Too many people ignore it or brush it off - until it directly effects them. I think the news and game media has been letting us down. There should be a greater knowledge and dicussion of DRM, but there isn't. Why is that? The only recent article that even approached 'mainstream' was a CNN *Opinion* piece.
I know a lot of people read game reviews. We need to start including 'What DRM this game has' in each and every review.
It needs to become part of the common vernacular and lingo so that people start understanding what it is, what it does, and why they may want to include it as part of their purchasing decision. I don't think there is a realization of consumer rights being infringed, abridged or otherwise impugned. I don't think there is a realization of that fact that the game *just might not work* due to flawed or bad DRM implementations.
This movement of knowledge has to reach a certain mass such that companies can make fiscal decisions based on :
We lose X legitimate sales due to our DRM We lose Y possible/maybe sales due to pirating.
Until X > (Y * (conversion of pirate to purchaser - certainly not 1:1)), this will only get worse.
That's why I stopped playing. Statesman kept shifting his position on the powers and the modifications to the powers. Regen scrappers w/all the toughness and extra resist skills slotted fully were uber... because no one bothered to run a particular scenario of :
"Gee, I wonder if I acted like a min-max character what kind of abuse of the system could I do?"
They nerfed Invuln tanks. They nerfed regen scrappers. They nerfed fire tanks. And then they nerfed everyone across the board with diminishing returns from SOs. (patch 4? 5?)
Welcome to the City of Mediocrity. Statesman observed you were being too heroic and awesome, and made sure that you sucked more. The nerfs hurt more in this game, because this was the game where you/were supposed to be awesome/. You're a fucking super hero!
Frankly, the most fun I ever had in CoH was the Crystal Cavern, where I pulled half the map as my fire tank. I felt like I had finally reached a pinnacle of my hero's power. I bet you can't do that anymore - which is a shame - because that was the most fun I ever had in CoH.
It's too bad MMO's optimize for keeping you around and paying, instead of letting you go nuts and have fun. You'd think someone would hit on the formula for the latter, which would beget the former.
Huh? So T1-T4 RVR/ORVR and PVP. Scenarios. 3 PQ's per chapter, 22 chapters per race. Nevermind all the hidden world unlocks (You do use Tome Titan, don't you?), lairs, quests, and the 11 or so classes per side...
This is from their super big announcement. If you go and read the original thread, and talk to any actual Warhammer player, you'll see that all we care about is FIXING THE EXISTING GAME. There are bugs that have been reported since beta that are still in place. Classes that were revamped just before release and don't really work all that well. The entire player community was waiting with baited breath for/fixes/ and/tweaks/ to make the existing content/work/.
The above post illustrates the total fail that is coming to Warhammer.
More content == More/New bugs + old bugs + less QA == FAIL.
"Homeowner Associations" are another phrase for "Fascism" and "Nazis". Seriously. Who agrees to be a part of this crap?
Like you really want your neighbor telling you what color you can paint your fence, if you can have a fence, or a hedge, or do anything on/your property/.
Go google for "Gramm-Leach-Bliley mortgage". Bonus question - which one of those is tied to McCain? To say that it was Clinton/Gore's fault is technically true - they did sign the law into effect, but it's not terribly informative and only passingly factual. It fact, it's somewhat deceptive because you're squarely placing blame on Clinton/Gore when there are PLENTY of other people to share the blame!
Republicans tried several times to tighten things up? And they failed in a fully Republican controlled Congress? Can you cite your sources please?
"I don't see CUDA becoming big in gaming circles anytime soon."... until Aegis PhysX is ported to CUDA. Thus enabling every single G80 and higher card to also turn into a physics accelerator. Yeah, gamers won't go for that shit at all.
"Third, CUDA still has a *lot* of limitations. It's not as easy to develop a physics engine for a GPU using CUDA as it is for a general purpose CPU."
> Creative's first attempt at a PCI soundcard turned out so murky that 1997 era mobos have something called a "SoundBlaster link" to make them happy. Finally giving up Creative bought another company that had made a PCI soundcard and slapped the SoundBlaster brand on it. (SoundBlaster 16 PCI.. or SoundBlaster 512, they had many names for it).
I believe that was Audigy, which at the time was making their own A3D standard for 3d sound, etc. Creative bought them, slapped their name on the card, and raised the price > $20. I could be wrong, but this is from memory.
