People who paid for the product can enjoy it and those who didn't can't.
Uhh, no. Some of the people who were banned paid for the product but thought that going through Steam AND having the CD check was too much. So they used a nocd hack, and then Valve banned their paid-for account, signed up for using a paid-for CDROM copy of the game. Some people had Steam accounts for other games which got banned, even though only the HL2 game was caught being used with a nocd hack. So not only did some people lose access to a HL2 game they paid for, they also lost access to other games they paid for.
What the hell do you expect them to do then Michael? Is Valve just supposed to put up with tens of thousands of people playing their game without paying for it?
For me, the solution is simple. They are offering an ephemeral product, not a tangible one. Charge less. Around $10, I'd buy it, and not give a crap about any de-activation technology Valve wants to use. For ten bucks, it's no big deal. But for fifty bucks, I expect to be able to play the damn thing whenever and wherever I want, whether Valve still operates Steam or not, and whether I have a network connection, or not.
OK, pretend you just moved to a new home in a new city and haven't got cable internet yet. While you're waiting, you install HL2 from CD onto your new PC and try to play without an online connection. Let me know how that goes. If you can't reinstall offline (i.e. without Valve's permission), then HL2 is more like a month's subscription to a porn site. Only it's priced like a tangible product you can use forever.
I won't buy HL2 becasue of it. Perhaps I'll loose out on the greatest game in the world, but it's a small price to pay compared to only being able to run programs you have purchased with the permission of somebody else. somebody who will have financial reason to not give you permission is even worse.
I agree with you. I haven't bought HL2 because of the requirement to be online for single play. If Steam goes away, so does my purchase. I still play Prince of Persia 2 in a virtual DOS machine. I still play Tribes 1 under a Voodoo emulator. Games I like, I play again and again. But buying HL2 is like buying a song from Itunes, or a month's subscription to a porn site. It is an ephemeral product, and it should be priced accordingly. When HL2 reaches the bargain bin and can be purchased for less than ten bucks, then it'll have reached a fair price for an ephemeral product, and if Steam is still around by then, I'd buy it then for that price.
Or I might be cruising the South Pacific in my yacht by then, and not give a crap.:)
Didn't anyone notice that the motion to unseal was denied because the movants did not have the legal standing to file such a motion?
Did the court rule? This seems to be merely the US Government's response to the motion from the EFF and UCIMC, stating their view of the issue. Unless I misunderstand something, the court hasn't ruled on the question yet.
To my knowledge, all standard SMTP servers respect this request, and little to none of the mass mailers do.
To my knowledge, that ain't so. We used to tempfail spam with a score over our threshhold. The idea with tempfailing is that if it was a legit message falsely flagged as spam, then in 4 hours or so the sender would get a notice from their mail server about the mail delay. The sender could contact us by other means, get whitelisted and then not have to resend their original message. It would be on the whitelist the next time a delivery was attempted.
This happened exactly once in the course of a year. Meantime, over half the spam we were tempfailing was coming back again and again. Now I bounce it all on the first attempt.
This is not a solution. This is another way to tie me down to manual editing of whitelists. I already have to do that with current content scanners. Any spam solution that fails to improve upon current solutions by mitigating the need for a whitelist is not an improvement. They are all sufficiently accurate to identify virtually every spam, and what slips through must be so innocuous in order to evade the filters that it isn't much a bother. The problem is the false positives and having to maintain whitelists to deal with that. I don't need more true positives. I need fewer false positives. Hashcash does not solve this problem, so there's no reason to adopt it.
Second off, before everyone starts ripping on evil corporations and patents... let's not forget that the evil Government creates the environment that breeds bacterial scum like SCO.
The "evil government" is a creature created by the corporations for the express purpose of creating the environment you so rightly deride.
Individualism - that "philosophy" so loved by the "evil government" and libertarian types - is a propaganda invention of corporate marketing, with the purpose of keeping workers and consumers divided and quarreling among themselves over the crumbs they are allowed to keep from the fruits of their own labor. Meanwhile, the lions' share of those fruits go to people who didn't lift a finger. Individualism is the philosophy that justifiues this behavior with the false hope that you, the common man, may one day become the idle rich, too.
