You obviously aren't someone who receives a lot of these 'professional' magazines. Almost all of these are 'free' mailings from groups who make their money by stuffing the zine with as many ads as can fit on the pages. And like this particular article most are filled with a combination of completely obvious statements or a load of BS written by people who have never actually dealt with the matter at hand.
"Really, you made it to the title of CIO and you haven't figured out that vendors lie?"
"Really, you made it to the title of CIO and need a magazine to tell you that you need to manage your team as people and not faceless units?"
"Really? No, really?"
At my old job someone appearently hated me and slipped my name to a number of these outfits as a "Web Master". They make good "oohh, look how well read he is" decor if you leave them all over your desk and someone clueless walks by, but that's about all they are good for. Most of the time the paper isn't even easily recyclable.
Great idea till someone figured out how to inject goatse into everything they 'share'.
It doesn't scale well with dynamic content (i.e. you clicked on this and that and this thing over here, so here's your own special version of the page just for you) and I can see all sorts of issues with ad content and privacy ('oh, I'm a fundie who's trolling on this porn site collecting the IP's of who visits so I can shame them, those nasty porn consumers...'), but assuming it went up along side the current setup, it could be cool.
The current tech darling Apple has a big hole in their DRM making it mostly useless. On another note, look up the number of 30 or 60 Gig players sold and then note the nubmer of DRM song sales average per player. The price and the DRM is keeping Itunes a nich market. This is especially true for those without an iPod. My MP3 player is 100% incompatable with iTunes, so my purchases have been zero. There were a few songs I would have considered, but I lack compatible hardware (actualy Apple has incompatible songs).
Bolding added by me. Niche? My, you have an interesting definition of niche.
The iTunes Store leads the pack with 19 percent, Wal-Mart (which includes the brick-and-mortar stores as well as its online properties) is second with 15 percent, and Best Buy is third with 13 percent. Amazon is a distant fourth at 6 percent, trailed by the likes of Borders, Circuit City, and Barnes & Noble. Rhapsody is in the tenth slot with 1 percent.
I think, perhaps you mistake what you do, with what the world does. While the PC game market has only about 15% of the total market, that's 15% vs the rest of the group. Not a bad slice of the pie given how many consoles and handhelds are out there currently with games being sold for them.
Plays for Sure and the Zune are more indicators of Microsoft's inability to plan or market than they are of any sort of rebellion vs. DRM. If it were the case that there was an up swell of "anti-DRM" in play, the current tech darling Apple would be tumbling from their throne instead of seated securely in place with their foot on the throats of their iPhone/iTouch/iPod customers.
The Plays for Sure didn't even work on the Zune. It was an abortion, and I'm half convinced it was put into place just so Microsoft could lure partners in to screw when the company launched their own 'real' products.
The Zune fiasco on the other hand was pure bad design. It was ugly, handled worse than its competitor, did less, and was going up against a competitor that had the edge of being a "hip status symbol". Who buys KFC if the cost of a meal at a five star restaurant is the same?
Regardless, I'm not arguing that copy protection (which realistically is what we are talking about here, not DRM) does not reduce the value prospect of the game. I'm arguing that the whole idea that THIS scheme being talked about reduces it so much that the thought of actually purchasing the game is unbearable to anyone but a purest.
If you want to be a purist, that's ok. Certainly, on a platform mostly supported by like minded individuals, it's an understandable position to take.
But don't expect the rest of the world to follow your ideals simply because you say so. There are reasons why people implement copy protection on their products, and it's surprisingly not simply because they are a-holes who like to piss people off. I don't know if you were alive/remember the old days of floppy games, but I started on tape cassettes. Piracy isn't a theory for me; I know for a fact that a good portion of the tech knowledgeable world would copy for free rather than pay, because they did when there weren't any impediments at all.
Because we all know bottles of breast milk can be used to bring down airplanes and terrorists will always refuse to provide ID rather than coming up with fake ones.
