Interesting that you see it in terms of "deterrents to piracy" as opposed to "reasons to buy the game"...
I buy a game when I consider it an awesome game that'll be worth it for me to buy. There have been many games I've bought because of that...
Well, unfortunately due to my principles against copy-protection, I haven't bought a game in a really long time... and considering that I'm against even having the CD in when I play, I doubt I'll ever buy a PC game again, because EVERY SINGLE GAME that comes out has this "protection"... I can just download a crack, but that's not the point. I'm not going to financially support something I'm morally opposed to.
Anyway, none of those supposed deterrents "deter" me from piracy whatsoever. It seems like a form of natural selection almost... if a game is really cool then I'll buy it. Well, in theory, assuming I wasn't so against copy-"protection" (AKA unneccesary consumer inconveniencing).
This is exactly the same type of point some other person made. Oh yeah, about Disneyland checking their ID and shit. Now I'll point out the same thing I did before.
There's a big difference between making a duplicate of a piece of software and playing it on your computer at home, and flying on a plane thousands of feet in the air with 100 other people.
I thought this was a really obvious thing, but apparently not...
Same deal with the banks. At a bank someone can rush in with sub machineguns and kill all the guards and steal whatever money is there, etc.
What can you do by pirating software? Um, nothing, actually. No one's life is at risk, no one is being harmed, nor is there potential for any harm to come up anyone... Don't bother bringing up "$millions in losses". That is extremely arguable and is essentially 95% propaganda.
Again, same thing at stores. Of course they protect their saleable items. These are physical, actual objects people can steal and prevent the stores from selling.
The risk involved in these physical situations is much higher than the "risk" involved with software sales. Practically crippling software is completely unreasonable when those pirating the software will circumvent the security measures within seconds or minutes anyways... All it does is inconvenience and alienate legitimate consumers who shouldn't be hassled by what is supposed to prevent *illegal* usage of the software.
There's a pretty big difference between playing a single player game on your computer at home and entering a huge theme park with 10 year old kids running around everywhere...
Um, except that most of the time these cracks are written by members of huge piracy/cracking groups that have their huge reputation on the line and will only release the best product to maintain their reputation...
They see releasing high quality cracks/warez as a matter of pride and wouldn't do something so "immoral" for any reason, unless the whole purpose of their group to begin with was to gain respect and popularity and then screw over everyone who trusts them.
The only people who make those malicious cracks are small groups that are founded upon the members' harmful intent, or individuals with the same intent.
Anyone who runs cracks made by these small groups/individuals obviously deserves whatever they get as a result of trusting unreputed and unknown obscure software crackers.
So many times I've gone to crack a program for a friend or whatever, and they start whining about shit like "You're going to get a virus on my computer!"... No, you dumbass. You'll get viruses/trojans on your computer when you search for "half life 2 crack" on fucking Kazaa and start downloading and running every result that comes up.
These groups have a HUGE reputation on the line, they're not gunna fuck around with that. They receive hosting on servers with huge disk space and high bandwidth *as a favor* from users who support the groups. They don't want to piss off the users that support them.
"I'll buy from someone who does not automatically assume I'm a criminal."
Exactly. I hold the exact same viewpoint.
That's why I haven't bought a CD, movie or computer game for at least a couple years now. I also have no plans to buy any of them anytime soon, either.
"We also have to make sure that Susie who takes one day to learn plate tectonics doesn't get too far ahead of Johnny who takes 4 days."
This is why I failed 5 of my 7 classes in grade 11.. I learned plate tectonics in 15 minutes. Get it? Because the educational system cripples the already-minimal intellectual challenge of ANYTHING in school, people like me who learn stuff nearly instantly are saying "Why am I wasting half my day doing something that would otherwise take an hour?"...
