No, you can't. There's a humongous difference between seeing a finished product and deciding if you want it, vs. seeing a proposal, assuming all will work as claimed, and putting money down for it. Um.. let me repeat the part of my comment that you quoted, this time with emphasis: "You could make the same complaint about any service."
When you pay for a service, you're "seeing a proposal, assuming all will work as claimed, and putting money down for it". That's how services typically work: the service doesn't get performed until after you've agreed to pay for it.
You can't take your car to a mechanic for repairs, then after it's done, say "hmm, you know, I found a better deal somewhere else" and drive off without paying for your repaired car. By having him perform the service, you're agreeing to pay. Whether you physically exchange the money before or after he fixes your car is irrelevant.
Of course, if he fails to fix your car, you can demand your money back. That wouldn't change just because we replace "fix your car" with "write your program".
Come to think of it, anytime people crave something different they'd have to go through reams of proposals instead of browsing through existing product -- because existing product can only be sold (given?) to people who funed the labor in your model! I'm not sure where you're getting that. Under the model I've proposed, if you hire me to write a program, I'll give it to you and then wash my hands of it. You can then give it to whoever you want, under whatever terms you want. It's none of my concern what you do with that program once it leaves my hands; I may have written it, but nobody owns it.
Define reasonable. Define it for a operating system, a game, a song and a movie. Will you describe the movie you want made (thereby ruining the suspense among other things) and then fund it? Or browse a description of movies you want made and then fund them? I'll let the market work that out. The only requirement is that the person putting down the money feels he knows enough about what the final result will be that he'll be able to determine whether it lived up to the description. If you think the seller is being too vague, then don't give him your money.
Or selling a product in exchange for money. The kind of thing millions (if not billions) of people do every day. The rest of them manage to do that without a monopoly, though. If you want to burn a file to a CD and sell it as a product without demanding to be the only person who's allowed to sell that file, then go right ahead.
They didn't have a choice. Of course they did. They could've offered to sell their labor, but instead, they offered to sell discs. They removed themselves from the programming-labor market, where they could compete, and inserted themselves into the plastic-disc market, where they can't. That's their problem, not mine.
You stole their product. They wanted to sell it to you for a certain price. You didn't want to pay the price, but felt you had some god-given right to use the product anyway, so you make an unauthorized copy -- they didn't participate in this action in any way -- you did, and your action amounts to theft. Ah yes, that magical kind of "theft" in which no one is deprived of anything. Please forgive me for not caring one whit about that kind of phony, neutered "theft". The fact that theft deprives people of their property is exactly what makes theft a bad thing; without that, it's merely "theft lite", with all the rhetorical impact but none of the harm.
Copyright gives the original creator (publisher) the right to be credited for their work. The pirate violates the copyright by taking that credit instead. Actually, no, they don't; they give credit to the original creator. No one wants "Photoshop by leetpiratekid420", they want "Adobe Photoshop", so that's what gets shared. Look on any torrent site.
If they were taking credit for someone else's work, then believe me, I'd be denouncing those bastards right alongside you. Taking credit would be fraud, not copyright infringement.
Now consider copy protection in something like Adobe Photoshop (or any appliction or game). This can only make the bar for pirates higher. It cannot restrict competition because it has absolutely no effect on competing products. But it does restrict competition, because it means only Adobe is allowed to provide that sequence of bits. A competitive market would allow everyone to provide that sequence of bits.
You're doing much worse than that. You're suggesting nobody has a right to get paid for a product -- they can only ask to be paid for a service. Not at all! I have no problem with people selling products. If Adobe wants to sell a box containing a disc with a certain sequence of bits burned onto it, they can do that, and they can charge whatever price they want. I won't object at all.
I will object, however, when they want to stop everyone else from selling a different box containing a different disc with the same sequence of bits on it. Or from distributing those bits over the internet. Or from distributing a different sequence of bits that's derived from the first one.
You're exhibiting the most extreme cheapness and self-righteousness I've seen in a really long time. I'm sorry you've been misinterpreting my posts in a way that gives you that impression. Perhaps you'll learn to stop doing that, and to focus on my arguments instead of attacking me as a person ("cheapos like you").
Again, you don't have this god-given right to choose what you should pay (i.e. labor and distribution only). They have every right to make a profit, to chose their price point, business model, distribution method. Of course. And I have the right to reject that and find someone else who offers what I want at a better price.
For all your noise about publishers not being able to "rub two brain cells together to form a business model that's compatible" with your rights, you came up with an incredibly damaged buisness model yourself. Actually, I didn't come up with it... it's been in use for thousands of years, in thousands of industries. For as long as there has been money or goods to barter, people have been paying each other to do things. I'm just making the common-sense observation that writing software is a thing you can pay someone to do.
As for whether this age-old business model is "incredibly damaged"... well, open your eyes. I don't see any shortage of businesses using the payment-for-service model, do you?
what you are talking about is called a donation. Which generally does not work for a business. Not quite.
