Yes, insightful. But also, funny.
There's passionate people in every industry - open source is unique in that it's easier to share work on a project to make something grand. I'd love to see what carpenters and masons could do if they could team up in their free time.
Actually I had just read a quick review saying it was at least as good as the original game, so I wandered to the store and bought it. I generally don't read much about games ahead of time as they are usually just hype and not useful info. I had never heard of Steam before I bought the game. Nor did it mention it on the box.
Perhaps the reason I got modded up that you are not realizing, is that this is just another step in the erosion of your rights as a consumer. I see tons of mandatory registrations of software around, CD checks, CD keys, mandatory authentication of software, and general erosion of freedoms with the product you've licensed as a consumer. More importantly, this is yet one more baby step in the removal of your anonymity in cruising around planet earth, doing your thing. Technology is a wonderful thing, but it has the potential to automate the monitoring of humans in all sorts of states. Now, you could easily argue that Steam is as minor an infraction of this as possible, and certainly not as serious as automatic face recognition in airports, automatic license plate scanners on police cars, etc, and you'd be right. But that doesn't make it acceptable. Movies like Enemy of the State, though a massively (though entertaining) unrealistic potrayal currently of technologies capabilities, are not so far off in the future. It won't be the government either that is after you, but rather the corporations, abusing the volume of information they have at their fingertips.
I'm not trying to sound like some huge alarmist, because I totally understand the counter arguments, but generally it's the people in the computer industry who understand the dangers most prominently of the potential abuse of privacy by technology. And THAT is why it's so disappointing to see Valve go down this road in the quest for a few extra sheckels.
1) You're right - it's not a deal breaker. I have CD's scattered all over my desk, so obviously I still buy them.
2) My original analogy is flawed - you've obviously come up with a more apt one. The point I was really trying to make was that when I'm in the privacy of my own home, mucking about playing a single player game, I don't like the idea of having to communicate with the outside world so they can find out whether my copy is stolen or not. To extend your analogy above, it's more like someone dropping by my seat in the stadium to check my ticket again every time I glance at the playing field. A CD key checks the legitimaticy once, like having it checked when you go into the stadium - Steam checks it over and over again. I always buy my games - never steal em (I seriously cannot figure out why people go through all that hassle to save 50 bucks - if they're so damn poor that they can't afford 50 bucks, would Valve get their money anyway?), but I still like to use CD-cracks on games I play frequently. Steam prevents that too. Basically, what Steam does is make sure that when I play the game, I play it only with their permission, in the format that they dictate. I've always been one to make my own rules, and it's this that really chaps my ass. Feels like Big Brother.
I bought HL2 the day it came out. The steam servers were so swamped that it took me over 2 hours to get the damn thing activated.
Frankly, I do find the idea of being treated like a potential criminal every time I launch the game offensive. It's like having a store run a criminal record check every time you wander in to buy something.
I'm not going to argue about the license - Valve certainly does have a right to protect their interests, but I'll certainly think twice once I see any product using Steam as a prerequisite to using it. They can do what they like, and me and my money just won't get involved.
(btw - the post above about still needing the damn CD is right - what the hell for? If anything good could have come out of Steam it would have been able to stop having to swap CD's back and forth).
Actually this happened to a good friend of mine. She had a new Mercedes (not sure which model - one of the painfully expensive ones). She was in a parkade though when it happened to her, and I think the car was simply too powerful for the brakes to stop it adequately. Her passenger told me he could see her stomping on the brakes to no effect. In her case, she chose to turn the car over the edge onto the next level, landing on another car, rather than speeding towards the edge of the parkade where she would have plunged several stories down to the road below.
As an interesting aside, the police could find nothing wrong with the vehicle, though I doubt they had the ability to check the chip programming itself thoroughly.