I started asking why I had to waste so much time at school as early as grade 1. In fact, in grade 1 I finished the entire math curriculum so fast I did grade 2 math in grade 1.. (and then did it again in grade 2)... In grade 3 I made up the lists of words for the spelling tests because my vocabulary far surpassed that of my teacher's... I was so annoyed by the simple words on the tests I started suggesting words for her to put on the tests, and I basically just started coming up with the entire lists....
By grade 10 or so I just started going to sleep in classes. I was so sick of wasting my time for the past 10 years, I was just shutting down, or whatever.. It was like being in jail, essentially. The sheer mediocrity and simplicity of everything was no different than looking at a blank wall, or watching some sort of "sitcom" on TV.
I fully realize I could have "made" things interesting... but I felt like I'd be lying to myself by putting meaning into something devoid of any thought/feeling such as mundane math or science assignments. I'd just be "pretending" it was interesting.
I can tell you how to get kids to go to school, and enjoy it. When you are inclined to teach them "values", ensure those values aren't simply "what society believes". Teach them what is the most reasonable and what will benefit them and people around them, if they adopt these values... Don't tell them that stealing is bad because it's "not nice" or they'll get in trouble if they do it... You probably already know this though... but they need to know that people value their belongings and will be unhappy if their stuff is stolen (as opposed to simply being threatened with punishment)...
I probably made no sense at all with that last paragraph, but oh well.. if you're really actually interested you can just reply, or whatever. I'm at work anyways, so I'm not even supposed to be on here...
"No matter how you slice it, some things are boring to teach and boring to learn."
Dude, nothing is boring to learn! Unless you have no value in knowledge or intelligence (not you literally, I mean people in general)..
But honestly I'd be glad to have a lengthy discussion about how 'most' school systems are and how I feel they could be far far better. I used to criticize the organization and operation of things at my schools pretty much constantly, so I've spent a lot of time thinking about it... heh
I'll "fight crime" with the full size machete I bought last night for $10 from the local thrift shop, if neccesary... no one's putting a damned thing on me for my "safety".. fuck that.
heh, I knew the word "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" when I was in grade 5 (as well as "phthalylsulfathiazole", along with making all the spelling tests for my teachers since grade 3 because I knew words they'd never even heard of)... I think I can read well enough;)
This program isn't some mandatory piece of software that the MPAA is demanding you put on your system and run, as many many people on here seem to be assuming. They're *making it available* so uninformed, technologically-impaired users can find all the shit their 12-year-old kids have been downloading on Kazaa/whatever for the past year, so they don't get sued.
Thinking about that for a second, it's interesting - yet another manifestation of the "culture of fear" thing that's been going on for some time now... Better delete those AVIs, kids, *or else*!...
From the linked MSN news article: "The copyright law also provides for penalties of up to $30,000 for each motion picture traded over the Internet, and up to $150,000 if such infringement is shown to be willful."
So, if some family member of mine uses my computer, downloads some movie using a P2P program and leaves it there in my "shared files" folder, I can be fined $30,000, or potentially more?
Whatever... hearing about this stuff just makes me want to promote the piracy of movies (and music) because of the way the record/movie industries are handling the situation. They're behaving like little kids who got their candy taken away from them... they'll bitch and whine and scream and do anything to get it back, but never even consider any form of rational reaction.
Did anyone else think of "X-10" when they saw this article's title?... or even better... "We must destroy X-10... we must destroy all internet ad".. ??
Except that the word proprietary essentially implies non-standard and exclusive to a certain brand or style, or whatever...."held as property of a private owner".. "used, made, or marketed by one having the exclusive legal right"... Sounds like something that you'd have to struggle excessively to make a "standard".
Anyway, once something is standard, it kind of loses its proprietary-ness, seeing as it becomes no longer exclusive to just one company or brand. I guess technically it could still be, and just "licensed" to others... but that's not what I would call standard.
I guess it also depends on how you define "standard". I mean, people try and say WMA is standard. What a joke! Standard on Windows, maybe. Even that is pushing it. You don't have huge huge piracy networks that trade WMA files, for instance. The only people that really use WMA files are companies that want to cripple the freedom that users have with the file, or uninformed users who rip their CDs using Windows Media Player...