George W. Bush, certainly is not the best president that we have ever had but he is OUR GOD DAMN MOTHER FUCKING LEADER, SO LISTEN WITH A LITTLE BIT OF DIGNITY TO WHAT HE SAYS.
You forgot to stick your fingers in your ears and sing LA-LA-LA-LA-LA real loud.
Individualism is a propaganda invention of the economic elite to keep the proles divided and quarreling among themselves. You bought the line, too, buddy. Hook line and sinker.
CLIFF AND EMCEE: Happy to see you. Bleibe, reste, stay... Willkommen, en bienvenue, welcome Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, tu Cabaret
EMCEE: (spoken) Meine Damen und Herren... Mesdames et Messieurs... Ladies and Gentlemen. Where are your troubles now? Forgotten? I told you so. We have no troubles here! In here life is beautiful... the girls are beautiful... even the orchestra is beautiful.
(The GIRL ORCHESTRA appears onstage as do the characters from the opening scene, but this time the picture and the mood are much different. The girls are not as pretty, German uniforms and swastika armbands are apparent; it is not as bright, a dream-like quality that prevails. dissonant strains of "Willkommen" (Nazi music) are heard. Then from among the moving people, we see HERR SCHULTZ)
SCHULTZ: Just children. Mischievous children on their way to school. You understand.
(The people move again and we see FRAULEIN SCHNEIDER)
FRAULEIN SCHNEIDER: I understand. One does what one must.
(Again the people move and we see SALLY)
SALLY: It'll all work out. It's only politics, and what's that got to do with us?
All: Glucklich zu sehen Je suis enchante. Happy to see you.....
FRAULEIN SCHNEIDER: I must be sensible. If the Nazis come- what other choice have I?
SCHULTZ: I know I am right because I understand the Germans. After all, what am I? A German.
ALL: (Singing) Fremde, etranger, stranger Glucklich zu sehen Je suis enchante
(Suddenly SALLY is lifted high on a chair)
SALLY: (Singing) I made my mind up back in Chelsea. When I go... I'm going like Elsie.
(SALLY is lowered. The people gradually fade away)... from cradle to tomb Isn't that long a stay. Life is a cabaret, old chum, Life is a cabaret, old chum,
(SALLY disappears into the darkness-leaving the EMCEE alone on the stage)
EMCEE: Life is a cabaret.
Auf wiedersehen!... A bientot. Good night!...
(The EMCEE bows, accompanied by a snare drum roll, then suddenly vanishes with the crash of a high hat cymbal. The stage is empty except for the street lamps shining on the wet street, the mirror, and then, glowing in the darkness, the Cabaret sign)
Let's say that you buy a song/movie and it has DRM which restricts the way you use it
Let's say I don't. Yeah. I like that much better.
Yes they do not ask you before disabling your browser options.
Or perhaps by way of returning the favor, I won't ask if I can disable their DRM. Fair enough? If they can hijack my property, why can't I hijack theirs?
Re:Free [books|music|stuff] is not a basic right.
on
Breaking Google's DRM
·
· Score: 1
I don't care whether you don't like the law. It's STILL THE LAW.
Where do you get your jackboots polished? That's a mighty high shine you got there.
Sorry to rant, but this "I have the right to anything I want, and I shouldn't have to pay for it because The Man is just trying to keep me down by stealing my hard-earned money" ethos pisses me off.
Jesus, people, do we have to break everything just for the sake of breaking it?
Yes.
As someone mentioned above, the only reason Google *can* offer this is because of the DRM.
Well, writers have to write something, first.
Why do we have to immediately set to destroying every new toy we get with a hammer?
Hammers are not for sitting on the shelf and soaking up admiration for their potential. They are to be used. It is the nature of the hammer. Why else have one?
...and otherwise abuse and destroy a fledging new service.
That is the way of the market,
Obviously, a lot of people want the service unemcumbered by DRM. If it delivers something else, it isn't responding to market demand, and should die off. Cest la vie. According to every hyperventilating capitalist and sneering socialist I have ever heard speak or write about it, that's how the market works.
Why should Kerry call Bush on the lies used to rationalize the war, when Kerry is all for the war, and only differs with Bush on tactics? Kerry can't call the war a fraud because it would undermine his pitch to become the commander in chief, not to mention piss off all his wealthy donors.