It's true that political campaigns are funded by donations, yes. But the reason they're called donations is that you're not guaranteed anything in return. You don't know whether the candidate will spend your money on radio ads, fliers, etc., or even whether it'll be spent at all, and you certainly have no recourse if it gets spent on something you don't like.
If you do offer guarantees, however, then it's not a donation: it's payment for a service, which of course works quite well for businesses. You have a reasonably good idea of what you're getting in exchange for your money, and if the result doesn't measure up to what you were promised, you can demand your money back.
It might seem like that poses a problem for creative endeavors like designing a game, where the outcome isn't specified to pixel-perfect detail. But in fact, paying for creative services is nothing new, and any criticisms you could imagine have probably already been dealt with for services like photography and architecture.
Why are sports stars/actors paid millions? It just isn't fair. Boo hoo! Sorry you feel that way. Sports stars demand an amount of money in exchange for the service they're going to perform, and they either find someone who's willing to pay it or they revise their asking price. Nothing wrong with that.
If you're trying to draw an analogy between sports stars and programmers, try this one: imagine a sports star who decides he doesn't want to get paid for playing the game, but instead he wants to collect $10 from everyone who watches him play - whether they're watching at the stadium, on TV, or years later on DVD. And then he convinces Congress to make it illegal to look at a picture or video clip of him playing unless you've mailed him a check.
Some games cost over a million to create, develop, and market (and probably a longer list of other things that cost money). Instead of charging a million per copy, the cost is made up through the number of copies sold. If you don't like this business model, don't fucking buy it. If only it were that simple. See, copyright restricts everyone's freedom. It forces everyone to participate in that business model, even the people who "don't fucking buy it".
By the way, political campaigns also cost millions of dollars to run. Do you know how they're funded? (Hint: it's not by finding one person and asking him for a hundred million dollars. Nor is it by producing an ad with borrowed money and then hoping to recoup it by charging everyone who watches the ad.)
I wish you would tell that to the FSF. They are going after gnu violators in court. The authors released it for free..why shouldn't I be able to put it in my proprietary application? Without copyright, you would be able to. Personally, I don't have a problem with that, because everyone would be free to share your proprietary application, disassemble it, and port your changes back into the open source code. RMS disagrees with me, but oh well.
You seem to be entirely ignorant of how the economic system works, and how software production really is not different whatsoever from any other manufacturing industry, other than the ease with which the product can be ripped off. Oh, and the fact that the "product" only has to be "manufactured" once in order to satisfy an infinite number of customers. Kind of a big difference, that one. In fact, it's the reason why software production is not at all like manufacturing.
Really, the only similarity between today's software industry and a manufacturing industry is that the design is done up front, and then the design costs are recouped by selling lots of copies. But that's not an inherent aspect of programming at all; it's an artifact of the attempt to force software into a manufacturing model which doesn't really apply.
Or do you really think a Ferrari costs $200k in raw materials? They can charge whatever they want for the products they distribute, but if someone else is offering an identical car at a lower price, I'd rather buy that one instead.
Just because you don't want to pay for something doesn't mean it should be free - that's just not how the system works. I agree: it shouldn't be free just because people don't want to pay for it. It should be free because people are willing to offer it for free without depriving anyone else of it.
If you don't like it feel free to campaign for change, but don't think you can just spew some crap about civil disobedience. Those who really know what that means know that civil disobedience involves getting caught and taking the punishment to publicize a wrong The astute reader will note that the phrase "civil disobedience" didn't appear even once in my comment. You can harp on it all you want, but it's beside the point: you're the only one "spewing" anything about civil disobedience.
Yes, I suppose getting caught in order to drum up publicity would be a better approach if your goal is to draw attention and agitate for change, but I'm not telling anyone to do that, because that's not my goal. For one thing, change isn't likely to occur no matter how many people demand it, because Big Content's money speaks louder than anyone.
But the other thing is change isn't really all that necessary, at least right now. In practice, it's creators and distributors who are most limited by copyright, not consumers. Copyright holders snipe at each other with restrictions on which works are derivative of which others, which TV series can be released on DVD with the original soundtracks, who used whose idea without paying for it, etc. while consumers end up getting whatever they want anyway, because copyright is basically unenforceable at the person-to-person level.
Can you even imagine the reams of specs you'd have to go through to know exactly what sort of product you are signing up to fund? You could make the same complaint about any service. Do you demand "reams of specs" from your barber, setting forth the desired placement of every single hair on your head? Do you expect your family photographer to tell you exactly how your heads will be placed within the frame to +/- 1 mm, which F-stop and film speeds he'll use, and so on?
Of course not. You come up with a reasonable description of the service you want done, and you let him figure out the details. If he won't make a commitment to the level of detail you want, you can move on and hire someone else. Or if you do hire him, and when it's done, he says he did what you asked and you say he didn't, then you take him to court and a judge decides whether the service performed meets the original promise.
None of this is new.
