Better yet, not only will the message not get to Valve, but instead it'll go to Virindi, who already hate Steam because it's cutting into their retail business. AND it'll lower the number of actual retail boxes sold, which will support the idea that Steam is the way to go when they find out they've sold more HL2 on Steam then they did in the store.
Way to shot yourself in the foot if your actual intent was to gum up the works. ^_^
Install Steam without owning any products and basicly what you have is an instant messaging client with the ability to buy games. So, assuming Valve ever actually fixes their Friends network to the point where it's not down 50% of the time, it's not a horrible waste even if you don't get any games. The idea is, however, that someday it'll be more than just Valve selling games on Steam. If that day comes, then it'll really be a "must install" program in my eyes.
It forced people to install Steam _ONLY_ if they wanted to use the unsupported bonus material - namely, multiplayer. You don't and never will need to install Steam to install Half-life, or to install any of the pre-Steam updates to Half-life. You don't even have to install Steam to play online with the pre-Steam versions of Half-life. The _ONLY_ thing they removed were the master servers which listed what games you could connect to.
Given that they provided services for people to play those games for free, and given that you can STILL play pre-Steam games online witout using Steam, I tend to class people who whine about having to install Steam to play Half-Life 1 in the "I just want to complain, don't bother me with facts" group and ignore them.
You need to look somewhere else to blame. Not only has that not happened to any of the people I've spoken with, but it's highly unlikely that anything you did to install HL2 could cause that sort of problem.
Right click on the Steam Tray Icon and pick "Monitor" from the options. This pops up a screen from where you can see if Steam is downloading anything in the background. If you don't see anything there, then something else is causing your ping problems.
Prove it. Unplug your net connection and attempt to play the game. Amazingly enough, you can! Why? Because THEY DON'T REQUIRE YOU TO AUTHENTICATE EVERY TIME YOU LAUNCH THE GAME.
And yes, they had a contract for distribution with Sierra. Sierra was acquired by Virindi. Valve had to produce the game for Virindi under the contract that they had with Sierra. They had no choice in the matter of distribution. That was in Virindi's corner. Perhaps if you actually read up on the situation instead of stomping your feet like a spoilt brat, you'd know that.
Lastly, I mention my experience because if you had to reinstall almost every driver in on your computer to get HL2 running then it is almost certainly because YOU fucked up your machine. Not Valve.
I think you breezed through the game without bothering to even look at anything that wasn't on the rails you were following if you feel the story wasn't in-depth or well told. No offense, there is a wealth of things in the game that are there to be found, you just don't have your nose rubbed in them.
Dude, if your 'terrorist' has access to enough energy to create said explosives, you've already lost. The power of explosives is that they have stored within them a huge energy potential. You aren't going to create that sort of matter without dumping a huge amount of energy into them in the first place. And if you have that at your disposal, WTF are you wasting it on ineffiecent explosives?
This is assuming this isn't some sort of magical "create energy and matter from nothing" box, in which case let throw reality to the wind and also assume that we've invented the infinitely strong energy shield that will protect us from such bombs.
And where do the plans/material/power for the solar cells come from? And where do the plans/material/power for the garbage disposal/atomizer come from?
You'd need the egg before you can hatch the chicken. And that's assuming you can produce enough power with your "do-it-yourself" power plant to actually accomplish anything. It's also assuming the majority of what you make will be possible to make off of your garbage.
The Internet? What incentive is there for the people who have those plans to share, knowing that they will only get one shot at making their mark before the plans are stolen and spread around?
Who would trust plans pulled from the Internet? Really. If I found plans to make my very own ANYTHING on the net, I'd wait for the first 40 people to come back and say the plans didn't actually cause their town to go up in a mushroom cloud before I even considered using them.
Open Source? That works great when the developers get something back in return. What do you have to offer them? Trade your plans for theirs? That works great for the first set of plans you want. What happens when you are out of things you know how to create because someone else has shared all your plans with everyone else?
Any such machine would need three things, which the user would still be mostly powerless to provide in any meaningful manner on their own.
Power to run the machine
'Atoms' to feed the machine
Patterns to instruct the machine
The first item is already something controlled by an industry that is well entrenched.
The second item would depend on the requirements of the machine. However given the fact that about 100% of the world is already claimed by someone, somewhere, I doubt it would have much of an effect
The last would be the kicker. We already live in a world that is being torn by the idea of Intellectual Property. How we fell on the sides of that issue would determine whether things would be status quo or a major upheval. Given who has the most strings to pull, I doubt there would be much to worry about in that respect either.
