How is DRM a necessary evil? Very few DRM schemes give something positive back to the user. I tend to like Steam, because for my usage patterns, it doesn't cause much of a problem, and I can download what I want to play no matter where I am (errrr...with a net connection, anyhow). This AC2 DRM gives me nothing. I don't *want* my save game on some remote server; that sounds really stupid to me.
The game likely knows the public key for the remote server, and any machine trying to contact it without using the appropriate key won't be able to authenticate. The traffic between the game and the Ubisoft server could be completely encrypted, which greatly increases the difficulty of reverse engineering the game's "heartbeat" ping, not to mention that whoever cracks this game will end up writing a server for the game to communicate with, which will have to manage the save game files and such. No matter how you look at this, it's not going to be an easy crack.
I have a giant pile of games next to my tv. Even for a console, Assassin's Creed 2 isn't going to ever be among them.
When the copyright can often extend significantly after the original artist's death? Yeah, I consider that a problem. Copyright is meant to spur creative development. What is more likely to do that? Giving an artist an avenue where they can produce one popular work and rest on their laurels as long as they want, or forcing them (via copyright expiration) to put in more work and actually create more art? I guess that I just don't believe in someone receiving payment for work that they don't do.
Well, technically, the OSX EULA states that the OS must be run on "Apple-logoed" hardware. I have a coworker that makes the argument that this means you can slap an Apple sticker on a Dell and use OSX without breaking the license.
It's more accurate to say that they're both "Darwin"-kernel OSes. I wouldn't really consider them the same OS, since the OS includes a lot more than the kernel (in this case, the GUI and available user-space applications, which differ significantly between the two).
Videos like this are why I go to Digg, not Slashdot. I come to Slashdot for tech news, There are already quite enough sites with this kind of crap on them, and I don't see why/. should be yet another.....crap, and this site doesn't even have a "bury" button!
It's kind of like dumping experience points into an object to enchant it, or spending money for the arrows that you've lost. You lose points in the short term, but gain a certain ability that will help you earn even more.
What Bert is saying is "What if I want to play this during my cellular automata class in the room the wifi doesn't reach??"
Even if you go by the dubious assumption that buying a game gets you only: 1. The physical disk 2. The right to use it on one computer, guess what? Ubisoft isn't even fulfilling that bargain! They haven't even sold you a license to a game; they've sold you a permission, which can be revoked at any time by themselves, anyone in your house, your ISP, etc etc. Anyone that buys this game is supporting increasingly draconian implementations of DRM. Does anyone really think that a game company will be reasonable? That they'll self-institute any sort of limit on what they'll try and sell? Each company that makes a successful experiment in controlling YOUR computer will continue to push further, to whatever point the market allows. Other companies will follow. Even the lenient companies will submit to market pressure, and it will be the rare independent release that "Only requires the CD in and one-time activation!". I don't want to put up with this, but if enough people are willing to take the easy path out, and just lay down their cash for the game, I guess I'll have to buy some anal lube.
Every month around the 15th or so, I lose connectivity. It always takes a reboot of the modem to get the connection back. And this will happen sometimes a dozen times in 6 or 8 hours, and might happen for a couple days. If there's a game that I have a legal license to play, but I'm prevented from playing it by the game itself, that's fraud on the part of the company as far as I'm concerned. I don't give a shit what they're trying to prevent; the fact of the matter would be that the publisher would be preventing me from playing my legally licensed game. There's enough other quality content out there. If some company wants to screw with me, I'll take my business elsewhere.
Note: Yes, I pirated constantly in college. Since getting an honest-to-goodness job, I haven't pirated a single game, even though I end up in possession of 10x as many as I ever did during college. I'm one sale, but I'm a sale that will remember. A PC game with DRM more onerous than anything that would be tolerated on a console? Screw it. They can keep their shit.