What you described sounds like some sort of venture capitalism No, it's just performing a service in exchange for money, the kind of thing millions (if not billions) of people do every day.
I suggest you try it. In the world we live in, people are trying to avoid paying for software/games that already exist - let alone ones that don't exist yet. If no one is willing to pay for it, that means there isn't enough demand for that labor to make it worthwhile. Compare that to the situation where a bunch of people spend a year writing a game that never sells enough copies to recoup the cost of development: if they'd known ahead of time that their work wouldn't turn a profit, they could've spent that time on something else.
But the pirate illegally pocketed the money instead of paying the laborers. That's theft. No matter how you twist it, that's theft. Nope, those laborers chose not to be paid for their labor when they left the "writing software" business and entered the "distributing copies" business.
Which is why I said, we need laws to prevent copy-restrictions from doing that [restricting rights]. But then it's not copyright anymore. The whole point of copyright is that by restricting the rights of anyone who would be willing to share certain information with you, I can force you to buy it from me instead (or not receive it at all). Without restricting rights, copyright can't exist.
Copy protection should not restrict competition. Again, the whole point of copy protection is to restrict competition, forcing anyone who wants the product to buy it from a single official source. Competition would mean I can buy a song for 10 cents from AllOfMP3 instead of for $1 from iTunes, and competitive pressure would eventually push the price down to just above zero (since that's the marginal cost of a copy).
No, it doesn't. As you said, the original owner now no longer has a copy of the game. But the publisher doesn't want the disappointed tears of gamers who no longer have a copy of their favorite games; he wants money. He ends up with exactly the same amount of money whether I buy a used copy or download a free one. Whether or not the person who sold that used copy misses out on all the fun is irrelevant to the publisher.
At the risk of turning this into a flamewar, I suggest that you have a misplaced sense of entitlement. You feel the whole business world should bend over backwards to provide everything to you for free, unless they can find some way of providing you an add-on service that you absolutely can't circumvent. This is utterly irrational on your part. Once again, you're 180 degrees off. I'm not the one trying to impose anything on anyone else. I'm not asking anyone to "bend over backwards" to provide me with anything, especially for free.
On the contrary, they are imposing terms on me. They want to tell me what I can or can't send over my internet connection and phone line, what I can or can't do with my computer and my DVD burner, what I can or can't host on my web site or tracker. They want me to bend over and give up my freedom for their benefit.
All I'm asking is for them to mind their own damn business.
If they want to write a game, that's great. If they want to get paid for developing it, that's entirely fair, and I'll happily pay for some of that labor if it's something that interests me. Hell, if they want to charge for the copies that they distribute, that's OK too - I'm not asking them to lift a finger for free. But if they can't rub two brain cells together to form a business model that's compatible with my rights, that's their problem, not mine.
Businesses are about getting money up front to fund production of a product, then selling it at the market bearable price to recoup your costs. Customers don't like gambling away their product purchasing dollars. Exactly, which is why unlike a political campaign, you'd need to offer your customers some guarantees. Give them a clear description of what they're paying for, give them a time frame in which it's going to be completed, and if the product isn't finished by then or is substantially different from what was promised, give them a full or partial refund. You could come up with several different ways to do it, using escrow, third-party arbitration, customer voting, or whatever, but those are implementation details.
I mentioned the fact that campaign contributions don't come with any guarantees to illustrate that people are willing to spend money even on a gamble, and thus they should be even more willing to spend money when they know what it is they're getting. That probably could've been clearer, though; sorry.
How do you suggest they charge for "the labor of game design"? "Hi, we're designing a game. Here's a description of what we have in mind. We need $100,000 to finish the first part. If this sounds cool and you'd like it to see the light of day, please give us some money." Repeat until you've collected a total of $100,000; then write the game and release it to the public.
Which is completely fair. They made a runaway hit. Oh, is it? If you buy a suit to wear to an interview, and you end up landing a job that pays $250,000 a year, does that mean the suit maker is entitled to a cut of your salary?
"find someone else who'll provide it for less" -- interesting choice of words. If somebody steals a $20,000 car and 'provides' it to me for $2,000 do you suggest I buy it? Depends - did he "steal" a copy of that car with depriving anyone of the original? Because that is what we're talking about here, and it's an important distinction.
If so, then yes, I do suggest you buy it.
Recognize your 'provider' for what he is -- a theif. Of someone else's labor. Bullshit! He can't reach into the past and make anyone do a lick of extra work, which is what stealing labor would mean. The amount of labor that went into the game is exactly the same no matter how many people end up getting a copy or how many of them paid for it.
His risk (and effort) is non-existant, but his reward is sky-high. Yet you seem eager to punish the publisher for wanting to make a buck. Only because his plan for making a buck involves restricting my rights: my right to exchange information about my experiences and my property with other people, my freedom to use my own property as I see fit, and so on.
If he wants to make a buck by offering me a quality product at a competitive price -- rather than by restricting competition so that his price is the only price -- then I'll have no objection.