Also, on a somewhat-related topic, allowing proprietary formats to become "standard" is a foolish idea from the start. As it's been discussed 5000+ times on here, MS Word's "doc" format has made users unable to read their own or each others' documents countless times, due to the proprietary nature of the format. I'm sure most people here understand the risks involved with using formats controlled, owned and dictated by corporations, but for some odd, unknown reason, the general populous fails to realize that the very moment Microsoft doesn't want you to read your own documents anymore, they can make it happen. Obviously that's an unlikely situation, but think about it - do you really want some immoral corporation having that kind of control over the documents *you created and legally own*?
Heh yeah dude. I have 21gb of mp3s on my computer. There's no way in hell I'm ever going to start downloading WMA bullshit. Why would I even consider it?
I totally plan to buy an iPod one day. The only reason I haven't is because I haven't had the money. But why would I even consider a player that only plays shitty WMA files? What a joke...
I'd be glad to do that if I had any clue how to do so.. I don't even care about the video performance of the comp, since I'd just be using it for audio anyways...
The only reason I can't just use it right now is it constantly crashes. Plus I'd like to be able to use a resolution higher than 640x480 too.
Ahh yeah someone I know recommended Buzz to me one time. I thought it was cool, but it felt like a step backwards for me, learning a whole new interface which likely wouldn't have much benefit for me compared to what I've been using... Uh I think basically I just didn't feel like learning a whole new program, especially with the minimal free time I have these days..:\
Anyway I actually started out using a similar (although primitive in comparison) program called PlayerPro for Mac OS years ago, which was a pretty simple "tracker" type program. Buzz seems to reproduce (and supercede) that functionality completely. I really wish I had had that kind of software available to me back then!!
Totally useful. Ardour looks awesome. Now I'm all excited to get all this stuff running. I can see it being very very useful for our band and future musical endeavours.. !!:)
Yeah, I actually have an old PowerComputing PowerTower Pro 225, upgraded to a G3 450mhz. Has 512mb of RAM too.
Only thing is it's about 8 or 9 years old, the [SCSI/expensive-to-replace] hard drives work only intermittently, and I can't really run Mac OS X on it unless I can find an old ATI Rage 128 or similar Mac OS X-supported video card (the IMS TwinTurbo 128 piece of crap in there isn't supported). I installed OS X before but it crashed constantly and wouldn't display higher than 640x480 resolution.:(
Also I just prefer to do it all on my Windows comp seeing as it's far faster than my Mac (Athlon XP 2000+ w/512mb DDR RAM), runs a recent OS, and has 320gb of disk space. It's just all-around a better environment to work with, especially with CPU-intensive audio processing... other than the fact that it runs Windoze...
But you're right, I really would actually prefer to have a nice G4 with tons of space and so on. I just don't have enough money to put towards such an awesome computer. I'll end up getting an awesome Mac to do my audio stuff but that's well in the future. For now my band and I are at the 'bottom of the food chain', so to speak, so yeah... it's low-budget solutions for us, for the time being.
I got a copy of Rhapsody DR2 as well. It worked fine on my Intel Celeron 400mhz machine but I couldn't get my screenshots off the Rhapsody machine and onto my main desktop machine! It wouldn't read DOS formatted disks, and the networking didn't work...
So I just took some photos with my digital camera...
Either way the UI was totally cool. I wish Mac OS X looked more like Rhapsody, or even better, NeXT..
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Interesting that you see it in terms of "deterrents to piracy" as opposed to "reasons to buy the game"...
I buy a game when I consider it an awesome game that'll be worth it for me to buy. There have been many games I've bought because of that...
Well, unfortunately due to my principles against copy-protection, I haven't bought a game in a really long time... and considering that I'm against even having the CD in when I play, I doubt I'll ever buy a PC game again, because EVERY SINGLE GAME that comes out has this "protection"... I can just download a crack, but that's not the point. I'm not going to financially support something I'm morally opposed to.