I gotta disagree. Although you're right that it's early in the game, I think that it's coming sooner than you think. Take movies, by example. Up here in Canada a couple of our big cable providers are already providing movies on demand - movies that you can pause, rewind, etc. Companies like Blockbuster video are suffering serious losses as a result, and when the cable companies can start providing a selection as large as the video store, which is likely within the next two or three years, the retail video stores are screwed. Though audio is still new to the online distribution scene, I think you're drastically underestimating the sophistication of the average youth of today. Combine that with aggressive marketing by people like i-tunes, this distribution model will be the norm in a few years, not the exception. Will the record store fall by the wayside like a video store? I doubt it - people will still want to browse and have a physical CD. As an interesting aside, I suspect the countries you mentioned that are behind on broadband penetration because of horrible infrastructure may leap past wired broadband right to wireless broadband. Not that it matters - they don't have much money to spend anyway on frivolities like music...
Touche - but this cash always has to come out of sales. Ultimately, isn't ITunes and crowd going to control the marketing (at least the online portion of it)? Cartels still have the power to promote, but it's hard to promote an individual album - and concert promoters are generally happy to do little better than break even. Distribution was easy money - sell 1 million albums - make 4 bucks off each album. With the distribution gone, who will now pay the cartels to promote and advertise? They have no incentive to do it themselves if they're not getting a piece of the distribution pie.
The music industry is changing, along with the movie industry. Distribution channels are changing, and as such the method of getting your margin is going to change too. The RIAA's job of seeming to try and protect what is soon to be an outdated distribution scheme is pointless for the long term, and irritating for the short. A slimmer profit margin is no big deal, when you consider that it's not a few hundred companies trying to support their insfrastructure, but rather a half dozen online firms supporting theirs. Let's not forget that online distributors will never get caught with extra inventory. It's hard to run out of warehouse space. They have to worry less about shipments. In short, thinner margins that are consistent fit the business model. It's nothing to whine about, though of course the RIAA always has to find some large stick to shove in the wrong place.
Hi - a good friend of mine has just finished her doctoral thesis in neuroscience, specializing in addiction in particular.
It is interesting that you can vaccinate against against a given drug, but the author of this thread is right - it is pretty appalling, because although you can block the receptors for a given neurotransmitter, that receptor is used by your body for 'normal' highs and lows. I think this is perhaps a good idea for people with heroin addictions already, but as a preventative measure it could have a very debilatating effect on people's lifestyle.
As an interesting aside, my neuroscientist doctor friend was able to find correlations between all kinds of addiction (not just physical, but addictions such as gambling and such too). Apparently certain people have a significantly stronger propensity for addiction than others. It may then be no surprise that addictions have a tendancy to run in families. This kind of research is more useful, IMHO, as you can identify people who are likely to end up with an addition before it happens, and provide counseling to make them understand the risks ahead of time.
Drug addictions may be physical, but they always have a social element too - it's best to treat the cause rather than the symptom, or the problems come out in other ways anyway.
Voting won't help.
Will you vote in people who will make offshoring labour illegal? Then the companies will simply start moving entire corporate divisions offshore instead of development, or creating a division solely for development. They can even spin off a new company to strictly manage it. What could the government possibly do to that would stop massive multinationals from offshoring?
Don't forget companies have a legal responsibility to look out for the bottom line of their shareholders: profit.
The problem is simply that the U.S. is getting fat. The steel industry got offshored 40 years ago, much of clothing manufacturing got offshored 25 years ago, and manufacturing of vast numbers of consumer products has been getting offshored in the past 15. This is simply the next step.
There is only ONE way (that I know of) to make it truly unviable to buy foreign products and labour - import taxes.
College students
on
Paid To Spam
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is going to be extremely appealing as easy money for college students who often have broadband connections and very little extra cash. This amount of money goes a long way. The smarter ones will even figure out a way to throttle the connection so they don't catch hell from their ISP for bandwidth usage.
This is extra appealing to people in countries outside of the U.S. where the U.S. dollar has more buying power. Add 25% alone in value for us Canadians. I expect to see widespread adoption.
Most importantly, this will really make the use of blacklists irrelevant as I expect these machines will act as their own SMTP servers.
Precisely. However, if I had my choice of buying a game for 50 bucks from the machine, or 60 bucks right beside it in a box with the doodads - it would totally depend on the game. Something like Battlefield 1942 I'd want the box. Something like Battlefield Vietnam, which is basically a mod of 1942 and therefore a manual is no value, I'm happy with the burned CD. There's definitely a market for this, but if they think they're going to get full price for a burned copy they're cracked.