A used-game store is a perfectly legal option for many reaons -- without going into them here, its pretty naive of you to club them in with the pirates thinking it gives your argument any weight - it doesn't. But it represents the same loss of revenue, doesn't it? If I buy a used game for $20 instead of a brand new copy for $50, the game publisher gets $0 - same as if I'd downloaded it for free.
The only difference is that now there can be two people playing that game instead of just one, but that certainly doesn't deprive anyone of anything; it makes the world a better place, not a worse one.
The laws I mentioned/suggested aren't supposed to enforce the business model. They're supposed to enforce our rights. I think you've got it backwards. Copyright does enforce a business model -- the model of doing the work first for free, and selling copies later -- and it does that by restricting our rights.
Then how do the developers get paid? [...] NO ONE will pay the $10 million to develop the game; the hope is that there are at least 1 million people willing to pony up at least $10 each to own a copy of the game... Those people could just as easily spend their $10 before the game is released, to fund its development. Or two million people could spend $5 each, or some combination of people could spend a range of amounts, as long as it all ended up to enough money in the end to fund the game.
For an example of how this works, look at political campaign web sites. Millions of people make small contributions that add up to millions of dollars, and they're not even guaranteed anything in return! Setting up a similar system for the development of software, music, etc. would be straightforward - the only hard part would be getting people used to the system. But it's already being tried to an extent: see sellaband.com for something similar (but not quite the same) for music.
It doesn't matter that it takes 1 cent to press a disk. How much did it cost to make the software, and how many disks did you sell? Turn it around: why are you selling discs in the first place, when anyone with a CD burner can make their own? You can give them the data for approximately zero cents, and they can spend their own 10 cents on a CD-R.
Making copies isn't the hard part; designing the game in the first place is. But they'd rather charge for copies than for the labor of game design... probably because they want to "strike it rich" if the game becomes a runaway hit. Instead of being paid for the amount of work they put in, like everyone else, they want to be paid based on the number of people who end up enjoying the game.
If only the rest of us got that luxury! Maybe barbers would like to be paid based on the number of people who compliment you on your haircut. Maybe auto manufacturers would like to be paid based on the number of trips you take in your car, or the number of passengers you carry, instead of a fixed amount up front. But would it really be worth passing a bunch of laws enforcing those business models?
It doesn't matter that it's an infinite good either, and that at $10 per copy, every sale after 10 million is profits. They are still entitled to think that they are providing you with a product/service that is worth at least $10 and that is what they ask you to pay them for it. And we are still entitled to think that what they're providing isn't worth $10, and find someone else who'll provide it for less - whether that's a used game store or a torrent.
if a customer isn't willing to pay that price, they shouldn't buy the game. I'd say if a publisher isn't willing to have their work copied, they shouldn't release it. Pouting because people copied the information you made available to them is like pouting because you built an igloo in the summer and it melted. Information is copyable, and water is a liquid above 32 F: these are facts of life.
3. Unless all of the other mobile industry players spontaneously decide to line up behind Apple, Java is not going to lose ground to C# anytime soon as the language of choice for game developers. Maybe you meant Objective-C? C# is Microsoft, not Apple.
Ahh, because you can't see it, it doesn't happen. I see. It happens less than it would if it were legal. I can't believe you're claiming otherwise.
I thought you wouldn't commit murder for money though? Oh, I see, you're a special case, and the rest of the unwashed masses surely would. "The rest"? No. But it only takes one person - one person who wouldn't have acted at all if not for the offer of cash.
Just like no one would get trampled in that theater if not for the false alarm. Would you trample someone if you were trying to escape from a burning theater? I hope not, but there's still a good chance that someone would.
You may want to look at the legal definition of conspiracy. As a hint though, conspiracy requires you to actually take actions that would lead to harm, not just talk about it. So make up your mind: is it OK in your opinion to call up a hit man and say "I'll give you $10,000 to kill this dude", or isn't it? Remember, until the money changes hands, it's just speech.
The offer still gets made, only underground. Sure - less often than if it were legal.
One trying to hire another to kill a third person doesn't want that information out, because it at least gives the third party a chance to run. Again, you're being REALLY naive. Oh, I'm being naive? I guess you've never heard of the concept of bounties. I suggest you read some history or current events - they've been commonly used in the past, and even today in the "war on terror".
Often, the benefit of having hundreds or thousands of bounty hunters on your victim's trail outweighs the fact that the victim knows he's being hunted (particularly if the victim already knew someone was after him and was already taking precautions).
Do you think no one has an unregistered gun because possing unregistered guns is illegal? What's this, the fallacy of the excluded middle? As a matter of fact, I do believe that fewer people have unregistered guns than would if it were legal. Not none, but fewer.
One third of Xbox 360 owners. You know, those "idiots" who have better things to spend $1000 on than a DRM-laden TV that makes most shows (which are still in SD) look like blurry, blocky crap.