Anyway, none of those supposed deterrents "deter" me from piracy whatsoever. It seems like a form of natural selection almost... if a game is really cool then I'll buy it. Well, in theory, assuming I wasn't so against copy-"protection" (AKA unneccesary consumer inconveniencing).
This is exactly the same type of point some other person made. Oh yeah, about Disneyland checking their ID and shit. Now I'll point out the same thing I did before.
There's a big difference between making a duplicate of a piece of software and playing it on your computer at home, and flying on a plane thousands of feet in the air with 100 other people.
I thought this was a really obvious thing, but apparently not...
Same deal with the banks. At a bank someone can rush in with sub machineguns and kill all the guards and steal whatever money is there, etc.
What can you do by pirating software? Um, nothing, actually. No one's life is at risk, no one is being harmed, nor is there potential for any harm to come up anyone... Don't bother bringing up "$millions in losses". That is extremely arguable and is essentially 95% propaganda.
Again, same thing at stores. Of course they protect their saleable items. These are physical, actual objects people can steal and prevent the stores from selling.
The risk involved in these physical situations is much higher than the "risk" involved with software sales. Practically crippling software is completely unreasonable when those pirating the software will circumvent the security measures within seconds or minutes anyways... All it does is inconvenience and alienate legitimate consumers who shouldn't be hassled by what is supposed to prevent *illegal* usage of the software.
There's a pretty big difference between playing a single player game on your computer at home and entering a huge theme park with 10 year old kids running around everywhere...
Um, except that most of the time these cracks are written by members of huge piracy/cracking groups that have their huge reputation on the line and will only release the best product to maintain their reputation...
... No, you dumbass. You'll get viruses/trojans on your computer when you search for "half life 2 crack" on fucking Kazaa and start downloading and running every result that comes up.
They see releasing high quality cracks/warez as a matter of pride and wouldn't do something so "immoral" for any reason, unless the whole purpose of their group to begin with was to gain respect and popularity and then screw over everyone who trusts them.
The only people who make those malicious cracks are small groups that are founded upon the members' harmful intent, or individuals with the same intent.
Anyone who runs cracks made by these small groups/individuals obviously deserves whatever they get as a result of trusting unreputed and unknown obscure software crackers.
So many times I've gone to crack a program for a friend or whatever, and they start whining about shit like "You're going to get a virus on my computer!"
These groups have a HUGE reputation on the line, they're not gunna fuck around with that. They receive hosting on servers with huge disk space and high bandwidth *as a favor* from users who support the groups. They don't want to piss off the users that support them.
"I'll buy from someone who does not automatically assume I'm a criminal."
Exactly. I hold the exact same viewpoint.
That's why I haven't bought a CD, movie or computer game for at least a couple years now. I also have no plans to buy any of them anytime soon, either.
I'd rather be treated like the law-abiding citizen I am, than deal with any of their "copyright protection" methods.
http://artists.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/kompressormusic /
:\
Notice "WE MUST DESTROY X10"... listen to it. heh
My post was supposed to be funny, but no one seems to even recognize my allusion to this song...
"We also have to make sure that Susie who takes one day to learn plate tectonics doesn't get too far ahead of Johnny who takes 4 days."
This is why I failed 5 of my 7 classes in grade 11.. I learned plate tectonics in 15 minutes. Get it? Because the educational system cripples the already-minimal intellectual challenge of ANYTHING in school, people like me who learn stuff nearly instantly are saying "Why am I wasting half my day doing something that would otherwise take an hour?"...
I started asking why I had to waste so much time at school as early as grade 1. In fact, in grade 1 I finished the entire math curriculum so fast I did grade 2 math in grade 1.. (and then did it again in grade 2)... In grade 3 I made up the lists of words for the spelling tests because my vocabulary far surpassed that of my teacher's... I was so annoyed by the simple words on the tests I started suggesting words for her to put on the tests, and I basically just started coming up with the entire lists....