Security theaters aren't about security they are about looking secure.
I imagine, given they are infrastructure and unless current trends with Homeland Security reverse, getting close enough to see them as more than dots on the horizon will result in another type of field trip in a Coast Guard vessel. Especially in a small boat.
The question isn't "is this less convenience than nothing at all?", it's "is this a reasonable step, or is it extremely inconvenient?"
CastrTroy had a perfect example of how a poorly implemented in-store loss prevention measure was inconvienient to him.
But I ask the question again, is this truely that inconvenient? Or are people just complaining because it's less than 100% convenient?
There are measures one can take that will put the kibosh on my purchases. I don't own Bioshock, even though I could purchase it on Steam. But the difference between the DRM used in Bioshock and the activation proposed by the LGP is the difference between day and night.
I think you're making a dangerous assumption about the parent post. The parent indicates that he'll buy the game and crack it to use it how he wants. Cracking a game I bought to use in and damn way I please is not stealing as I have bought the game.
Actually:
I have a better idea, if I must have this game, I'll just crack it. But then why go through all that trouble to "fix" a game I purchased and put the security of my system at risk by running an unknown program?? Might as well steal the whole thing.
I was responding directly to that with the stealing comment. I agree, if you have purchased the game and want to go to the effort of cracking it so you don't have to deal with the extra hassle, that should be your right.
How did that affect your willingness to purchase such items from Wal-Mart? If it happened repeatedly, would you not simply and naturally stop purchasing from them?
If LGP's authentication servers are often down, then yes, it becomes an issue and I wouldn't buy from them anymore. But at the baseline, this isn't that big of a problem.
It boils down to a matter of perspective.
Those who look at this through the fisheye lens of "Any copy protection is evil" are obviously going to hate the idea. But then in my experience few of these people are willing to provide an alternate solution other than "Trust us, even though as a group we've proven repeatedly that we can't be."
When I walk into a store, I expect and accept a certain level of 'theft prevention' to be in place.
Perhaps they have security monitors covering the out of the way nooks of the store.
Perhaps they have someone in 'plain clothes' that wanders the store watching for people shoving things into their purse.
Perhaps they have certain items locked in a cabinet or with tags that trigger an alarm when removed from the store.
These things I accept because I realize that people steal and that one of the things a store must do to stay profitable is to cut down on amount of five finger discounts taken.
I realize that these things don't prevent theft 100%, and so does the store. In fact, the store probably also realizes that depending on the 'quality' of the store, a good percent of the shrinkage in their product could be due to their own staff.
But even though these things don't work 100%, I accept them. And do you know why? Because these things rarely ever become an inconvenience to me.
If, on the other hand, a store began requiring pat downs or strip searches every time I entered or left, I would stop patronizing them.
Is what LGP is proposing really a strip search level deal? Because honestly, when you threaten to just steal their games, that's what you are indicating to me. That you consider this an unreasonable measure for them to take that you would rather screw them over as a matter of principle.
Honestly, myself, I think this is a fairly benign manner to approach the issue.
I knew, logically, that everything that had happened since I read that silly ad had been impossible.
So I chucked logic.
Logic is a feeble reed, friend. "Logic" proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs won't work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.
isn't long term storage, though it may have it. The strength is that you can reproduce it with high fidelity to the original numberous times.
The best way to store digital vidio for 20 years is to make numerous copies of it. 10Gigs is about 3 DVD's at the lowest density. Add a dvd of checksum files (something like a PAR) and you should still be able to make five sets for under $20 if you are shopping around for DVD media.
Once a year or three, load up one of the sets and run it through the checksums. Correct any errors discovered via the checksums and copies from the other sets, and make another five sets.
Volia. Repeatable as long as there is any sort of cheap digital recording media that can easily fit your files out there.
The real question is how you do this when you have 1,000 Gig to backup.
At least, thats how I would do it. Look into joining one or two professional IT associations that deal with your 'area' of concern and network a lot.
