Or just go back to the Diablo 2 way and store single player characters locally and multiplayer characters on their servers. There's absolutely no reason to require an internet connection for a single player experience, other then as a weak anti-piracy measure. They can claim it "improves the experience of the game" or whatever, but that's just marketing/orwellian speak.
You should care because if Android phones lose the entire US market, they will become much less profitable to make.
The Samsung Galaxy II sold 5 milion units in 3 months before it was even released in the States. I'm pretty sure companies like Samsung will survive just fine without you. Bonus points for saving hundreds of millions of dollars for not having to deal with patent lawsuits.
The best quote is from Rob Pardo (Executive Vice President of Blizzard):
While Pardo recognizes that people sometimes want or need to play offline (such as internet outages, or playing on a laptop during an airplane flight), he notes that the increased security, plus benefits like the above, outweigh those other concerns. "I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that."
I think companies are taking advantage of the fact that some people have a tendency to hoard and collect trinkets/items. Micro-transactions are just a way for these companies to cash in on human behaviour. I think it's unethical.
I have one friend for example that only plays Team Fortress 2 on idle servers. He barely even plays the game, he just idles 24/7 to collect more and more items. I ask him why he even bothers to idle since he doesnt actually play the game, and he can't come up with an answer. He constantly tells me how much he hates the game and all the changes Valve has made by constantly adding more and more items, yet he continues to idle and collect more items. Is that even sane? That sounds like an addiction.
These companies know exactly what they're doing, and they're making insane profits, so they'll continue to do it.
Mozilla just keeps making more and more retarded decisions. The last good branch was 2.x. It's been all downhill since then. I'm still using 3.6.x since I refuse to upgrade to version 4 or 5.
The only real options left: 1) Put up with their decisions 2) Fork it 3) Jump ship
Thanks for bringing that game to my attention, I've never heard of it. I absolutely love adventure games and murder mysteries. I recently just finished playing Heavy Rain and I absolutely loved it. I wish we could see more games like that.
You can disable P2P downloads if you want. It's there to speed up patching, but it isn't mandatory (you can disable it in the WoW launcher). I have it disabled myself, since I use Rogers and it actually slows down patching, but normally you'd want to leave it enabled.
It's not just BitTorrent, its all encrypted traffic aswell.
If anyone in my house connects to a work VPN my ping in WoW skyrockets and eventually I get disconnected. If I log off the VPN the problem goes away. This happens everytime and is 100% reproducible. I don't even have to do anything with that VPN connection, it just has to be established and idling and WoW will be effected to the point where I lag out and get disconnected.
The problem isn't just limited to WoW, it's all traffic. If I torrent anything or connect to a VPN *ALL* traffic is delayed to the point where I can't even connect to a website without timing out. My entire connection gets clobbered. This has been going on for over 2 years. The issue with WoW is more recent, most likely starting with the release of Cataclysm.
I'm glad Rogers is finally getting some much needed bad publicity. This is why I believe we need strong government regulation. I have zero faith in the Canadian government or the CTRC though, so I won't hold my breath.
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Looks like they forgot to edit the disclaimer page when they copy/pasted it from their FlightProSim page.
A few months before Rogers implemented their 60GB/month cap, I received a letter from them warning me about the upcoming change. They kindly included my bandwidth usage for the past 3 months in the letter. One month was over 600GB, one month was over 800GB. So, I went from being able to download 800GB/month to a 60GB/month cap.. And I still pay the same rate!
I had the pleasure of reading my rogers bill last month and realizing I went 20GB over my 60GB cap. They charge $2.00 for every gigabyte over the cap, so I was charged $40 extra. They're supposed to have a warning system in place to warn you when you're at 75% and again at 100% of the cap, but I received neither. I really hate rogers, but they're the only option in my area. My only choice was to upgrade to a more expensive package with a higher monthly cap.
As of April 2010 mechanical hard disk drives can transfer data at up to 157 MB/s, which is beyond the capabilities of the older PATA/133 specification and also exceeds a SATA 1.5 Gbit/s link. High-performance flash drives can transfer data at up to 308 MB/s which exceeds a SATA 3 Gbit/s link.
Companies like Rogers Communications Inc. and Groupe Videotron have been rolling out similar kinds of Internet-based services but the market is still in its infancy in Canada, analysts said.
and
Rogers Communications Inc. said customers prefer dealing with one company for all its entertainment needs. "Customers want to be able to subscribe to one service on a monthly basis and get it on a monthly basis," said David Purdy, Rogers' vice-president of video products. "Rogers has been moving toward a strategy that will allow customers to watch content on any platform of their choosing," Purdy said, referring to TVs, computers and mobile phones. The company recently launched video-on-demand online.