On the other hand, Nader doesn't share the same affection for slaughter and conquest that Kerry and Bush have, and so he feels free to call Bush the liar that he is, and Kerry the panderer to wealth that he is.
You won't see an impeachment over the fraud that is the Iraq war because both parties are in favor of it.
Well, I ask what they hell we are supposed to call the entire decade of the 90's. Was that not diplomatic? Time and time again we let him get away with shit and never said enough is enough. EVERY single time we said, "do that again and that will be it"
Let him get away with what? Do what again? He was impotent! A decade of sanctions and daily bombings had decimated his country and his government. The reasons for invading Iraq were fabricated. They had to be, Iraq was already a disaster that couldn't threaten anyone.
So, put your anti-Bush aside. Focusing on the WMD issue is not only a waste of time but it turns the worlds attention from something greater.
Oh NOW you're worried about what the world thinks.... Sheesh! Do they have focus groups on how to be duplicitous?
The very same protections that gave us the GPL highlight the BEST economic advantages of F/OSS.
You misunderstand the GPL. It is a hack of the intellectual property system. It is a license that denies profit-motivated people the very things they want to have protected, and gives the users the one thing they want: freedom. It turns the IP system on its head, intentionally. It is a form of moneky-wrenching. If it weren't for the screwed-up IP system we have to endure, there'd be no need for the GPL.
What are the odds that the political landscape Google is surveying actually is more conservative than OJR think?
What are the odds that conservatives are more likely to setup a website to vent their spleen than liberals?
I mean, come on: 10,000 visitors per day on UselessKnowledge is a trickle, a drop, and commercially unsupportable. The guy who runs a site like that with such a small user base is a fanatic, not a journalist.
Slashdot Mirror
People who paid for the product can enjoy it and those who didn't can't.
Uhh, no. Some of the people who were banned paid for the product but thought that going through Steam AND having the CD check was too much. So they used a nocd hack, and then Valve banned their paid-for account, signed up for using a paid-for CDROM copy of the game. Some people had Steam accounts for other games which got banned, even though only the HL2 game was caught being used with a nocd hack. So not only did some people lose access to a HL2 game they paid for, they also lost access to other games they paid for.
What the hell do you expect them to do then Michael? Is Valve just supposed to put up with tens of thousands of people playing their game without paying for it?
For me, the solution is simple. They are offering an ephemeral product, not a tangible one. Charge less. Around $10, I'd buy it, and not give a crap about any de-activation technology Valve wants to use. For ten bucks, it's no big deal. But for fifty bucks, I expect to be able to play the damn thing whenever and wherever I want, whether Valve still operates Steam or not, and whether I have a network connection, or not.
OK, pretend you just moved to a new home in a new city and haven't got cable internet yet. While you're waiting, you install HL2 from CD onto your new PC and try to play without an online connection. Let me know how that goes. If you can't reinstall offline (i.e. without Valve's permission), then HL2 is more like a month's subscription to a porn site. Only it's priced like a tangible product you can use forever.
Heavy FPS fighting, and goal oriented tasks would keep your mind off the standard level grind found in current RPGS.
I keep my mind off the standard level grind by not playing online RPGs. Works good, too.
I won't buy HL2 becasue of it. Perhaps I'll loose out on the greatest game in the world, but it's a small price to pay compared to only being able to run programs you have purchased with the permission of somebody else. somebody who will have financial reason to not give you permission is even worse.
:)
I agree with you. I haven't bought HL2 because of the requirement to be online for single play. If Steam goes away, so does my purchase. I still play Prince of Persia 2 in a virtual DOS machine. I still play Tribes 1 under a Voodoo emulator. Games I like, I play again and again. But buying HL2 is like buying a song from Itunes, or a month's subscription to a porn site. It is an ephemeral product, and it should be priced accordingly. When HL2 reaches the bargain bin and can be purchased for less than ten bucks, then it'll have reached a fair price for an ephemeral product, and if Steam is still around by then, I'd buy it then for that price.
Or I might be cruising the South Pacific in my yacht by then, and not give a crap.
Didn't anyone notice that the motion to unseal was denied because the movants did not have the legal standing to file such a motion?