Most American TV is utter crap, with a few shining jewels. Those jewels are so small and rare, that it's next to nothing to buy them when they come out on DVD. Anything else becomes a netflix rental (so I can watch it in order, and not have to deal with when they show them on TV) because they simply aren't worth owning.
Oh, and who wants to record movies off basic cable? Likely, it will be clipped, censored, or modified in some way. That's not the movie I want to waste burning to disc.
Buy it without disks, and then start cheap. You can always buy another large set and swap them all out, as long as you select their special raid mode (basically like raid5). Likely you picked up a low-memory one as well (256MB up to 1GB expandable).
The Infrant rocks, and their support forum is awesome.
I finally have it streaming to my PS3, which is pretty cool.
It also supports almost every file share mechanism you want. (NFS, SMB, FTP, WWW, AFP).
My personal favorite feature is just plugging in my USB flash stick, which the Infrant takes an automatic backup of. Great for snapping a quick backup of data with zero-effort.
"Tell me there sparky, how would a pilot know that an airplane is about to land on him from behind? The rear-view mirrors?"
I'm assuming that tower/control would have said something like "Pull the fuck off, there's a plane right about to land on you". Or perhaps something nicer, but I'm guessing there would have been some *urgency* involved in the discussion, given how close it was.
"And why would the guy get off the runway instead of just taking off?"
I'm wondering if he could have even gotten up to speed or not, since the plane behind us was literally ~15 seconds behind. Certainly far closer than we should have been. Someone fucked up. Either the pilot, by pulling onto the runway, or the tower, for not paying attention to the birds they had coming in.
What's your damage? Are you a pilot? Taking things you read on the internet personally? Let me know how that works out for you, "sparky".
Slashdot Mirror
Too many people ignore it or brush it off - until it directly effects them. I think the
news and game media has been letting us down. There should be a greater knowledge and
dicussion of DRM, but there isn't. Why is that? The only recent article that even
approached 'mainstream' was a CNN *Opinion* piece.
I know a lot of people read game reviews. We need to start including 'What DRM this game has'
in each and every review.
It needs to become part of the common vernacular and lingo so that people start understanding what it is,
what it does, and why they may want to include it as part of their purchasing decision. I don't think
there is a realization of consumer rights being infringed, abridged or otherwise impugned. I don't think
there is a realization of that fact that the game *just might not work* due to flawed or bad DRM
implementations.
This movement of knowledge has to reach a certain mass such that companies can make fiscal decisions based
on :
We lose X legitimate sales due to our DRM
We lose Y possible/maybe sales due to pirating.
Until X > (Y * (conversion of pirate to purchaser - certainly not 1:1)), this will only get worse.
That's why I stopped playing. Statesman kept shifting his position on the powers and the modifications to the powers. Regen scrappers w/all the toughness and extra resist skills slotted fully were uber ... because no one bothered to run a particular scenario of :
"Gee, I wonder if I acted like a min-max character what kind of abuse of the system could I do?"
They nerfed Invuln tanks. They nerfed regen scrappers. They nerfed fire tanks. And then they nerfed everyone across the board with diminishing returns from SOs. (patch 4? 5?)
Welcome to the City of Mediocrity. Statesman observed you were being too heroic and awesome, and made sure that you sucked more. The nerfs hurt more in this game, because this was the game where you /were supposed to be awesome/. You're a fucking super hero!
Frankly, the most fun I ever had in CoH was the Crystal Cavern, where I pulled half the map as my fire tank. I felt like I had finally reached a pinnacle of my hero's power. I bet you can't do that anymore - which is a shame - because that was the most fun I ever had in CoH.
It's too bad MMO's optimize for keeping you around and paying, instead of letting you go nuts and have fun. You'd think someone would hit on the formula for the latter, which would beget the former.
Yes, but who is number one?! I am not a number, I am a free man!
Huh? So T1-T4 RVR/ORVR and PVP. Scenarios. 3 PQ's per chapter, 22 chapters per race. Nevermind all the hidden world unlocks (You do use Tome Titan, don't you?), lairs, quests, and the 11 or so classes per side ...
Yeah, there is a lack of things to do ...
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3378401&postcount=5
This is from their super big announcement. If you go and read the original thread, and talk to any actual Warhammer player, you'll see that all we care about is FIXING THE EXISTING GAME. There are bugs that have been reported since beta that are still in place. Classes that were revamped just before release and don't really work all that well. /fixes/ and /tweaks/ to make the existing content /work/.