If they're priced as full games, I'll be a little miffed. I've got plenty of choice in games, so something like that *may* lose them my sale....but probably not. And I think that's the gamble they're going for. Blizzard puts out top-notch stuff. It's possible they're pushing for recognition of premium content with higher prices. Some people will be swept up in a wave of "OMG Starcraft!!" and that'll probably be enough to make the games massively successful, regardless of what price they come out as.
You have the game and two expansions, and each one has about the number of levels that the original game had. It's a different direction for the game,, but I don't think it's bad (as long as the expansions don't cost as much as the full game...and maybe if they publish a whopping 90 mission version at some point)
And the theatrical release versions are taken from the Laserdisc masters. Non-widescreen. Laserdisc-quality video. I'd still get it if I didn't have the 2004 boxset already.
The main game is supposed to have a similar amount of content to the original Starcraft, and the add-ons are supposed to have a similar amount to the main game.
I played some at Blizzcon this year. It *feels* like a Starcraft game. Of course, I was only playing for about 20 minutes at a time, so the long-term balance wasn't necessarily easy to gauge. And 20 minutes isn't long enough to get all the way through the tech tree either....still, I'm convinced that the gameplay videos that have been released are relatively representative of the game itself. SC2 felt smooth. I'm still ticked off about the LAN stuff though. I work right next to a Blizzard office, and I've been considering dropping a bundle of CAT5 on their doorstep, with a label "required SC2 testing equipment".
The US isn't a communist society....except in the ways that it is. Culture and society mutate over time. This seems like just one more mutation. Whether it's a maladaptive or beneficial trait for our culture is yet to really be seen.
It may not be possible to actually "discuss" the topic, but it's certainly possible to find bugs that may or may not influence the output of the program. And given the original input data, it's possible to remove the bugs, run the corrected program against the original input data, and see if the output is different. It would take someone with knowledge in the target topic to analyze the output data and decide if any difference is significant, but the actual check for bugs could certainly be done by anyone that "speaks" the language the program was written in.
Even with something like a Global Warming argument, a person with a strong grasp of both English and logic might not be able to verify claims in an argument, but they can certainly analyze the argument for certain logical fallacies. Perhaps the fallacious section of the argument doesn't invalidate the argument as a whole. You can't trust this generic English-speaker to accurately make that determination, but they're certainly able to identify and remove a strawman, an ad hominem, etc.
One of the main causes of World War I (or at least its size) was economic and political alliances between different groups of countries in Europe. As one country gets pulled into conflict, it calls on its allies to fight alongside it.
You could grab the file out of your iTunes directory and try to copy it over to an Android phone. It's not a "physical way"...but then again, I'm not even sure what that would mean anyhow.
iPod Touch works differently than a regular iPod (it uses a different communication protocol). The only way I know of to sync a Touch/iPhone is to jailbreak it, and use a wireless SSH connection to get at the data.
Generally it works if you keep the same account logged in, and jump through various other hoops. I'm not saying that it always works, or that I'd rather get something via Steam rather than a box-purchase, just that it's one of the less onerous DRM schemes that I've seen.
I've bought a number of Ubisoft games over the years. That won't be true if their new releases start "featuring" a constant tether to the internet. Frankly, I'll stick with the CD checks (or Steam). Steam isn't my favorite, but at least it doesn't force a constant connection to the publisher's servers to play a game!
I have a PSP and an iPod Touch. I don't consider their functions to overlap at all. The PSP is for relatively serious gaming...I buy a disk, and I expect it to provide me a reasonably complex game and an interface dedicated to controlling that game. I want the iPod to give me access to music, a few dictionary apps, and maybe some puzzle games like sudoku or a word-twist. It's for when I'm going to be playing 5 minutes, or I need a quick web look-up or something.
The PSP Go isn't a direction that I like. I don't want my "licensing" of a game to be present on a server; I'd rather have a physical disk/cartridge/whatever instead. It's bulkier, sure, but at least I can sell the thing when I'm done with it!
