround sound.
Not only is the principal absurd, the only way they'd truly get easy wiretapping is to make all free software/open source illegal, regulate compilers, etc. This is because as long as someone can modify a program they can remove back doors, use encryption and boom, the government won't be able to decode shit.
Granted, you'd want to use something heavy-duty, like RSA 4096-bit encryption or so.
Quite simple, sue/bribe/threaten/etc anyone who dares to challenge their "right" to patent it. I imagine enough money will keep anyone with the power to change things from considering revoking the patent. After all, considering Nintendo's history with questionable tactics in the console industry, I wouldn't put it past them.
And I just realized I should've used the preview button before posting that.
Honestly, what good is an expensive guard robot that just alerts you? If I spent tens of thousands on a robot to protect my house from intruders, I want it to be able to tear any woodbee burglars to shreds.
There are actually two methods to buy it over steam. You can pay for HL2 itself and get the Full Retail pack, just only over steam, but you'll always own it.
The other Option, is if you subscribe for 10$ per month to Steam, you'll get access to all Valve games you have not purchased, so you could play Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike: Condition Zero, and anything else they released, so long as you subscribed. Of course if you bought any game before or during you'd still keep it after your subscription ended.
Well that's because back when HL was made, OpenGL was king and DX sucked the big one, oh my how the tables have turned since. Although, if we ever get to see OGL 2.0 it might go back to how it was, only time will tell.
I truly hope this move is reconsidered, and if they do make this move, I hope everyone who's makes use of mp3 decoding/encoding refuses to add this. The public DOES NOT want DRM, and I can only hope that enough people in the right places will at the very least make this sort of move as painful and slow as possible.
The mp3 format was the one "standard" you knew would always be DRM free, I truly hope it continues to be that way.
The SDL's a start, however it can't do everything OpenGL or OpenAL can do, so while it's got the all encompassing part, it lacks all the latest high-tech features to be quite up to par with the rest.
I should also note I forgot to add DirectPlay, which allows for easy handling of networking.
Before you can expect more developers, *nix needs a direct competitor to ALL of DirectX. Currently there's OpenGL and OpenAL, currently though OGL's a bit out of it (once they finally release 2.0 to the public it'll be back in the game), however DirectX is more then just D3D.
There's DirectMusic, DirectInput, DirectSound, DirectShow AND Direct3D. If someone can make a single unified programing library that can do all those sorts of things for *nix, then I think it'd make the platform ten times more attractive to develop for. The problem right now is really there are only two libraries which pose competition to parts of DirectX, not the whole. If that situation were rectified things would be on a definite path to change I think.
MythTV, never heard of it, link please?
The only way you'd be able to serve all that content would be to get a video card with TV output, and a soundcard that could do some sort of component audio output to your sound system, rip everything to your PC, then get some remote control setup (like with WinDVD Platinum) to control the computer, which in turn outputs audio and video to your home theater system.
It's a messy solution, however the best you're probably likely to get in a long time.
You can never stop piracy or someone intent on cracking your software. However a robust server-side key engine and file hash verification system such as what's used by MMOs are generally difficult enough to crack that they discourage most people.
.gcf's were for?).
How does this sort of a system work? it's really rather simple. Every key you print for a CD you have listed in a database, when a user enters a key it's checked for a presence in the database, then mapped to that user's account. The account usually requires some form of personally identifiable information. In the rare instance a keygen is made and the pirate gets a valid unused key printed on a CD, if the real customer ever gets that box and finds their CD key doesn't work, they can contact the MMO company, prove they bought it and that is their CD key, then say goodbye to Mr. Pirate.
Since they know the pirate had that CD key and have a method of identifying him, that paints a bulls-eye on his ass begging for legal action. Now, MMOs require online play so for steam it's a bit different. You could hack the binaries so that you could have only LAN play with other hacked binaries, however to play online you'd run into problems with both a similar CD key style database as well as hash verification to ensure files aren't hacked (what do you think the
It won't stop most pirates, but it will reduce the playability of the game, steam hacking may also remove the ability to load mods, which may or may not be part of steam and not the game engine itself. Were this the case you'd essentially be getting a value similar to a pirated Tribes 2, yes there was single player and LAN, but the meat and potatoes of the game was online, and you couldn't get on without a legit CD key. Half-Life 2 and Steam will present a very similar problem for pirates, with the slight difference being Half-Life 2's single player will be generally better then Tribes 2 SP.:p
Going to be hard to pirate anything other then the half-life 2 single player only edition, since all multi-player and the mod interface is going to go through steam. :p
Steam may eventually not require a connection to the internet but it's going to most likely discourage a lot of pirates, as even if they managed to seperate any sort of callback or key verifacation, the best you'd get is a LAN only option. I don't know about you but playing online's a big draw for me.
Of course, I'd be likely to buy the HL2 collector's edition even if I could pirate it fully featured, since I really want to support Valve for all the hard work they're doing for the fan community.