With fewer people at work to 'leech' off of, you will need to spend more time out of work keeping those skills up. That means more effort on your part, and an actual drive to keep up the pace.
Couple of years ago, one of my neighbors narced on me because they thought I was playing video games too loud. This led to me getting a set of wireless headphones to listen to TV with.
It completely surprised me the first time I put them on and couldn't get them to tune into the TV's transmitter because all the channels were full of wireless phone conversations.
Sadly, none of my neighbors have any secrets worth listening to. And even worst, most of them seem to have no issues with taking the phone into the shitter with them:/
In revenge, I've hooked up the transmitter to a cheap dvd player and leave anime porn running on a loop just before going to work, every few days....
The sole addtion was to check for the specific save file used to stack smash past the code signing security in the Wii. In other words, for someone to have 'remotely rooted' you using this, they would have had to some how convinced you to install their save, load up the game, do the trick that activates the hack. Not notice the fact that the Wii crashed, not notice the scrolling black text as the exploit installs whatever...
In other words, this only protected you from things you didn't need protection from.
I don't like their stance against unauthorized code running on their machines needing to be blocked. But I do understand the economics behind the region locking. It's hard to get your product out there, if you can't promise a distributor that they'll have exclusive rights to distribute in a region.
No, it's not the ideal situation, but the reality is, even a 'giant' like Nintendo doesn't have the resources to do all their own distribution/publishing of their products. If you think the Wii/WiiFit shortages are bad now, think how crappy they would be if you had to rely on just Nintendo's resources for production and distribution.
That being said, if I recall correctly, the software based region unlocker that can be run via the Homebrew Channel was still working (at least that was what I was reading before coming into work.)
They've already found the bugs in the new code (which actually specificly looks for the TP hack save, rather than doing something nifty like verfiying saves in general) which will allow them to defeat it. The details aren't public but have been announced in general steps to many of the homebrew sites.
If I weren't at work behind a filter that thinks homebrew is 'illegal software', I'd post a link to an article or two.
But you should be able to check www.wiibrew.org... if I remember the URL. Sorry, I have bookmarkitis.
You did notice the letters "EA" in the summary, correct? Have you seen the number of expansion packs, deluxe packs, and megauber packs they release? Especially ones like the Sims?
While Spore might be Sid's attempt to get around this (it's hard to sell an expansion pack when all the content is user/procedurally generated), that just means they are going to do their best to squeeze out every last cent they can out of the game.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, use gasoline. It's far more efficient and as a side bonus you get a deeper tan.
You obviously aren't someone who receives a lot of these 'professional' magazines. Almost all of these are 'free' mailings from groups who make their money by stuffing the zine with as many ads as can fit on the pages. And like this particular article most are filled with a combination of completely obvious statements or a load of BS written by people who have never actually dealt with the matter at hand.
"Really, you made it to the title of CIO and you haven't figured out that vendors lie?"
"Really, you made it to the title of CIO and need a magazine to tell you that you need to manage your team as people and not faceless units?"
"Really? No, really?"
At my old job someone appearently hated me and slipped my name to a number of these outfits as a "Web Master". They make good "oohh, look how well read he is" decor if you leave them all over your desk and someone clueless walks by, but that's about all they are good for. Most of the time the paper isn't even easily recyclable.
True, I have them marked as avaliable on mine but just noticed that they actually aren't "on" till the 0.2 update that is slated for today.
You are misinformed.
Great idea till someone figured out how to inject goatse into everything they 'share'.
It doesn't scale well with dynamic content (i.e. you clicked on this and that and this thing over here, so here's your own special version of the page just for you) and I can see all sorts of issues with ad content and privacy ('oh, I'm a fundie who's trolling on this porn site collecting the IP's of who visits so I can shame them, those nasty porn consumers...'), but assuming it went up along side the current setup, it could be cool.
Niche? My, you have an interesting definition of niche.