You know, I would have more respect for the people who complained that Valve requires you to authenticate everytime you play Half-Life 2, IF THEY WERE IN ANY WAY RIGHT!
1. No, they don't. Nope. Nada. They DO NOT. 2. The CD check isn't Valves doing, it's Virindi's. They use the same mechanism on ever game they publish. Bitch to them if you want, don't lay it at Valve's feet. 3. I have NEVER, EVER had to reinstall drivers for any game I've played unless I had previously borked the system due to futzing around with it. Surprisingly, I didn't have to do anything for HL2 either.
Ack! You are right. I forgot that BS isn't Steam compatable, sorry for the misinformation.
Re:I want to, but should I?
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 2, Informative
You have the option to download it as many times as you need to as long as Steam is alive. There are even instrucions avaliable on the Steam forums (which I would link to if their search function wasn't currently out of order) which tell you how to backup with your authorization file so if Steam dies you wouldn't be out in the cold. Given you can make as many copies as you want of these files, I would say that would trump the single CD since eventually even that will need to be copied to preserve it.
The really nice thing about Steam is that I can install these games on every computer I want to, since playing the game is tied to my account, not my computer.
Re:My personal rating: 4.5/5
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The retail version has a CD check not because Valve wanted one but because their distributer Vivendi uses it on all games they distribute. To tell the truth, most of the complaints about the boxed versions can ulitimately be blamed on Vivendi. It was they who packaged the CD installer that creates issues if you don't install CS with Half-life. It is their CD check and antagonism against Valve that is why you can't upgrade a boxed version to one of the better priced Steam version. Etc. ad nausium.
Remember, if you are getting Half-life 2 through Steam, the Silver package is only $10 more than the basic HL2 only package. And the Silver package comes with EVERYTHING. HL1, BS, OPF,HL:S,CS:S,DOD:S, etc. Far easier to get it this way than to go out and buy one of those expensive packs.
Unless something has changed drasticly, I would not get any boxed version of Half-life 2. Disregarding every other consideration, you get a far bigger bang for your buck with the Steam/download packages. For instance, the Silver package for Steam includes every game Valve has out for Steam and will also include Day of Defeat:Source when it comes out. This is for $59.99. On the other hand, the Collector's Edition ($79.99 but you can get it for $69.99 at amazon.com) only gets you Counter Strike: Source and Half-Life:Source. Granted, you also get the Prima book with that. But given that I don't think it's possible to 'upgrade' your package if it's retail I would stick with the download packages.
In regards to how well you'd do without knowing anything about Half-life 1? There are no puzzles or parts to the story that I have seen so far that would require any in detail knowledge from the old game. There would be a few places where you'd be wondering what the heck someone is talking about but not anything that would leave you clueless on what to do next.
"But your honor, if she didn't want to be raped, she shouldn't have dressed that way!"
Bah. Pure poppycock.
Telling someone to leave a job if they don't like it is the one sure way to ensure nothing changes. You don't like your job? You are underpaid, overworked? You see your compatraits in the same position? How about not wussing out and actually making a stand to force your employer to play in an equitable manner?
As someone who was a consumate HL (engine) player when Steam came out and still plays as much as I can, I can tell you now that once you are over the hump the ride is smooth.
Last year when the code was stolen, a number of people attempted to DDOS Steam. Once you have been authenticated though, you can play in 'offline' mode which means Steam uses the authentication cookie it has in it's cache. The servers were down for several days however I played online each and every one of those days.
People can be pissed that Valve didn't expect this sort of traffic, but I think once they get over the initial difficulties they'll find final experience worth the effort.
Well, I can only tell you from my experience but....
The majority of the IT related friends I had were under the delusion that unions were for 'drones' and associated them more with plumbers and construction workers than with actors or teachers. Most were young, just out of college, and saw life as it was depicted to them in college. Or in other words, they believed that their starter job would be hell, that as they worked their way up in the company the job would be less and less so till they were 'tenured'. So they were willing to put up with the hardship because they thought that they would be rewarded in the end. Sadly, most never realized that the real world isn't academia and that being good at your job just means that most people are going to want to keep you in that job if you aren't pressing to go higher.
The protection a union gives comes at a cost. Your job suddenly has much more red tape involved, you suddenly have many more rules to follow, and you have a second boss in your union leaders. Most didn't see this as an improvement.
Now that they've become older, have had their delusions ripped to shreds, they are scattered about and surrounded by a million more kids who were just as mis-lead as they were at the start.