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How is DRM a necessary evil? Very few DRM schemes give something positive back to the user. I tend to like Steam, because for my usage patterns, it doesn't cause much of a problem, and I can download what I want to play no matter where I am (errrr...with a net connection, anyhow). This AC2 DRM gives me nothing. I don't *want* my save game on some remote server; that sounds really stupid to me.
The game likely knows the public key for the remote server, and any machine trying to contact it without using the appropriate key won't be able to authenticate. The traffic between the game and the Ubisoft server could be completely encrypted, which greatly increases the difficulty of reverse engineering the game's "heartbeat" ping, not to mention that whoever cracks this game will end up writing a server for the game to communicate with, which will have to manage the save game files and such. No matter how you look at this, it's not going to be an easy crack.
I have a giant pile of games next to my tv. Even for a console, Assassin's Creed 2 isn't going to ever be among them.
When the copyright can often extend significantly after the original artist's death? Yeah, I consider that a problem. Copyright is meant to spur creative development. What is more likely to do that? Giving an artist an avenue where they can produce one popular work and rest on their laurels as long as they want, or forcing them (via copyright expiration) to put in more work and actually create more art? I guess that I just don't believe in someone receiving payment for work that they don't do.
Well, technically, the OSX EULA states that the OS must be run on "Apple-logoed" hardware. I have a coworker that makes the argument that this means you can slap an Apple sticker on a Dell and use OSX without breaking the license.
It's more accurate to say that they're both "Darwin"-kernel OSes. I wouldn't really consider them the same OS, since the OS includes a lot more than the kernel (in this case, the GUI and available user-space applications, which differ significantly between the two).
Videos like this are why I go to Digg, not Slashdot. I come to Slashdot for tech news, There are already quite enough sites with this kind of crap on them, and I don't see why /. should be yet another.....crap, and this site doesn't even have a "bury" button!
I still have a working Atari and a few dozen game cartridges, if those count...
As someone who isn't into playing explosives, that other meaning for RPG (Rocket-propelled grenade) did not immediately occur to me.
It's kind of like dumping experience points into an object to enchant it, or spending money for the arrows that you've lost. You lose points in the short term, but gain a certain ability that will help you earn even more.
What Bert is saying is "What if I want to play this during my cellular automata class in the room the wifi doesn't reach??"
Even if you go by the dubious assumption that buying a game gets you only: 1. The physical disk 2. The right to use it on one computer, guess what? Ubisoft isn't even fulfilling that bargain! They haven't even sold you a license to a game; they've sold you a permission, which can be revoked at any time by themselves, anyone in your house, your ISP, etc etc. Anyone that buys this game is supporting increasingly draconian implementations of DRM. Does anyone really think that a game company will be reasonable? That they'll self-institute any sort of limit on what they'll try and sell? Each company that makes a successful experiment in controlling YOUR computer will continue to push further, to whatever point the market allows. Other companies will follow. Even the lenient companies will submit to market pressure, and it will be the rare independent release that "Only requires the CD in and one-time activation!". I don't want to put up with this, but if enough people are willing to take the easy path out, and just lay down their cash for the game, I guess I'll have to buy some anal lube.
Every month around the 15th or so, I lose connectivity. It always takes a reboot of the modem to get the connection back. And this will happen sometimes a dozen times in 6 or 8 hours, and might happen for a couple days. If there's a game that I have a legal license to play, but I'm prevented from playing it by the game itself, that's fraud on the part of the company as far as I'm concerned. I don't give a shit what they're trying to prevent; the fact of the matter would be that the publisher would be preventing me from playing my legally licensed game. There's enough other quality content out there. If some company wants to screw with me, I'll take my business elsewhere.
Note: Yes, I pirated constantly in college. Since getting an honest-to-goodness job, I haven't pirated a single game, even though I end up in possession of 10x as many as I ever did during college. I'm one sale, but I'm a sale that will remember. A PC game with DRM more onerous than anything that would be tolerated on a console? Screw it. They can keep their shit.