I think, perhaps you mistake what you do, with what the world does. While the PC game market has only about 15% of the total market, that's 15% vs the rest of the group. Not a bad slice of the pie given how many consoles and handhelds are out there currently with games being sold for them.
Plays for Sure and the Zune are more indicators of Microsoft's inability to plan or market than they are of any sort of rebellion vs. DRM. If it were the case that there was an up swell of "anti-DRM" in play, the current tech darling Apple would be tumbling from their throne instead of seated securely in place with their foot on the throats of their iPhone/iTouch/iPod customers.
The Plays for Sure didn't even work on the Zune. It was an abortion, and I'm half convinced it was put into place just so Microsoft could lure partners in to screw when the company launched their own 'real' products.
The Zune fiasco on the other hand was pure bad design. It was ugly, handled worse than its competitor, did less, and was going up against a competitor that had the edge of being a "hip status symbol". Who buys KFC if the cost of a meal at a five star restaurant is the same?
Regardless, I'm not arguing that copy protection (which realistically is what we are talking about here, not DRM) does not reduce the value prospect of the game. I'm arguing that the whole idea that THIS scheme being talked about reduces it so much that the thought of actually purchasing the game is unbearable to anyone but a purest.
If you want to be a purist, that's ok. Certainly, on a platform mostly supported by like minded individuals, it's an understandable position to take.
But don't expect the rest of the world to follow your ideals simply because you say so. There are reasons why people implement copy protection on their products, and it's surprisingly not simply because they are a-holes who like to piss people off. I don't know if you were alive/remember the old days of floppy games, but I started on tape cassettes. Piracy isn't a theory for me; I know for a fact that a good portion of the tech knowledgeable world would copy for free rather than pay, because they did when there weren't any impediments at all.
Because we all know bottles of breast milk can be used to bring down airplanes and terrorists will always refuse to provide ID rather than coming up with fake ones.
Security theaters aren't about security they are about looking secure.
I imagine, given they are infrastructure and unless current trends with Homeland Security reverse, getting close enough to see them as more than dots on the horizon will result in another type of field trip in a Coast Guard vessel. Especially in a small boat.
The question isn't "is this less convenience than nothing at all?", it's "is this a reasonable step, or is it extremely inconvenient?"
CastrTroy had a perfect example of how a poorly implemented in-store loss prevention measure was inconvienient to him.
But I ask the question again, is this truely that inconvenient? Or are people just complaining because it's less than 100% convenient?
There are measures one can take that will put the kibosh on my purchases. I don't own Bioshock, even though I could purchase it on Steam. But the difference between the DRM used in Bioshock and the activation proposed by the LGP is the difference between day and night.
Actually:
I was responding directly to that with the stealing comment. I agree, if you have purchased the game and want to go to the effort of cracking it so you don't have to deal with the extra hassle, that should be your right.
But buy it first.
How did that affect your willingness to purchase such items from Wal-Mart? If it happened repeatedly, would you not simply and naturally stop purchasing from them?
If LGP's authentication servers are often down, then yes, it becomes an issue and I wouldn't buy from them anymore. But at the baseline, this isn't that big of a problem.
It boils down to a matter of perspective.
Those who look at this through the fisheye lens of "Any copy protection is evil" are obviously going to hate the idea. But then in my experience few of these people are willing to provide an alternate solution other than "Trust us, even though as a group we've proven repeatedly that we can't be."
When I walk into a store, I expect and accept a certain level of 'theft prevention' to be in place.
Perhaps they have security monitors covering the out of the way nooks of the store.
Perhaps they have someone in 'plain clothes' that wanders the store watching for people shoving things into their purse.
Perhaps they have certain items locked in a cabinet or with tags that trigger an alarm when removed from the store.
These things I accept because I realize that people steal and that one of the things a store must do to stay profitable is to cut down on amount of five finger discounts taken.
I realize that these things don't prevent theft 100%, and so does the store. In fact, the store probably also realizes that depending on the 'quality' of the store, a good percent of the shrinkage in their product could be due to their own staff.