And remember, unions work only if you can control the labor. Look at the number of unemployed IT people out there today and ask yourself if you would risk your job knowing that there were ten people who the company could hire to replace you and that making too much noise could lead to you becoming black balled under the table.
No one in a non-union shop would ever hire someone they knew as a union sympathizer.
The Halo 2 team swore up and down that while I Love Bees was interesting, they had finished the game before it had started and therefore no ILB content would be in game.
However, having said that, I wouldn't mind running into Jan, Durga, Jersey, Rani, or Kamal in game, so I'll cross my fingers too.
Trademarks, unlike copyrights, must be defended as strongly as possible. If you do not defend it, you lose it. So while I agree that in some instances (like this one) companies are defending their IP to a ridiculous extreme or for disingenous reasons, telling a company to 'get over it' when they think someone is stealing their trademark is not really that great advice. They snooze, they lose the trademark.
If you want your product to be carried in the big stores, they want something in return. If you are a big store, you might be able to bully your way into releasing the product in your stores earlier than other stores. Thus, driving sales to you. However, if you go and sign such a deal, you have a much harder time getting into the other stores, since obviously they can't release it earlier and since the people who really want the product will have gotten it from the one that released it early.
As a result, most of the time everyone has the same release date. Not only does this keep the smaller stores from just saying 'forget it, we won't be able to sell any' and still give the big stores a date to promote.
The reason these things are shipped so early, is that the date needs to be far enough ahead of the ship date to help clear up any shipping screwups. Otherwise, if something goes wrong and one store is left out on release date, they aren't going to be as willing to carry your games in the future.
The store agree to this for the same reason, if you don't agree to stick to the release date, then the product won't be shipped to you till the last minute. If something happens then, you've missed your best selling opportunity and probably lost a few customers to the stores that were carrying it.
This sort of scheme is used for pretty much any product that has a 'shelf-life' in terms of demand. You aren't going to ever see any release day parties for the newest version of the Swifter Jet Dry Rhomba Auto Mop, because it'll still be selling (or not) until the end of it's product life. But things like music, movies, games, and even (to a limited extent) books, all are considered to sell most of what they are going to sell in a short period right after they come out.
Not only that, but what happens if they screw up the definition of VOIP when they try to tax it? All the sudden, you can't use voice chat in games without paying $0.50 a minute in taxes, (Yeah, I know, an exageration) because instead of defining VOIP closely, they just say "transmitting voice data over the internet" or some other idiot idea.
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Better yet, not only will the message not get to Valve, but instead it'll go to Virindi, who already hate Steam because it's cutting into their retail business. AND it'll lower the number of actual retail boxes sold, which will support the idea that Steam is the way to go when they find out they've sold more HL2 on Steam then they did in the store.
Way to shot yourself in the foot if your actual intent was to gum up the works. ^_^
Install Steam without owning any products and basicly what you have is an instant messaging client with the ability to buy games. So, assuming Valve ever actually fixes their Friends network to the point where it's not down 50% of the time, it's not a horrible waste even if you don't get any games. The idea is, however, that someday it'll be more than just Valve selling games on Steam. If that day comes, then it'll really be a "must install" program in my eyes.
It forced people to install Steam _ONLY_ if they wanted to use the unsupported bonus material - namely, multiplayer. You don't and never will need to install Steam to install Half-life, or to install any of the pre-Steam updates to Half-life. You don't even have to install Steam to play online with the pre-Steam versions of Half-life. The _ONLY_ thing they removed were the master servers which listed what games you could connect to.
Given that they provided services for people to play those games for free, and given that you can STILL play pre-Steam games online witout using Steam, I tend to class people who whine about having to install Steam to play Half-Life 1 in the "I just want to complain, don't bother me with facts" group and ignore them.
I beleive it was Gamespy and the Planet Network.
After their first site died, they did a short stint with Gamespy to help keep the comic alive.
GS then claimed that they owned the cartoon.
You need to look somewhere else to blame. Not only has that not happened to any of the people I've spoken with, but it's highly unlikely that anything you did to install HL2 could cause that sort of problem.
Right click on the Steam Tray Icon and pick "Monitor" from the options. This pops up a screen from where you can see if Steam is downloading anything in the background. If you don't see anything there, then something else is causing your ping problems.
Prove it. Unplug your net connection and attempt to play the game. Amazingly enough, you can! Why? Because THEY DON'T REQUIRE YOU TO AUTHENTICATE EVERY TIME YOU LAUNCH THE GAME.