Did the court rule? This seems to be merely the US Government's response to the motion from the EFF and UCIMC, stating their view of the issue. Unless I misunderstand something, the court hasn't ruled on the question yet.
To my knowledge, all standard SMTP servers respect this request, and little to none of the mass mailers do.
To my knowledge, that ain't so. We used to tempfail spam with a score over our threshhold. The idea with tempfailing is that if it was a legit message falsely flagged as spam, then in 4 hours or so the sender would get a notice from their mail server about the mail delay. The sender could contact us by other means, get whitelisted and then not have to resend their original message. It would be on the whitelist the next time a delivery was attempted.
This happened exactly once in the course of a year. Meantime, over half the spam we were tempfailing was coming back again and again. Now I bounce it all on the first attempt.
This is not a solution. This is another way to tie me down to manual editing of whitelists. I already have to do that with current content scanners. Any spam solution that fails to improve upon current solutions by mitigating the need for a whitelist is not an improvement. They are all sufficiently accurate to identify virtually every spam, and what slips through must be so innocuous in order to evade the filters that it isn't much a bother. The problem is the false positives and having to maintain whitelists to deal with that. I don't need more true positives. I need fewer false positives. Hashcash does not solve this problem, so there's no reason to adopt it.
Second off, before everyone starts ripping on evil corporations and patents... let's not forget that the evil Government creates the environment that breeds bacterial scum like SCO.
The "evil government" is a creature created by the corporations for the express purpose of creating the environment you so rightly deride.
Individualism - that "philosophy" so loved by the "evil government" and libertarian types - is a propaganda invention of corporate marketing, with the purpose of keeping workers and consumers divided and quarreling among themselves over the crumbs they are allowed to keep from the fruits of their own labor. Meanwhile, the lions' share of those fruits go to people who didn't lift a finger. Individualism is the philosophy that justifiues this behavior with the false hope that you, the common man, may one day become the idle rich, too.
Check out Cabaret (1972) while you're at it.
George W. Bush, certainly is not the best president that we have ever had but he is OUR GOD DAMN MOTHER FUCKING LEADER, SO LISTEN WITH A LITTLE BIT OF DIGNITY TO WHAT HE SAYS.
You forgot to stick your fingers in your ears and sing LA-LA-LA-LA-LA real loud.
Damn I'm glad I voted libertarian.
Individualism is a propaganda invention of the economic elite to keep the proles divided and quarreling among themselves. You bought the line, too, buddy. Hook line and sinker.
CLIFF AND EMCEE: Happy to see you. Bleibe, reste, stay... Willkommen, en bienvenue, welcome Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, tu Cabaret
....
... I'm going like Elsie.
... from cradle to tomb
...
EMCEE: (spoken) Meine Damen und Herren... Mesdames et Messieurs... Ladies and Gentlemen. Where are your troubles now? Forgotten? I told you so. We have no troubles here! In here life is beautiful... the girls are beautiful... even the orchestra is beautiful.
(The GIRL ORCHESTRA appears onstage as do the characters from the opening scene, but this time the picture and the mood are much different. The
girls are not as pretty, German uniforms and swastika armbands are apparent; it is not as bright, a dream-like quality that prevails. dissonant strains of "Willkommen" (Nazi music) are heard. Then from among the moving people,
we see HERR SCHULTZ)
ALL: (Singing) Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome Fremde, etranger, stranger
SCHULTZ: Just children. Mischievous children on their way to school. You understand.
(The people move again and we see FRAULEIN SCHNEIDER)
FRAULEIN SCHNEIDER: I understand. One does what one must.
(Again the people move and we see SALLY)
SALLY: It'll all work out. It's only politics, and what's that got to do with us?
All: Glucklich zu sehen Je suis enchante. Happy to see you.
FRAULEIN SCHNEIDER: I must be sensible. If the Nazis come- what other choice have I?
SCHULTZ: I know I am right because I understand the Germans. After all, what am I? A German.
ALL: (Singing) Fremde, etranger, stranger
Glucklich zu sehen Je suis enchante
(Suddenly SALLY is lifted high on a chair)
SALLY: (Singing) I made my mind up back in Chelsea. When I go
(SALLY is lowered. The people gradually fade away)
Isn't that long a stay.