If you don't have an HDTV, don't get the 360 version. It's letterboxed on 4:3 and the text is nearly unreadable (there's a zoom setting, but it doesn't help much).
What, this doesn't happen now? That's pretty naive. It's not legal now, and I for one can't think of the last time I saw one citizen offering a cash bounty for another citizen's head.
Prosecute both. Why is it acceptable to trample over someone when you're trying to save yourself? The person that yelled fire in your example caused an event that caused harm.. so prosecute. The person who offers a big pile of money as an incentive to commit murder is causing an event that caused harm, too, but for some reason you don't want to prosecute him.
As for hiring a hitman, that's a bit different than announcing something on TV. In the former, you HAVE located someone that will do the killing. Still, it's just speech, right? You're contradicting yourself.
So what is the point of making the speech itself illegal? To discourage people from making the offer in the first place, obviously. No offer = no incentive for others to commit the murder.
He came home and bought SIMs 2. [...] but his mother - with more religious views, said "heck no" [...] Then what does he do? He goes online to YouTube and looks around there for "funny stuff". Knowing again - YouTube is blocked at my house. Then I found out he created a facebook page on a school computer. Again.. bypassing my rules and my proxies setup at home.
So.. What is a parent to do? Simple: let him play The Sims 2, watch YouTube, and create a Facebook account. Seriously, it's not going to hurt him.
It seems like you want to keep him away from this stuff just to prove a point, to show that you can lay down the law. But clearly you can't. He's going to be exposed to this stuff one way or another, and the best solution is for you to just stop worrying and realize that it's OK. If your rules say he can't play a game a tame as The Sims, then it's your rules that ought to change, not his behavior.
Create a TRUE rating system. None of this crap T is for teen. Ummm Okay.. so my son could easily play T games when he was 9.. Spy Vs. Spy? Sure. LoTR? Sure. Make a system that is much closer to what is reality. Some of those T games are borderline M games No rating system is ever going to be "close to reality", because it's all subjective. What's the "right age" for someone to play GTA: 14, 16, 18, 21? There is no biological answer, it's just a matter of opinion.
Every child matures at a different rate, and every parent has a different idea of when various things are "appropriate". What if the game has zero violence but it has nudity? Or what if it has zero sexual content but graphic violence? Some people, like the MPAA ratings board, would give sexual content a much higher age restriction than violence. Others would do the opposite. There is no right answer, it's all subjective.
When I was a kid, there was no internet, YouTube or video games you had to worry about (well except Leisure Suit Larry), all we had was HBO at a friends house who had full cable. We could see more on that and Cinimax late at night. That's right, you could see stuff your parents didn't want you to see, and you turned out all right, didn't you? So loosen up.
As i mentioned in an earlier post, my manager's kid had a copy of GTA 4. She didnt buy. He does chores, saves money from his birthday, whatever, either he bought the game some place where the clerk doesnt give a damn who they sell to (the kid is 14) or another adult bought it, but not his parents. His mother broke it and threw it away once she realized he had it. If he's old enough to scrape together the money to buy it, get himself to the store, and buy his own copy of the game, then he's old enough to play it. (In a just world, his mother would be found guilty of vandalism, and she'd have to pay restitution and do community service for destroying another person's property.)
Really, I don't know why people think this stuff is so dangerous. You know what's going to happen to this kid if he plays GTA a few years before his parents think he's "ready" for it? Nothing. He's going to grow up to be a well-adjusted individual, most likely, just like everyone else. To think otherwise is to buy into Jack Thompson's bullshit ideas about games turning kids into murderous zombies.
But at the end of the day though, YOU are responsible for not harming someone else. I have to ask; if you saw an ad on TV that offered $10,000 for my head, would you go after it? Me, personally? No. But I'm sure some people would. By saying it's all right to offer large cash rewards for murder, you're making it legal for wealthy people to have their enemies killed, because there will always be someone who's willing to take up the offer if the price is right.
I don't know why you think I've accepted your beliefs, because I thought I made it pretty clear that I don't. If someone DID cause harm from yelling something, then it was never the person's right to yell. If no harm was done, then the person did have a right to say whatever they said. I got the impression that you agreed with me when you said you agreed with my examples where the harm is indirect.
Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater doesn't harm anyone in itself: the harm comes later, when the panicked patrons trample each other as they try to escape from the phony fire. By your logic, shouldn't you prosecute the tramplers, not the guy who set off the panic in the first place? How can you be opposed to that indirect harm -- which may not have even been the yeller's intent -- while giving a free pass to the guy who hires a hit man?
Yeah, everyone can afford multiple gaming computers, A pre-teen doesn't need water cooling or SLI. You can get a brand new desktop PC for $300 or so, or get a used one at a pawn shop for $100, or hand down your old one when you upgrade.
and kids never sneak around and use stuff they're not supposed to when you're not around, Perhaps you could employ the high-tech security device known as a "password". If your kids can get past that, they can get past NTFS security too.
and of course you should just trust your kid's judgement as to what games are appropriate for him. You should use your own judgment, but that means thinking rationally instead of living in fear that your children will somehow be ruined if you don't control everything they see and hear. Like I said, no one ever died from playing a game that wasn't "appropriate".