By grade 10 or so I just started going to sleep in classes. I was so sick of wasting my time for the past 10 years, I was just shutting down, or whatever.. It was like being in jail, essentially. The sheer mediocrity and simplicity of everything was no different than looking at a blank wall, or watching some sort of "sitcom" on TV.
I fully realize I could have "made" things interesting... but I felt like I'd be lying to myself by putting meaning into something devoid of any thought/feeling such as mundane math or science assignments. I'd just be "pretending" it was interesting.
I can tell you how to get kids to go to school, and enjoy it. When you are inclined to teach them "values", ensure those values aren't simply "what society believes". Teach them what is the most reasonable and what will benefit them and people around them, if they adopt these values... Don't tell them that stealing is bad because it's "not nice" or they'll get in trouble if they do it... You probably already know this though... but they need to know that people value their belongings and will be unhappy if their stuff is stolen (as opposed to simply being threatened with punishment)...
I probably made no sense at all with that last paragraph, but oh well.. if you're really actually interested you can just reply, or whatever. I'm at work anyways, so I'm not even supposed to be on here...
"No matter how you slice it, some things are boring to teach and boring to learn."
Dude, nothing is boring to learn! Unless you have no value in knowledge or intelligence (not you literally, I mean people in general)..
But honestly I'd be glad to have a lengthy discussion about how 'most' school systems are and how I feel they could be far far better. I used to criticize the organization and operation of things at my schools pretty much constantly, so I've spent a lot of time thinking about it... heh
I'll "fight crime" with the full size machete I bought last night for $10 from the local thrift shop, if neccesary... no one's putting a damned thing on me for my "safety".. fuck that.
heh, I knew the word "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" when I was in grade 5 (as well as "phthalylsulfathiazole", along with making all the spelling tests for my teachers since grade 3 because I knew words they'd never even heard of)... I think I can read well enough ;)
This program isn't some mandatory piece of software that the MPAA is demanding you put on your system and run, as many many people on here seem to be assuming. They're *making it available* so uninformed, technologically-impaired users can find all the shit their 12-year-old kids have been downloading on Kazaa/whatever for the past year, so they don't get sued.
Thinking about that for a second, it's interesting - yet another manifestation of the "culture of fear" thing that's been going on for some time now... Better delete those AVIs, kids, *or else*!...
"Don't open your eyes... Take it from me - I have found you can find happiness in slavery"
From the linked MSN news article: "The copyright law also provides for penalties of up to $30,000 for each motion picture traded over the Internet, and up to $150,000 if such infringement is shown to be willful."
So, if some family member of mine uses my computer, downloads some movie using a P2P program and leaves it there in my "shared files" folder, I can be fined $30,000, or potentially more?
Whatever... hearing about this stuff just makes me want to promote the piracy of movies (and music) because of the way the record/movie industries are handling the situation. They're behaving like little kids who got their candy taken away from them... they'll bitch and whine and scream and do anything to get it back, but never even consider any form of rational reaction.
Did anyone else think of "X-10" when they saw this article's title? ... or even better... "We must destroy X-10... we must destroy all internet ad".. ??
I just find the Aqua theme really "mickey mouse"... it seems really cartoon-ish for such a great OS.
Oh well.. it still looks nice and everything.. hehe
Except that the word proprietary essentially implies non-standard and exclusive to a certain brand or style, or whatever. ..."held as property of a private owner".. "used, made, or marketed by one having the exclusive legal right"... Sounds like something that you'd have to struggle excessively to make a "standard".
Anyway, once something is standard, it kind of loses its proprietary-ness, seeing as it becomes no longer exclusive to just one company or brand. I guess technically it could still be, and just "licensed" to others... but that's not what I would call standard.
I guess it also depends on how you define "standard". I mean, people try and say WMA is standard. What a joke! Standard on Windows, maybe. Even that is pushing it. You don't have huge huge piracy networks that trade WMA files, for instance. The only people that really use WMA files are companies that want to cripple the freedom that users have with the file, or uninformed users who rip their CDs using Windows Media Player...