Actually, this is really a good idea. Has anyone ever made a piece of software that 'checks in' to a central server once in a while, so that you can track it in case of theft? Similar to dnetc except it's sole purpose is anti-theft.
Howdy - I belong to a non-profit group that has been doing this for years. We take solar panels, batteries to charge them, and LED lights (especially good cause they last soooo long) and we put them into remote villages in underdeveloped countries. Practical, cheap, and really really effective. We're off to Tanzania this fall!
Costs for the last trip to Pakistan
Per light-$4.50 Can.
7, 75-watt panels complete with frames and regulators--$6,000 Can.
7.5 amp hour battery (each)---$15 Can.
80 amp hour batteries (each)--$50 Can.
Wire- negligible!
Total costs---$12,000 Can.
Total cost per household with 2 lights----$50 Can.
Life Expectancy!
Lights----30 years.
Batteries-----5 years.
Solar Panels---15 years.
The trekkers pay for this ourselves - about a grand canadian each...
You can check it out at http://www.luxtreks.com/
Havn't you ever noticed that there's only ever one or two comfy chairs in starbucks? When people are only dropping 1-5 bucks, you can't have them sitting there taking up real estate for 3 hours. Turning customers over is a huge challenge for coffee shops - you want to maintain the appearance of being a friendly place to come and have a coffee, but dont want 20 customers sucking up your seats for the entire day either.
Being that you are in a smaller locale though - this may be less of a problem than for a coffee shop in a major metropolis dropping thousands a month in rent for 800 square feet.
Brilliant idea! I would make the coffee shop eat the up front cost - and tell him it'll be reimbursed by the first 90 days worth of tips or some such. This gives the owner incentive to help push the service. You also have the problem that, being on the honor system, who's to say that the 5 dollar an hour staff don't see the 'tips' as theirs... Might be worth having a flat rate of 2 bucks a session or something (not enforced, but rather a recommended donation...), but that does cause you problems as a student, being able to service that if there's a problem.
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Yes, insightful. But also, funny. There's passionate people in every industry - open source is unique in that it's easier to share work on a project to make something grand. I'd love to see what carpenters and masons could do if they could team up in their free time.
Would they? Shops suffer a 1-2% theft rate. Any idea on the real number that piracy accounts for?
Perhaps the reason I got modded up that you are not realizing, is that this is just another step in the erosion of your rights as a consumer. I see tons of mandatory registrations of software around, CD checks, CD keys, mandatory authentication of software, and general erosion of freedoms with the product you've licensed as a consumer. More importantly, this is yet one more baby step in the removal of your anonymity in cruising around planet earth, doing your thing. Technology is a wonderful thing, but it has the potential to automate the monitoring of humans in all sorts of states. Now, you could easily argue that Steam is as minor an infraction of this as possible, and certainly not as serious as automatic face recognition in airports, automatic license plate scanners on police cars, etc, and you'd be right. But that doesn't make it acceptable. Movies like Enemy of the State, though a massively (though entertaining) unrealistic potrayal currently of technologies capabilities, are not so far off in the future. It won't be the government either that is after you, but rather the corporations, abusing the volume of information they have at their fingertips.
I'm not trying to sound like some huge alarmist, because I totally understand the counter arguments, but generally it's the people in the computer industry who understand the dangers most prominently of the potential abuse of privacy by technology. And THAT is why it's so disappointing to see Valve go down this road in the quest for a few extra sheckels.
1) You're right - it's not a deal breaker. I have CD's scattered all over my desk, so obviously I still buy them. 2) My original analogy is flawed - you've obviously come up with a more apt one. The point I was really trying to make was that when I'm in the privacy of my own home, mucking about playing a single player game, I don't like the idea of having to communicate with the outside world so they can find out whether my copy is stolen or not. To extend your analogy above, it's more like someone dropping by my seat in the stadium to check my ticket again every time I glance at the playing field. A CD key checks the legitimaticy once, like having it checked when you go into the stadium - Steam checks it over and over again. I always buy my games - never steal em (I seriously cannot figure out why people go through all that hassle to save 50 bucks - if they're so damn poor that they can't afford 50 bucks, would Valve get their money anyway?), but I still like to use CD-cracks on games I play frequently. Steam prevents that too. Basically, what Steam does is make sure that when I play the game, I play it only with their permission, in the format that they dictate. I've always been one to make my own rules, and it's this that really chaps my ass. Feels like Big Brother.