For the most part it's a moot point, as kids are more interested in console games, so you can just lock up your games and force him to play at his friends house instead. ...where you'll have absolutely no control over what he watches and plays? Seems like that defeats the purpose.
I know this is a really weird thought, but bear with me. Maybe, just maybe, a parent might want to play a video game with mature content. Fascinating idea! Perhaps this hypothetical parent could consider one of these options:
Don't let your kids use the computer that has this game installed on it.
or
Keep an eye on your kids while they're using your computer. This way you can prevent them from accessing all sorts of "mature content", not just the stuff that's stored on your hard drive.
or
Let your kids play the damn game if they want to. No one ever died from being exposed to "mature content".
The only reason XP is pretty good by MS standards is because Vista was delayed so often. When XP first came out, the only good thing about it was that it wasn't ME; it was uber slow, crashed apps constantly and tons of HW and SW just wouldn't run on it. Funny, I remember XP being more stable than Win9x and compatible with more software than Win2k. If you were running Windows 98 or ME, XP was a big step up. If you were running Windows 2000, you might've only noticed the eye candy, but then you weren't a typical home user anyway.
Hmm. That's interesting, because I've read that computer monitors (CRT as well as flat panel) give off electromagnetic radiation, and this radiation is correlated to the type of software that's running on the computer. Televisions also give off the same radiation, correlated to the signal they're tuned into. There's even some evidence that non-electronic objects such as books and people can passively reflect this radiation, selectively absorbing parts of it and causing a characteristic disturbance.
Many species are able to detect this type of radiation -- and this might seem far-fetched, but I have a hunch that humans might be able to do it too, at least with the proper training. If a parent could learn to distinguish between different games, movies, etc. by detecting patterns in the electromagnetic radiation they emit, they might be able to figure out what their kids are up to.
Clearly, this needs to be studied more before we can draw any conclusions, but I'm willing to do the research if someone wants to fund it.
With XP Home, you've got to find a way to install the game "for this user only" AFAIK that only affects where the Start Menu shortcuts are created, not the file system permissions.
Also, if the kid has access to the computer, he's likely to have access to the installation media too, so he can just reinstall. I guess you could put the disc in a safe... or, like I said, don't buy it in the first place if you don't want your kids to play it.
In particular, what if games came with an age group flag when they were installed, and operating system users could also have an age limit specified, so that applications with a "18+" flag would not launch of a user configured as "13." Even better, what if this "18+" flag could somehow appear on the outside of the game box? That way, parents could avoid buying the game in the first place, instead of waiting until they get home to discover that their kids are below its target age range.
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When you pay for a service, you're "seeing a proposal, assuming all will work as claimed, and putting money down for it". That's how services typically work: the service doesn't get performed until after you've agreed to pay for it.
You can't take your car to a mechanic for repairs, then after it's done, say "hmm, you know, I found a better deal somewhere else" and drive off without paying for your repaired car. By having him perform the service, you're agreeing to pay. Whether you physically exchange the money before or after he fixes your car is irrelevant.
Of course, if he fails to fix your car, you can demand your money back. That wouldn't change just because we replace "fix your car" with "write your program". Come to think of it, anytime people crave something different they'd have to go through reams of proposals instead of browsing through existing product -- because existing product can only be sold (given?) to people who funed the labor in your model! I'm not sure where you're getting that. Under the model I've proposed, if you hire me to write a program, I'll give it to you and then wash my hands of it. You can then give it to whoever you want, under whatever terms you want. It's none of my concern what you do with that program once it leaves my hands; I may have written it, but nobody owns it. Define reasonable. Define it for a operating system, a game, a song and a movie. Will you describe the movie you want made (thereby ruining the suspense among other things) and then fund it? Or browse a description of movies you want made and then fund them? I'll let the market work that out. The only requirement is that the person putting down the money feels he knows enough about what the final result will be that he'll be able to determine whether it lived up to the description. If you think the seller is being too vague, then don't give him your money. Or selling a product in exchange for money. The kind of thing millions (if not billions) of people do every day. The rest of them manage to do that without a monopoly, though. If you want to burn a file to a CD and sell it as a product without demanding to be the only person who's allowed to sell that file, then go right ahead.
If they were taking credit for someone else's work, then believe me, I'd be denouncing those bastards right alongside you. Taking credit would be fraud, not copyright infringement. Now consider copy protection in something like Adobe Photoshop (or any appliction or game). This can only make the bar for pirates higher. It cannot restrict competition because it has absolutely no effect on competing products. But it does restrict competition, because it means only Adobe is allowed to provide that sequence of bits. A competitive market would allow everyone to provide that sequence of bits. You're doing much worse than that. You're suggesting nobody has a right to get paid for a product -- they can only ask to be paid for a service. Not at all! I have no problem with people selling products. If Adobe wants to sell a box containing a disc with a certain sequence of bits burned onto it, they can do that, and they can charge whatever price they want. I won't object at all.