Fuck Rogers, seriously. I hate them. Their digital boxes are horribly slow and randomly lock up, requiring constant reboots. Their internet service sucks, I'm capped at 60GB/month and the latency and packet loss is horrible (I constantly have issues connecting to basic sites like google.com for example). I'd switch if I could but there are no other options in my area.
I love how my internet connection in 2010 is worse than my connection in 1995. Aside from a speed increase, the quality has gone way down hill, and I pay more for less. Yay for monopolies!
UT3 was disregarded because it was inferior to UT2004, plain and simple. They took an extremely successful game and turned it into a Gears of War clone. UT2004 looks gorgeous with its bright skies and vibrant colours. UT3 looks like a generic grey-and-brown shooter with a ridiculous overabundance of bloom effects and hdr lighting. When did shiny surfaces become so popular?
I completely agree with you. I'm only 27 but I've been voting since I was 18. In the past I've always voted Liberal, but over the last few years I've gotten sick and tired of the Liberal party. For the past 3 years I've been voting NDP. I like Jack Layton alot, I think he's the best potential leader out of the 4 main political parties.
I really dislike Stephen Harper and the Conservative party. They want to turn Canada into another Republican state. One huge problem with defeating the Conservatives is the fact that we have 3 left-leaning parties (Green, Liberal, NDP) and they all fight over the same votes... Which is why the Conservatives end up having 30% of the vote and every other party gets 10-20%. If only the Green, Liberal and NDP could join forces and combine their votes, we could destroy the Conservatives every election.
Slashdot Mirror
Or just go back to the Diablo 2 way and store single player characters locally and multiplayer characters on their servers. There's absolutely no reason to require an internet connection for a single player experience, other then as a weak anti-piracy measure. They can claim it "improves the experience of the game" or whatever, but that's just marketing/orwellian speak.
The Samsung Galaxy II sold 5 milion units in 3 months before it was even released in the States. I'm pretty sure companies like Samsung will survive just fine without you. Bonus points for saving hundreds of millions of dollars for not having to deal with patent lawsuits.
Not all US developers are bad. Runic Games for example.
You can already do that.
1. Edit your profile.
2. Click on the item that you want to edit, Occupation for example.
3. Click custom
4. Add circles or individuals to the list
Now only people/circles that you added can see that specific profile data.
http://www.1up.com/news/diablo-3-requires-online-when-playing
The best quote is from Rob Pardo (Executive Vice President of Blizzard):
While Pardo recognizes that people sometimes want or need to play offline (such as internet outages, or playing on a laptop during an airplane flight), he notes that the increased security, plus benefits like the above, outweigh those other concerns. "I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that."
Because its mandatory that you use the auction house...
So, how long have you been an astroturfing troll for NewsTechnica?
Your last dozen posts are all Google fud pieces, with gems like this: http://slashdot.org/submission/1734290/Google-deleting-account-en-masse
I agree. They're inflating the numbers.
15 billion downloads / 200 million users = 75 downloads per person.. There's no way in hell they're averaging 75 unique app downloads per person.
I think companies are taking advantage of the fact that some people have a tendency to hoard and collect trinkets/items. Micro-transactions are just a way for these companies to cash in on human behaviour. I think it's unethical.
I have one friend for example that only plays Team Fortress 2 on idle servers. He barely even plays the game, he just idles 24/7 to collect more and more items. I ask him why he even bothers to idle since he doesnt actually play the game, and he can't come up with an answer. He constantly tells me how much he hates the game and all the changes Valve has made by constantly adding more and more items, yet he continues to idle and collect more items. Is that even sane? That sounds like an addiction.
These companies know exactly what they're doing, and they're making insane profits, so they'll continue to do it.
Yes.
Though your free account will have some minor limitations: http://teamfortress.com/freetoplay/faq.php
Mozilla just keeps making more and more retarded decisions. The last good branch was 2.x. It's been all downhill since then. I'm still using 3.6.x since I refuse to upgrade to version 4 or 5.
The only real options left:
1) Put up with their decisions
2) Fork it
3) Jump ship
I'm choosing option 3.
If you use Firefox you can use Adblock Plus to remove all the social media crap.
http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions
Scroll down to the very bottom and subscribe to the Antisocial filter in the Miscellaneous section.
Thanks for bringing that game to my attention, I've never heard of it. I absolutely love adventure games and murder mysteries. I recently just finished playing Heavy Rain and I absolutely loved it. I wish we could see more games like that.