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
(SALLY disappears into the darkness-leaving the EMCEE alone on the stage)
EMCEE: Life is a cabaret.
Auf wiedersehen!
A bientot.
Good night!...
(The EMCEE bows, accompanied by a snare drum roll, then suddenly vanishes with the crash of a high hat cymbal. The stage is empty except for the street lamps shining on the wet street, the mirror, and then, glowing in the darkness, the Cabaret sign)
(final curtain, house lights up)
Gee, you think?
The present system is effectively a two party system. This gives you only one choice between left and right wing.
From where I sit, we effectively have one party, with two right wings to choose from.
Let's say that you buy a song/movie and it has DRM which restricts the way you use it
Let's say I don't. Yeah. I like that much better.
Yes they do not ask you before disabling your browser options.
Or perhaps by way of returning the favor, I won't ask if I can disable their DRM. Fair enough? If they can hijack my property, why can't I hijack theirs?
I don't care whether you don't like the law. It's STILL THE LAW.
Where do you get your jackboots polished? That's a mighty high shine you got there.
Sorry to rant, but this "I have the right to anything I want, and I shouldn't have to pay for it because The Man is just trying to keep me down by stealing my hard-earned money" ethos pisses me off.
Good. Mission accomplished.
Jesus, people, do we have to break everything just for the sake of breaking it?
Yes.
As someone mentioned above, the only reason Google *can* offer this is because of the DRM.
Well, writers have to write something, first.
Why do we have to immediately set to destroying every new toy we get with a hammer?
Hammers are not for sitting on the shelf and soaking up admiration for their potential. They are to be used. It is the nature of the hammer. Why else have one?
...and otherwise abuse and destroy a fledging new service.
That is the way of the market,
Obviously, a lot of people want the service unemcumbered by DRM. If it delivers something else, it isn't responding to market demand, and should die off. Cest la vie. According to every hyperventilating capitalist and sneering socialist I have ever heard speak or write about it, that's how the market works.
Why should Kerry call Bush on the lies used to rationalize the war, when Kerry is all for the war, and only differs with Bush on tactics? Kerry can't call the war a fraud because it would undermine his pitch to become the commander in chief, not to mention piss off all his wealthy donors.
On the other hand, Nader doesn't share the same affection for slaughter and conquest that Kerry and Bush have, and so he feels free to call Bush the liar that he is, and Kerry the panderer to wealth that he is.
You won't see an impeachment over the fraud that is the Iraq war because both parties are in favor of it.
Well, I ask what they hell we are supposed to call the entire decade of the 90's. Was that not diplomatic? Time and time again we let him get away with shit and never said enough is enough. EVERY single time we said, "do that again and that will be it"
Let him get away with what? Do what again? He was impotent! A decade of sanctions and daily bombings had decimated his country and his government. The reasons for invading Iraq were fabricated. They had to be, Iraq was already a disaster that couldn't threaten anyone.
So, put your anti-Bush aside. Focusing on the WMD issue is not only a waste of time but it turns the worlds attention from something greater.
Oh NOW you're worried about what the world thinks.... Sheesh! Do they have focus groups on how to be duplicitous?
There isn't any news in this "news" for anyone, it seems like just another excuse to be able to trashtalk Bush...
... rewrapping an old story ...
It isn't "trashtalk" if it's true.
So because it's old, and Bush seems to have gotten away with it, we should ignore his crimes. Nice!
The very same protections that gave us the GPL highlight the BEST economic advantages of F/OSS.
You misunderstand the GPL. It is a hack of the intellectual property system. It is a license that denies profit-motivated people the very things they want to have protected, and gives the users the one thing they want: freedom. It turns the IP system on its head, intentionally. It is a form of moneky-wrenching. If it weren't for the screwed-up IP system we have to endure, there'd be no need for the GPL.
What are the odds that the political landscape Google is surveying actually is more conservative than OJR think?
What are the odds that conservatives are more likely to setup a website to vent their spleen than liberals?
I mean, come on: 10,000 visitors per day on UselessKnowledge is a trickle, a drop, and commercially unsupportable. The guy who runs a site like that with such a small user base is a fanatic, not a journalist.
France != French Canada
Whew! For a moment there, I thought New York City might be in Morroco.