I will object, however, when they want to stop everyone else from selling a different box containing a different disc with the same sequence of bits on it. Or from distributing those bits over the internet. Or from distributing a different sequence of bits that's derived from the first one. You're exhibiting the most extreme cheapness and self-righteousness I've seen in a really long time. I'm sorry you've been misinterpreting my posts in a way that gives you that impression. Perhaps you'll learn to stop doing that, and to focus on my arguments instead of attacking me as a person ("cheapos like you"). Again, you don't have this god-given right to choose what you should pay (i.e. labor and distribution only). They have every right to make a profit, to chose their price point, business model, distribution method. Of course. And I have the right to reject that and find someone else who offers what I want at a better price. For all your noise about publishers not being able to "rub two brain cells together to form a business model that's compatible" with your rights, you came up with an incredibly damaged buisness model yourself. Actually, I didn't come up with it... it's been in use for thousands of years, in thousands of industries. For as long as there has been money or goods to barter, people have been paying each other to do things. I'm just making the common-sense observation that writing software is a thing you can pay someone to do.
As for whether this age-old business model is "incredibly damaged"... well, open your eyes. I don't see any shortage of businesses using the payment-for-service model, do you?
It's true that political campaigns are funded by donations, yes. But the reason they're called donations is that you're not guaranteed anything in return. You don't know whether the candidate will spend your money on radio ads, fliers, etc., or even whether it'll be spent at all, and you certainly have no recourse if it gets spent on something you don't like.
If you do offer guarantees, however, then it's not a donation: it's payment for a service, which of course works quite well for businesses. You have a reasonably good idea of what you're getting in exchange for your money, and if the result doesn't measure up to what you were promised, you can demand your money back.
It might seem like that poses a problem for creative endeavors like designing a game, where the outcome isn't specified to pixel-perfect detail. But in fact, paying for creative services is nothing new, and any criticisms you could imagine have probably already been dealt with for services like photography and architecture.
If you're trying to draw an analogy between sports stars and programmers, try this one: imagine a sports star who decides he doesn't want to get paid for playing the game, but instead he wants to collect $10 from everyone who watches him play - whether they're watching at the stadium, on TV, or years later on DVD. And then he convinces Congress to make it illegal to look at a picture or video clip of him playing unless you've mailed him a check. Some games cost over a million to create, develop, and market (and probably a longer list of other things that cost money). Instead of charging a million per copy, the cost is made up through the number of copies sold. If you don't like this business model, don't fucking buy it. If only it were that simple. See, copyright restricts everyone's freedom. It forces everyone to participate in that business model, even the people who "don't fucking buy it".
By the way, political campaigns also cost millions of dollars to run. Do you know how they're funded? (Hint: it's not by finding one person and asking him for a hundred million dollars. Nor is it by producing an ad with borrowed money and then hoping to recoup it by charging everyone who watches the ad.) I wish you would tell that to the FSF. They are going after gnu violators in court. The authors released it for free..why shouldn't I be able to put it in my proprietary application? Without copyright, you would be able to. Personally, I don't have a problem with that, because everyone would be free to share your proprietary application, disassemble it, and port your changes back into the open source code. RMS disagrees with me, but oh well.
Really, the only similarity between today's software industry and a manufacturing industry is that the design is done up front, and then the design costs are recouped by selling lots of copies. But that's not an inherent aspect of programming at all; it's an artifact of the attempt to force software into a manufacturing model which doesn't really apply. Or do you really think a Ferrari costs $200k in raw materials? They can charge whatever they want for the products they distribute, but if someone else is offering an identical car at a lower price, I'd rather buy that one instead. Just because you don't want to pay for something doesn't mean it should be free - that's just not how the system works. I agree: it shouldn't be free just because people don't want to pay for it. It should be free because people are willing to offer it for free without depriving anyone else of it. If you don't like it feel free to campaign for change, but don't think you can just spew some crap about civil disobedience. Those who really know what that means know that civil disobedience involves getting caught and taking the punishment to publicize a wrong The astute reader will note that the phrase "civil disobedience" didn't appear even once in my comment. You can harp on it all you want, but it's beside the point: you're the only one "spewing" anything about civil disobedience.
Yes, I suppose getting caught in order to drum up publicity would be a better approach if your goal is to draw attention and agitate for change, but I'm not telling anyone to do that, because that's not my goal. For one thing, change isn't likely to occur no matter how many people demand it, because Big Content's money speaks louder than anyone.
But the other thing is change isn't really all that necessary, at least right now. In practice, it's creators and distributors who are most limited by copyright, not consumers. Copyright holders snipe at each other with restrictions on which works are derivative of which others, which TV series can be released on DVD with the original soundtracks, who used whose idea without paying for it, etc. while consumers end up getting whatever they want anyway, because copyright is basically unenforceable at the person-to-person level.