If they're priced as full games, I'll be a little miffed. I've got plenty of choice in games, so something like that *may* lose them my sale....but probably not. And I think that's the gamble they're going for. Blizzard puts out top-notch stuff. It's possible they're pushing for recognition of premium content with higher prices. Some people will be swept up in a wave of "OMG Starcraft!!" and that'll probably be enough to make the games massively successful, regardless of what price they come out as.
You have the game and two expansions, and each one has about the number of levels that the original game had. It's a different direction for the game,, but I don't think it's bad (as long as the expansions don't cost as much as the full game...and maybe if they publish a whopping 90 mission version at some point)
And the theatrical release versions are taken from the Laserdisc masters. Non-widescreen. Laserdisc-quality video. I'd still get it if I didn't have the 2004 boxset already.
The main game is supposed to have a similar amount of content to the original Starcraft, and the add-ons are supposed to have a similar amount to the main game.
I played some at Blizzcon this year. It *feels* like a Starcraft game. Of course, I was only playing for about 20 minutes at a time, so the long-term balance wasn't necessarily easy to gauge. And 20 minutes isn't long enough to get all the way through the tech tree either....still, I'm convinced that the gameplay videos that have been released are relatively representative of the game itself. SC2 felt smooth. I'm still ticked off about the LAN stuff though. I work right next to a Blizzard office, and I've been considering dropping a bundle of CAT5 on their doorstep, with a label "required SC2 testing equipment".
The US isn't a communist society....except in the ways that it is. Culture and society mutate over time. This seems like just one more mutation. Whether it's a maladaptive or beneficial trait for our culture is yet to really be seen.
He deprived them of first release of their product; that's a form of theft. It's *also* copyright infringement, of course.
It may not be possible to actually "discuss" the topic, but it's certainly possible to find bugs that may or may not influence the output of the program. And given the original input data, it's possible to remove the bugs, run the corrected program against the original input data, and see if the output is different. It would take someone with knowledge in the target topic to analyze the output data and decide if any difference is significant, but the actual check for bugs could certainly be done by anyone that "speaks" the language the program was written in.
Even with something like a Global Warming argument, a person with a strong grasp of both English and logic might not be able to verify claims in an argument, but they can certainly analyze the argument for certain logical fallacies. Perhaps the fallacious section of the argument doesn't invalidate the argument as a whole. You can't trust this generic English-speaker to accurately make that determination, but they're certainly able to identify and remove a strawman, an ad hominem, etc.
One of the main causes of World War I (or at least its size) was economic and political alliances between different groups of countries in Europe. As one country gets pulled into conflict, it calls on its allies to fight alongside it.
You could grab the file out of your iTunes directory and try to copy it over to an Android phone. It's not a "physical way"...but then again, I'm not even sure what that would mean anyhow.
iPod Touch works differently than a regular iPod (it uses a different communication protocol). The only way I know of to sync a Touch/iPhone is to jailbreak it, and use a wireless SSH connection to get at the data.
Generally it works if you keep the same account logged in, and jump through various other hoops. I'm not saying that it always works, or that I'd rather get something via Steam rather than a box-purchase, just that it's one of the less onerous DRM schemes that I've seen.
I've bought a number of Ubisoft games over the years. That won't be true if their new releases start "featuring" a constant tether to the internet. Frankly, I'll stick with the CD checks (or Steam). Steam isn't my favorite, but at least it doesn't force a constant connection to the publisher's servers to play a game!
I have a PSP and an iPod Touch. I don't consider their functions to overlap at all. The PSP is for relatively serious gaming...I buy a disk, and I expect it to provide me a reasonably complex game and an interface dedicated to controlling that game. I want the iPod to give me access to music, a few dictionary apps, and maybe some puzzle games like sudoku or a word-twist. It's for when I'm going to be playing 5 minutes, or I need a quick web look-up or something.
The PSP Go isn't a direction that I like. I don't want my "licensing" of a game to be present on a server; I'd rather have a physical disk/cartridge/whatever instead. It's bulkier, sure, but at least I can sell the thing when I'm done with it!