One of my all time favourite shows! You can download (legally) every episode here: http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/SLOM/index.html
You can disable P2P downloads if you want. It's there to speed up patching, but it isn't mandatory (you can disable it in the WoW launcher). I have it disabled myself, since I use Rogers and it actually slows down patching, but normally you'd want to leave it enabled.
It's not just BitTorrent, its all encrypted traffic aswell.
If anyone in my house connects to a work VPN my ping in WoW skyrockets and eventually I get disconnected. If I log off the VPN the problem goes away. This happens everytime and is 100% reproducible. I don't even have to do anything with that VPN connection, it just has to be established and idling and WoW will be effected to the point where I lag out and get disconnected.
This issue has been known for a while. Here's a 32 page thread on Roger's community forums: http://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/forums/forumtopicpage/board-id/Getting_connected/thread-id/557/page/1. That thread was started on January 17th 2011, so Rogers has known about the issue for a while. The fact that they refuse to fix the issue is ridiculous and unacceptable.
The problem isn't just limited to WoW, it's all traffic. If I torrent anything or connect to a VPN *ALL* traffic is delayed to the point where I can't even connect to a website without timing out. My entire connection gets clobbered. This has been going on for over 2 years. The issue with WoW is more recent, most likely starting with the release of Cataclysm.
I'm glad Rogers is finally getting some much needed bad publicity. This is why I believe we need strong government regulation. I have zero faith in the Canadian government or the CTRC though, so I won't hold my breath.
As someone else pointed out above, these are the same people.
http://www.illusionmage.com/disclaimer.htm
Looks like they forgot to edit the disclaimer page when they copy/pasted it from their FlightProSim page.
You're lucky.
A few months before Rogers implemented their 60GB/month cap, I received a letter from them warning me about the upcoming change. They kindly included my bandwidth usage for the past 3 months in the letter. One month was over 600GB, one month was over 800GB. So, I went from being able to download 800GB/month to a 60GB/month cap.. And I still pay the same rate!
I had the pleasure of reading my rogers bill last month and realizing I went 20GB over my 60GB cap. They charge $2.00 for every gigabyte over the cap, so I was charged $40 extra. They're supposed to have a warning system in place to warn you when you're at 75% and again at 100% of the cap, but I received neither. I really hate rogers, but they're the only option in my area. My only choice was to upgrade to a more expensive package with a higher monthly cap.
What about the ioDrive? They have to use PCIe because SATA isnt fast enough.
I think you're wrong. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
You say that like it's a bad thing.
You hit the nail on the head. Here's a story from last week about Netflix being offered in Canada: http://www.thestar.com/business/article/837394--netflix-to-bring-internet-movies-and-tv-to-canada
Here are some choice quotes:
and
Fuck Rogers, seriously. I hate them. Their digital boxes are horribly slow and randomly lock up, requiring constant reboots. Their internet service sucks, I'm capped at 60GB/month and the latency and packet loss is horrible (I constantly have issues connecting to basic sites like google.com for example). I'd switch if I could but there are no other options in my area.
I love how my internet connection in 2010 is worse than my connection in 1995. Aside from a speed increase, the quality has gone way down hill, and I pay more for less. Yay for monopolies!
Valve hired the team that made the original UT2004 mod. Source.
UT3 was disregarded because it was inferior to UT2004, plain and simple. They took an extremely successful game and turned it into a Gears of War clone. UT2004 looks gorgeous with its bright skies and vibrant colours. UT3 looks like a generic grey-and-brown shooter with a ridiculous overabundance of bloom effects and hdr lighting. When did shiny surfaces become so popular?
UT2004 vs UT3:
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/1154/ut20041mz3.jpg
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/2244/ut3texturehiworldhipostad9.jpg
Not only did it look inferior, but the gameplay was inferior aswell. End result was a shitty game that didn't sell well.
I completely agree with you. I'm only 27 but I've been voting since I was 18. In the past I've always voted Liberal, but over the last few years I've gotten sick and tired of the Liberal party. For the past 3 years I've been voting NDP. I like Jack Layton alot, I think he's the best potential leader out of the 4 main political parties.
I really dislike Stephen Harper and the Conservative party. They want to turn Canada into another Republican state. One huge problem with defeating the Conservatives is the fact that we have 3 left-leaning parties (Green, Liberal, NDP) and they all fight over the same votes... Which is why the Conservatives end up having 30% of the vote and every other party gets 10-20%. If only the Green, Liberal and NDP could join forces and combine their votes, we could destroy the Conservatives every election.