And yes, they had a contract for distribution with Sierra. Sierra was acquired by Virindi. Valve had to produce the game for Virindi under the contract that they had with Sierra. They had no choice in the matter of distribution. That was in Virindi's corner. Perhaps if you actually read up on the situation instead of stomping your feet like a spoilt brat, you'd know that.
Lastly, I mention my experience because if you had to reinstall almost every driver in on your computer to get HL2 running then it is almost certainly because YOU fucked up your machine. Not Valve.
I think you breezed through the game without bothering to even look at anything that wasn't on the rails you were following if you feel the story wasn't in-depth or well told. No offense, there is a wealth of things in the game that are there to be found, you just don't have your nose rubbed in them.
Dude, if your 'terrorist' has access to enough energy to create said explosives, you've already lost. The power of explosives is that they have stored within them a huge energy potential. You aren't going to create that sort of matter without dumping a huge amount of energy into them in the first place. And if you have that at your disposal, WTF are you wasting it on ineffiecent explosives?
This is assuming this isn't some sort of magical "create energy and matter from nothing" box, in which case let throw reality to the wind and also assume that we've invented the infinitely strong energy shield that will protect us from such bombs.
And where do the plans/material/power for the solar cells come from? And where do the plans/material/power for the garbage disposal/atomizer come from?
You'd need the egg before you can hatch the chicken. And that's assuming you can produce enough power with your "do-it-yourself" power plant to actually accomplish anything. It's also assuming the majority of what you make will be possible to make off of your garbage.
The Internet? What incentive is there for the people who have those plans to share, knowing that they will only get one shot at making their mark before the plans are stolen and spread around?
Who would trust plans pulled from the Internet? Really. If I found plans to make my very own ANYTHING on the net, I'd wait for the first 40 people to come back and say the plans didn't actually cause their town to go up in a mushroom cloud before I even considered using them.
Open Source? That works great when the developers get something back in return. What do you have to offer them? Trade your plans for theirs? That works great for the first set of plans you want. What happens when you are out of things you know how to create because someone else has shared all your plans with everyone else?
General Ludd if you please!
You know, I would have more respect for the people who complained that Valve requires you to authenticate everytime you play Half-Life 2, IF THEY WERE IN ANY WAY RIGHT!
1. No, they don't. Nope. Nada. They DO NOT.
2. The CD check isn't Valves doing, it's Virindi's. They use the same mechanism on ever game they publish. Bitch to them if you want, don't lay it at Valve's feet.
3. I have NEVER, EVER had to reinstall drivers for any game I've played unless I had previously borked the system due to futzing around with it. Surprisingly, I didn't have to do anything for HL2 either.
Ack! You are right. I forgot that BS isn't Steam compatable, sorry for the misinformation.
You have the option to download it as many times as you need to as long as Steam is alive. There are even instrucions avaliable on the Steam forums (which I would link to if their search function wasn't currently out of order) which tell you how to backup with your authorization file so if Steam dies you wouldn't be out in the cold. Given you can make as many copies as you want of these files, I would say that would trump the single CD since eventually even that will need to be copied to preserve it.
The really nice thing about Steam is that I can install these games on every computer I want to, since playing the game is tied to my account, not my computer.
The retail version has a CD check not because Valve wanted one but because their distributer Vivendi uses it on all games they distribute. To tell the truth, most of the complaints about the boxed versions can ulitimately be blamed on Vivendi. It was they who packaged the CD installer that creates issues if you don't install CS with Half-life. It is their CD check and antagonism against Valve that is why you can't upgrade a boxed version to one of the better priced Steam version. Etc. ad nausium.
Remember, if you are getting Half-life 2 through Steam, the Silver package is only $10 more than the basic HL2 only package. And the Silver package comes with EVERYTHING. HL1, BS, OPF,HL:S,CS:S,DOD:S, etc. Far easier to get it this way than to go out and buy one of those expensive packs.
Unless something has changed drasticly, I would not get any boxed version of Half-life 2. Disregarding every other consideration, you get a far bigger bang for your buck with the Steam/download packages. For instance, the Silver package for Steam includes every game Valve has out for Steam and will also include Day of Defeat:Source when it comes out. This is for $59.99. On the other hand, the Collector's Edition ($79.99 but you can get it for $69.99 at amazon.com) only gets you Counter Strike: Source and Half-Life:Source. Granted, you also get the Prima book with that. But given that I don't think it's possible to 'upgrade' your package if it's retail I would stick with the download packages.