The entire player community was waiting with baited breath for
The above post illustrates the total fail that is coming to Warhammer.
More content == More/New bugs + old bugs + less QA == FAIL.
"Homeowner Associations" are another phrase for "Fascism" and "Nazis". Seriously. Who agrees to be a part of this crap?
Like you really want your neighbor telling you what color you can paint your fence, if you can have a fence, or a hedge, or do anything on /your property/.
It's more likely than you think!
Come visit beautiful Bennington in the Fall! And you'll likely still have the protection of the Constitution while you leaf peep.
> I think it's sad that this (eternal) election has divided American citizens into Republicans or Democrats and not much else.
Would that make it always November somewhere on the 'net?
Go google for "Gramm-Leach-Bliley mortgage". Bonus question - which one of those is tied to McCain? To say that it was Clinton/Gore's fault is technically true - they did sign the law into effect, but it's not terribly informative and only passingly factual. It fact, it's somewhat deceptive because you're squarely placing blame on Clinton/Gore when there are PLENTY of other people to share the blame!
Republicans tried several times to tighten things up? And they failed in a fully Republican controlled Congress? Can you cite your sources please?
Could someone explain just what exactly the chip on his shoulder is?
Did a nvidia graphics card molest him as a child?
http://www.starflight3.org/
sigh.
Yeah, and I'd pay for it too.
Since that's a play-by-play example of the manual in question, in action.
Perhaps these bugs are by design
Every time he says something funny that's a joke about something horrendously sad, I think he dies a little inside.
But it would have been totally sweet.
"I don't see CUDA becoming big in gaming circles anytime soon."
"Third, CUDA still has a *lot* of limitations. It's not as easy to develop a physics engine for a GPU using CUDA as it is for a general purpose CPU."
Guess we'll see.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhysX
Unless you really are "that guy". Then you might feel a bit different about the error rate.
> Creative's first attempt at a PCI soundcard turned out so murky that 1997 era mobos have something called a "SoundBlaster link" to make them happy. Finally giving up Creative bought another company that had made a PCI soundcard and slapped the SoundBlaster brand on it. (SoundBlaster 16 PCI .. or SoundBlaster 512, they had many names for it).
I believe that was Audigy, which at the time was making their own A3D standard for 3d sound, etc. Creative bought them, slapped their name on the card, and raised the price > $20. I could be wrong, but this is from memory.
Oh great, so you're saying elements within our own government (and without) will make moves to remove him anyway they can - just like JFK.
Back, and to the left.
only one thing -
invasion.
Seriously.
Most American TV is utter crap, with a few shining jewels. Those jewels are so small and rare, that it's next to nothing to buy them when they come out on DVD. Anything else becomes a netflix rental (so I can watch it in order, and not have to deal with when they show them on TV) because they simply aren't worth owning.
Oh, and who wants to record movies off basic cable? Likely, it will be clipped, censored, or modified in some way. That's not the movie I want to waste burning to disc.
Buy it without disks, and then start cheap. You can always buy another large set and swap them all out, as long as you select their special raid mode (basically like raid5). Likely you picked up a low-memory one as well (256MB up to 1GB expandable).
The Infrant rocks, and their support forum is awesome.
I finally have it streaming to my PS3, which is pretty cool.
It also supports almost every file share mechanism you want. (NFS, SMB, FTP, WWW, AFP).
My personal favorite feature is just plugging in my USB flash stick, which the Infrant takes an automatic backup of. Great for snapping a quick backup of data with zero-effort.
It's not about what you said, it's about what you *meant*[1]
;-)
... 5 .. 4 .. 3 .. 2 ..
Even if you "win" the argument, you'll lose. You don't date much, do you?
[1] Subject to HER interpretation.
cue flamebait modding
"Tell me there sparky, how would a pilot know that an airplane is about to land on him from behind? The rear-view mirrors?"
I'm assuming that tower/control would have said something like "Pull the fuck off, there's a plane right about to land on you". Or perhaps something nicer, but I'm guessing there would have been some *urgency* involved in the discussion, given how close it was.
"And why would the guy get off the runway instead of just taking off?"
I'm wondering if he could have even gotten up to speed or not, since the plane behind us was literally ~15 seconds behind. Certainly far closer than we should have been. Someone fucked up. Either the pilot, by pulling onto the runway, or the tower, for not paying attention to the birds they had coming in.
What's your damage? Are you a pilot? Taking things you read on the internet personally? Let me know how that works out for you, "sparky".