There is nothing "stopping" anyone. There are a lot of "free" modifacations for commercial games too, those have lots of artists and art. However the majority (there are exceptions) of those modifacations have art assets that are usually inferrior in comparison to the game their modding for. A lot of the stuff is very fun, but generally not of a quality you'd deem on the same level as the 40/50$ game you are getting it for.
Not to rag on anyone or anyone's work, but frankly I think OSS has a ways to go before the concept of "free" is enticing enough to get free games that can compare with their commercially successful bretheren such as UT2K3 or Quake III. It can go there and may eventually do so, but it's got a big hurdle to overcome in the art area, especially with ever increasing quality standards (meaning more time required per art asset).
The day "free" can compete in terms of quality on all levels with commercial games is a day I'd welcome, however it's going to take a long while to get there.
First of all, your comparison to SUVs is like apples to Oranges. an SUV is a tangible physical good, software is entirely intellectual property. As well, I know this is probably the billionth time it's been said. Piracy is not theft, it is copyright infringement, there is a world of difference.
Secondly, most applications, such as the ones you mention, have more then enough business customers that every person who needed it for a hobby or curiosity pirated it, they'd barely see a difference in profits.
I also highly doubt OSS will ever fit the need for games anytime in the next 20 to 30 years, especially with the increased demands for higher and higher quality models/textures/other art stuff. You could be the best programmer in the world, have an engine and all the code finished, and not be able to make a good game merely because you lack good artists/modelers/etc willing to contribute to a "free" game.
Most laws go much farther then just simply restricting sale to minors, as well there's also the fact that the majority of game purchases for minors are made by parents. In effect you'd be enacting a useless ban that'd take up taxpayer dollars just to give you that "warm and fuzzy feeling when you go to sleep at night." I don't know about you, but I'd rather have my tax dollars spent on something more useful, maybe enforcing existing laws that make sense.
A parent is in charge of keeping track of their child and what their child does. If the parent lets their 16 or 17-year old have a job and have money of their own, then they should either keep track of what they're buying or realize the things they might get. A 7-year old isn't going to have cash to get into a movie or buy a game unless he/she stole it, or the parent was extremely irresponsible. If a parent isn't responsible, punish the parent, not everyone else.
I also fail to see how seeing the human body or violence depicted on the screen will cause any real harm to anyone.
Probably, but I like going "D'yaaaaarrrr!" :p
I seriously hope someone at this panel makes the RIAA look like the fools they are. Suing their user-base, charging ridiculous prices, forcing draconian DRM (in non US countries) on people, and stiffing the artist.
And yet they wonder why they have such a piracy epidemic on their hands? Someone really needs to say/do something at the event to make a spectacle of the RIAA and how ridiculous what they're saying and doing is.
Why does everyone insist steam is subscription based? Here's the low down in case someone told you something else.
You can use steam with any retail valve product you bought, it's yours forever once you buy it. You can also purchase online and its yours for good. Now there IS a subscription OPTION, where you pay 10$ per month and you have access to all games valve has released. If they release more games you instantly get those too.
So say they started this right now, and then released HL2 and TF2, I have Half-life. Suddenly I can play that AND half-life 2 and TF2. I can cancel my subscription at any time and still have access to Half-Life, which I previously bought.
Also, please stop the ranting about HL2 on non windows boxes. The simple fact is that it's not going to happen, the client was made based on Direct3D because OpenGL 1.x sucks, and 2.0 is nowhere near completed.
If they did something like that here, long story short, there'd be some hell to pay.
"but sometimes you've just got to kick some ass."
What about the levies though? I mean honestly, aren't these levies supposed to prevent exactly this type of behavior by the CRIA? If not, then I'd ask they take away those before the CRIA goes sue happy like the RIAA did. If I were Canadian I wouldn't accept a tax to compensate a corrupt oligopoly unless it had something in it for me (legalization of file-sharing).
T'is truly a sad day to both see Black Isle close out and hear that the much anticipated Fallout 3 was canned. I can only hope the IP is sold to someone else who WILL make the next game, and hopefully a good one that lives up to the last two.
From what I remember, the 21 drinking age was actually the work of a soccer mom. A group of 18 year olds got drunk and plowed their car into her house, running over her young daughter (think she was in the neighborhood of five years old). After this she set out to make it illegal to drink at 18 nationally because of this incident. The typical soccer-mom activist routine. Naturally, the federal government does not have a say over the drinking age, each state does. So with her lobbying the feds basically dangled a figurative carrot. If the state has a drinking age lower then 21 they do not receive federal highway funding I could be wrong, I'm trying to remember a few years back to the text in my AP government book in HS, that's the best I can remember of it.
Can you quite honestly say you think it's good to set a trend of censoring all anime to broadcast it?
Cartoon network, even in its famed adult swim, does very much so censor anime. I really don't like the trend this sets, in fact I've refused to watch their network on a whole after how horribly they butchered Tenchi Muyo! back several years ago.
So I personally would prefer anime just not be broadcast to this, as I detest censorship of any kind and the effects it has are often very wide reaching. Tenchi Muyo had its plot blurred and obfuscated because of it, and other animes suffered a similar fate and yet more may as well if this sort of thing continues. Just say no to censorship, hold out for the ideal, uncut anime.