I bought HL2 the day it came out. The steam servers were so swamped that it took me over 2 hours to get the damn thing activated. Frankly, I do find the idea of being treated like a potential criminal every time I launch the game offensive. It's like having a store run a criminal record check every time you wander in to buy something. I'm not going to argue about the license - Valve certainly does have a right to protect their interests, but I'll certainly think twice once I see any product using Steam as a prerequisite to using it. They can do what they like, and me and my money just won't get involved. (btw - the post above about still needing the damn CD is right - what the hell for? If anything good could have come out of Steam it would have been able to stop having to swap CD's back and forth).
I can't find the release date for the PC. Do you know it?
Actually this happened to a good friend of mine. She had a new Mercedes (not sure which model - one of the painfully expensive ones). She was in a parkade though when it happened to her, and I think the car was simply too powerful for the brakes to stop it adequately. Her passenger told me he could see her stomping on the brakes to no effect. In her case, she chose to turn the car over the edge onto the next level, landing on another car, rather than speeding towards the edge of the parkade where she would have plunged several stories down to the road below. As an interesting aside, the police could find nothing wrong with the vehicle, though I doubt they had the ability to check the chip programming itself thoroughly.
I gotta disagree. Although you're right that it's early in the game, I think that it's coming sooner than you think. Take movies, by example. Up here in Canada a couple of our big cable providers are already providing movies on demand - movies that you can pause, rewind, etc. Companies like Blockbuster video are suffering serious losses as a result, and when the cable companies can start providing a selection as large as the video store, which is likely within the next two or three years, the retail video stores are screwed. Though audio is still new to the online distribution scene, I think you're drastically underestimating the sophistication of the average youth of today. Combine that with aggressive marketing by people like i-tunes, this distribution model will be the norm in a few years, not the exception. Will the record store fall by the wayside like a video store? I doubt it - people will still want to browse and have a physical CD. As an interesting aside, I suspect the countries you mentioned that are behind on broadband penetration because of horrible infrastructure may leap past wired broadband right to wireless broadband. Not that it matters - they don't have much money to spend anyway on frivolities like music...
Touche - but this cash always has to come out of sales. Ultimately, isn't ITunes and crowd going to control the marketing (at least the online portion of it)? Cartels still have the power to promote, but it's hard to promote an individual album - and concert promoters are generally happy to do little better than break even. Distribution was easy money - sell 1 million albums - make 4 bucks off each album. With the distribution gone, who will now pay the cartels to promote and advertise? They have no incentive to do it themselves if they're not getting a piece of the distribution pie.
The music industry is changing, along with the movie industry. Distribution channels are changing, and as such the method of getting your margin is going to change too. The RIAA's job of seeming to try and protect what is soon to be an outdated distribution scheme is pointless for the long term, and irritating for the short. A slimmer profit margin is no big deal, when you consider that it's not a few hundred companies trying to support their insfrastructure, but rather a half dozen online firms supporting theirs. Let's not forget that online distributors will never get caught with extra inventory. It's hard to run out of warehouse space. They have to worry less about shipments. In short, thinner margins that are consistent fit the business model. It's nothing to whine about, though of course the RIAA always has to find some large stick to shove in the wrong place.
Hi - a good friend of mine has just finished her doctoral thesis in neuroscience, specializing in addiction in particular. It is interesting that you can vaccinate against against a given drug, but the author of this thread is right - it is pretty appalling, because although you can block the receptors for a given neurotransmitter, that receptor is used by your body for 'normal' highs and lows. I think this is perhaps a good idea for people with heroin addictions already, but as a preventative measure it could have a very debilatating effect on people's lifestyle. As an interesting aside, my neuroscientist doctor friend was able to find correlations between all kinds of addiction (not just physical, but addictions such as gambling and such too). Apparently certain people have a significantly stronger propensity for addiction than others. It may then be no surprise that addictions have a tendancy to run in families. This kind of research is more useful, IMHO, as you can identify people who are likely to end up with an addition before it happens, and provide counseling to make them understand the risks ahead of time. Drug addictions may be physical, but they always have a social element too - it's best to treat the cause rather than the symptom, or the problems come out in other ways anyway.