In regards to how well you'd do without knowing anything about Half-life 1? There are no puzzles or parts to the story that I have seen so far that would require any in detail knowledge from the old game. There would be a few places where you'd be wondering what the heck someone is talking about but not anything that would leave you clueless on what to do next.
Bah. Pure poppycock.
Telling someone to leave a job if they don't like it is the one sure way to ensure nothing changes. You don't like your job? You are underpaid, overworked? You see your compatraits in the same position? How about not wussing out and actually making a stand to force your employer to play in an equitable manner?
As someone who was a consumate HL (engine) player when Steam came out and still plays as much as I can, I can tell you now that once you are over the hump the ride is smooth.
Last year when the code was stolen, a number of people attempted to DDOS Steam. Once you have been authenticated though, you can play in 'offline' mode which means Steam uses the authentication cookie it has in it's cache. The servers were down for several days however I played online each and every one of those days.
People can be pissed that Valve didn't expect this sort of traffic, but I think once they get over the initial difficulties they'll find final experience worth the effort.
Well, I can only tell you from my experience but....
The majority of the IT related friends I had were under the delusion that unions were for 'drones' and associated them more with plumbers and construction workers than with actors or teachers. Most were young, just out of college, and saw life as it was depicted to them in college. Or in other words, they believed that their starter job would be hell, that as they worked their way up in the company the job would be less and less so till they were 'tenured'. So they were willing to put up with the hardship because they thought that they would be rewarded in the end. Sadly, most never realized that the real world isn't academia and that being good at your job just means that most people are going to want to keep you in that job if you aren't pressing to go higher.
The protection a union gives comes at a cost. Your job suddenly has much more red tape involved, you suddenly have many more rules to follow, and you have a second boss in your union leaders. Most didn't see this as an improvement.
Now that they've become older, have had their delusions ripped to shreds, they are scattered about and surrounded by a million more kids who were just as mis-lead as they were at the start.
And remember, unions work only if you can control the labor. Look at the number of unemployed IT people out there today and ask yourself if you would risk your job knowing that there were ten people who the company could hire to replace you and that making too much noise could lead to you becoming black balled under the table.
No one in a non-union shop would ever hire someone they knew as a union sympathizer.
The Halo 2 team swore up and down that while I Love Bees was interesting, they had finished the game before it had started and therefore no ILB content would be in game.
However, having said that, I wouldn't mind running into Jan, Durga, Jersey, Rani, or Kamal in game, so I'll cross my fingers too.
Grandparent is refering to the article, not the book.
Trademarks, unlike copyrights, must be defended as strongly as possible. If you do not defend it, you lose it. So while I agree that in some instances (like this one) companies are defending their IP to a ridiculous extreme or for disingenous reasons, telling a company to 'get over it' when they think someone is stealing their trademark is not really that great advice. They snooze, they lose the trademark.
If you want your product to be carried in the big stores, they want something in return. If you are a big store, you might be able to bully your way into releasing the product in your stores earlier than other stores. Thus, driving sales to you. However, if you go and sign such a deal, you have a much harder time getting into the other stores, since obviously they can't release it earlier and since the people who really want the product will have gotten it from the one that released it early.
As a result, most of the time everyone has the same release date. Not only does this keep the smaller stores from just saying 'forget it, we won't be able to sell any' and still give the big stores a date to promote.
The reason these things are shipped so early, is that the date needs to be far enough ahead of the ship date to help clear up any shipping screwups. Otherwise, if something goes wrong and one store is left out on release date, they aren't going to be as willing to carry your games in the future.
The store agree to this for the same reason, if you don't agree to stick to the release date, then the product won't be shipped to you till the last minute. If something happens then, you've missed your best selling opportunity and probably lost a few customers to the stores that were carrying it.
This sort of scheme is used for pretty much any product that has a 'shelf-life' in terms of demand. You aren't going to ever see any release day parties for the newest version of the Swifter Jet Dry Rhomba Auto Mop, because it'll still be selling (or not) until the end of it's product life. But things like music, movies, games, and even (to a limited extent) books, all are considered to sell most of what they are going to sell in a short period right after they come out.
Not only that, but what happens if they screw up the definition of VOIP when they try to tax it? All the sudden, you can't use voice chat in games without paying $0.50 a minute in taxes, (Yeah, I know, an exageration) because instead of defining VOIP closely, they just say "transmitting voice data over the internet" or some other idiot idea.