Also, on a somewhat-related topic, allowing proprietary formats to become "standard" is a foolish idea from the start. As it's been discussed 5000+ times on here, MS Word's "doc" format has made users unable to read their own or each others' documents countless times, due to the proprietary nature of the format. I'm sure most people here understand the risks involved with using formats controlled, owned and dictated by corporations, but for some odd, unknown reason, the general populous fails to realize that the very moment Microsoft doesn't want you to read your own documents anymore, they can make it happen. Obviously that's an unlikely situation, but think about it - do you really want some immoral corporation having that kind of control over the documents *you created and legally own*?
Whatever..
Heh yeah dude. I have 21gb of mp3s on my computer. There's no way in hell I'm ever going to start downloading WMA bullshit. Why would I even consider it?
I totally plan to buy an iPod one day. The only reason I haven't is because I haven't had the money. But why would I even consider a player that only plays shitty WMA files? What a joke...
Ummm, proprietary standard? If that's not an oxymoron, someone please tell me what is...
I'd be glad to do that if I had any clue how to do so.. I don't even care about the video performance of the comp, since I'd just be using it for audio anyways...
The only reason I can't just use it right now is it constantly crashes. Plus I'd like to be able to use a resolution higher than 640x480 too.
Ahh yeah someone I know recommended Buzz to me one time. I thought it was cool, but it felt like a step backwards for me, learning a whole new interface which likely wouldn't have much benefit for me compared to what I've been using... Uh I think basically I just didn't feel like learning a whole new program, especially with the minimal free time I have these days.. :\
Anyway I actually started out using a similar (although primitive in comparison) program called PlayerPro for Mac OS years ago, which was a pretty simple "tracker" type program. Buzz seems to reproduce (and supercede) that functionality completely. I really wish I had had that kind of software available to me back then!!
Hell yeah dude, thanks for the post.
:)
Mod parent up!!
Totally useful. Ardour looks awesome. Now I'm all excited to get all this stuff running. I can see it being very very useful for our band and future musical endeavours.. !!
Yeah, I actually have an old PowerComputing PowerTower Pro 225, upgraded to a G3 450mhz. Has 512mb of RAM too.
:(
Only thing is it's about 8 or 9 years old, the [SCSI/expensive-to-replace] hard drives work only intermittently, and I can't really run Mac OS X on it unless I can find an old ATI Rage 128 or similar Mac OS X-supported video card (the IMS TwinTurbo 128 piece of crap in there isn't supported). I installed OS X before but it crashed constantly and wouldn't display higher than 640x480 resolution.
Also I just prefer to do it all on my Windows comp seeing as it's far faster than my Mac (Athlon XP 2000+ w/512mb DDR RAM), runs a recent OS, and has 320gb of disk space. It's just all-around a better environment to work with, especially with CPU-intensive audio processing... other than the fact that it runs Windoze...
But you're right, I really would actually prefer to have a nice G4 with tons of space and so on. I just don't have enough money to put towards such an awesome computer. I'll end up getting an awesome Mac to do my audio stuff but that's well in the future. For now my band and I are at the 'bottom of the food chain', so to speak, so yeah... it's low-budget solutions for us, for the time being.
Topic says:
"Wired: Pro-Level, GPL'd Audio Editing For Linux"
Awesome... The only reason I still use Windows on my desktop is because the audio software I use is Windows-only...
:)
Let's hope this program will be good enough for me to be able to switch over to Linux full-time
I got a copy of Rhapsody DR2 as well. It worked fine on my Intel Celeron 400mhz machine but I couldn't get my screenshots off the Rhapsody machine and onto my main desktop machine! It wouldn't read DOS formatted disks, and the networking didn't work...
So I just took some photos with my digital camera...
Either way the UI was totally cool. I wish Mac OS X looked more like Rhapsody, or even better, NeXT..