But even though these things don't work 100%, I accept them. And do you know why? Because these things rarely ever become an inconvenience to me.
If, on the other hand, a store began requiring pat downs or strip searches every time I entered or left, I would stop patronizing them.
Is what LGP is proposing really a strip search level deal? Because honestly, when you threaten to just steal their games, that's what you are indicating to me. That you consider this an unreasonable measure for them to take that you would rather screw them over as a matter of principle.
Honestly, myself, I think this is a fairly benign manner to approach the issue.
Yes. And trust me, you don't want to know what "adventurers
isn't long term storage, though it may have it. The strength is that you can reproduce it with high fidelity to the original numberous times.
The best way to store digital vidio for 20 years is to make numerous copies of it. 10Gigs is about 3 DVD's at the lowest density. Add a dvd of checksum files (something like a PAR) and you should still be able to make five sets for under $20 if you are shopping around for DVD media.
Once a year or three, load up one of the sets and run it through the checksums. Correct any errors discovered via the checksums and copies from the other sets, and make another five sets.
Volia. Repeatable as long as there is any sort of cheap digital recording media that can easily fit your files out there.
The real question is how you do this when you have 1,000 Gig to backup.
Like to try again?
Though, I could have sworn I saw someone selling new kits somewhere.
At least, thats how I would do it. Look into joining one or two professional IT associations that deal with your 'area' of concern and network a lot.
With fewer people at work to 'leech' off of, you will need to spend more time out of work keeping those skills up. That means more effort on your part, and an actual drive to keep up the pace.
Couple of years ago, one of my neighbors narced on me because they thought I was playing video games too loud. This led to me getting a set of wireless headphones to listen to TV with.
:/
It completely surprised me the first time I put them on and couldn't get them to tune into the TV's transmitter because all the channels were full of wireless phone conversations.
Sadly, none of my neighbors have any secrets worth listening to. And even worst, most of them seem to have no issues with taking the phone into the shitter with them
In revenge, I've hooked up the transmitter to a cheap dvd player and leave anime porn running on a loop just before going to work, every few days....
The sole addtion was to check for the specific save file used to stack smash past the code signing security in the Wii. In other words, for someone to have 'remotely rooted' you using this, they would have had to some how convinced you to install their save, load up the game, do the trick that activates the hack. Not notice the fact that the Wii crashed, not notice the scrolling black text as the exploit installs whatever...
In other words, this only protected you from things you didn't need protection from.
I don't like their stance against unauthorized code running on their machines needing to be blocked. But I do understand the economics behind the region locking. It's hard to get your product out there, if you can't promise a distributor that they'll have exclusive rights to distribute in a region.
No, it's not the ideal situation, but the reality is, even a 'giant' like Nintendo doesn't have the resources to do all their own distribution/publishing of their products. If you think the Wii/WiiFit shortages are bad now, think how crappy they would be if you had to rely on just Nintendo's resources for production and distribution.
That being said, if I recall correctly, the software based region unlocker that can be run via the Homebrew Channel was still working (at least that was what I was reading before coming into work.)
They've already found the bugs in the new code (which actually specificly looks for the TP hack save, rather than doing something nifty like verfiying saves in general) which will allow them to defeat it. The details aren't public but have been announced in general steps to many of the homebrew sites.
If I weren't at work behind a filter that thinks homebrew is 'illegal software', I'd post a link to an article or two.
But you should be able to check www.wiibrew.org... if I remember the URL. Sorry, I have bookmarkitis.
The one that spells it Will. Completely understandable you didn't recognize that one.
You did notice the letters "EA" in the summary, correct? Have you seen the number of expansion packs, deluxe packs, and megauber packs they release? Especially ones like the Sims?
While Spore might be Sid's attempt to get around this (it's hard to sell an expansion pack when all the content is user/procedurally generated), that just means they are going to do their best to squeeze out every last cent they can out of the game.