I'm not sure naming it Zeppelin NT is such a wise move. Would you get on an aircraft with a namesake that's prone to crash? Oh, the humanity!
Voting won't help. Will you vote in people who will make offshoring labour illegal? Then the companies will simply start moving entire corporate divisions offshore instead of development, or creating a division solely for development. They can even spin off a new company to strictly manage it. What could the government possibly do to that would stop massive multinationals from offshoring? Don't forget companies have a legal responsibility to look out for the bottom line of their shareholders: profit. The problem is simply that the U.S. is getting fat. The steel industry got offshored 40 years ago, much of clothing manufacturing got offshored 25 years ago, and manufacturing of vast numbers of consumer products has been getting offshored in the past 15. This is simply the next step. There is only ONE way (that I know of) to make it truly unviable to buy foreign products and labour - import taxes.
This is going to be extremely appealing as easy money for college students who often have broadband connections and very little extra cash. This amount of money goes a long way. The smarter ones will even figure out a way to throttle the connection so they don't catch hell from their ISP for bandwidth usage. This is extra appealing to people in countries outside of the U.S. where the U.S. dollar has more buying power. Add 25% alone in value for us Canadians. I expect to see widespread adoption. Most importantly, this will really make the use of blacklists irrelevant as I expect these machines will act as their own SMTP servers.
Precisely. However, if I had my choice of buying a game for 50 bucks from the machine, or 60 bucks right beside it in a box with the doodads - it would totally depend on the game. Something like Battlefield 1942 I'd want the box. Something like Battlefield Vietnam, which is basically a mod of 1942 and therefore a manual is no value, I'm happy with the burned CD. There's definitely a market for this, but if they think they're going to get full price for a burned copy they're cracked.
Actually, this is really a good idea. Has anyone ever made a piece of software that 'checks in' to a central server once in a while, so that you can track it in case of theft? Similar to dnetc except it's sole purpose is anti-theft.
Howdy - I belong to a non-profit group that has been doing this for years. We take solar panels, batteries to charge them, and LED lights (especially good cause they last soooo long) and we put them into remote villages in underdeveloped countries. Practical, cheap, and really really effective. We're off to Tanzania this fall! Costs for the last trip to Pakistan Per light-$4.50 Can. 7, 75-watt panels complete with frames and regulators--$6,000 Can. 7.5 amp hour battery (each)---$15 Can. 80 amp hour batteries (each)--$50 Can. Wire- negligible! Total costs---$12,000 Can. Total cost per household with 2 lights----$50 Can. Life Expectancy! Lights----30 years. Batteries-----5 years. Solar Panels---15 years. The trekkers pay for this ourselves - about a grand canadian each... You can check it out at http://www.luxtreks.com/
I'm in Canada. I've seen rates from 7 to 11 bucks an hour up here. That translates to 4 to 7 bucks an hour in yankland.
Havn't you ever noticed that there's only ever one or two comfy chairs in starbucks? When people are only dropping 1-5 bucks, you can't have them sitting there taking up real estate for 3 hours. Turning customers over is a huge challenge for coffee shops - you want to maintain the appearance of being a friendly place to come and have a coffee, but dont want 20 customers sucking up your seats for the entire day either. Being that you are in a smaller locale though - this may be less of a problem than for a coffee shop in a major metropolis dropping thousands a month in rent for 800 square feet.
Brilliant idea! I would make the coffee shop eat the up front cost - and tell him it'll be reimbursed by the first 90 days worth of tips or some such. This gives the owner incentive to help push the service. You also have the problem that, being on the honor system, who's to say that the 5 dollar an hour staff don't see the 'tips' as theirs... Might be worth having a flat rate of 2 bucks a session or something (not enforced, but rather a recommended donation...), but that does cause you problems as a student, being able to service that if there's a problem.