Of course not. You come up with a reasonable description of the service you want done, and you let him figure out the details. If he won't make a commitment to the level of detail you want, you can move on and hire someone else. Or if you do hire him, and when it's done, he says he did what you asked and you say he didn't, then you take him to court and a judge decides whether the service performed meets the original promise.
None of this is new. What you described sounds like some sort of venture capitalism No, it's just performing a service in exchange for money, the kind of thing millions (if not billions) of people do every day.
On the contrary, they are imposing terms on me. They want to tell me what I can or can't send over my internet connection and phone line, what I can or can't do with my computer and my DVD burner, what I can or can't host on my web site or tracker. They want me to bend over and give up my freedom for their benefit.
All I'm asking is for them to mind their own damn business.
If they want to write a game, that's great. If they want to get paid for developing it, that's entirely fair, and I'll happily pay for some of that labor if it's something that interests me. Hell, if they want to charge for the copies that they distribute, that's OK too - I'm not asking them to lift a finger for free. But if they can't rub two brain cells together to form a business model that's compatible with my rights, that's their problem, not mine.
I mentioned the fact that campaign contributions don't come with any guarantees to illustrate that people are willing to spend money even on a gamble, and thus they should be even more willing to spend money when they know what it is they're getting. That probably could've been clearer, though; sorry.
If so, then yes, I do suggest you buy it. Recognize your 'provider' for what he is -- a theif. Of someone else's labor. Bullshit! He can't reach into the past and make anyone do a lick of extra work, which is what stealing labor would mean. The amount of labor that went into the game is exactly the same no matter how many people end up getting a copy or how many of them paid for it. His risk (and effort) is non-existant, but his reward is sky-high. Yet you seem eager to punish the publisher for wanting to make a buck. Only because his plan for making a buck involves restricting my rights: my right to exchange information about my experiences and my property with other people, my freedom to use my own property as I see fit, and so on.
If he wants to make a buck by offering me a quality product at a competitive price -- rather than by restricting competition so that his price is the only price -- then I'll have no objection. A used-game store is a perfectly legal option for many reaons -- without going into them here, its pretty naive of you to club them in with the pirates thinking it gives your argument any weight - it doesn't. But it represents the same loss of revenue, doesn't it? If I buy a used game for $20 instead of a brand new copy for $50, the game publisher gets $0 - same as if I'd downloaded it for free.
The only difference is that now there can be two people playing that game instead of just one, but that certainly doesn't deprive anyone of anything; it makes the world a better place, not a worse one. The laws I mentioned/suggested aren't supposed to enforce the business model. They're supposed to enforce our rights. I think you've got it backwards. Copyright does enforce a business model -- the model of doing the work first for free, and selling copies later -- and it does that by restricting our rights.
For an example of how this works, look at political campaign web sites. Millions of people make small contributions that add up to millions of dollars, and they're not even guaranteed anything in return! Setting up a similar system for the development of software, music, etc. would be straightforward - the only hard part would be getting people used to the system. But it's already being tried to an extent: see sellaband.com for something similar (but not quite the same) for music.
Making copies isn't the hard part; designing the game in the first place is. But they'd rather charge for copies than for the labor of game design... probably because they want to "strike it rich" if the game becomes a runaway hit. Instead of being paid for the amount of work they put in, like everyone else, they want to be paid based on the number of people who end up enjoying the game.
If only the rest of us got that luxury! Maybe barbers would like to be paid based on the number of people who compliment you on your haircut. Maybe auto manufacturers would like to be paid based on the number of trips you take in your car, or the number of passengers you carry, instead of a fixed amount up front. But would it really be worth passing a bunch of laws enforcing those business models? It doesn't matter that it's an infinite good either, and that at $10 per copy, every sale after 10 million is profits. They are still entitled to think that they are providing you with a product/service that is worth at least $10 and that is what they ask you to pay them for it. And we are still entitled to think that what they're providing isn't worth $10, and find someone else who'll provide it for less - whether that's a used game store or a torrent. if a customer isn't willing to pay that price, they shouldn't buy the game. I'd say if a publisher isn't willing to have their work copied, they shouldn't release it. Pouting because people copied the information you made available to them is like pouting because you built an igloo in the summer and it melted. Information is copyable, and water is a liquid above 32 F: these are facts of life.
Just like no one would get trampled in that theater if not for the false alarm. Would you trample someone if you were trying to escape from a burning theater? I hope not, but there's still a good chance that someone would. You may want to look at the legal definition of conspiracy. As a hint though, conspiracy requires you to actually take actions that would lead to harm, not just talk about it. So make up your mind: is it OK in your opinion to call up a hit man and say "I'll give you $10,000 to kill this dude", or isn't it? Remember, until the money changes hands, it's just speech. The offer still gets made, only underground. Sure - less often than if it were legal. One trying to hire another to kill a third person doesn't want that information out, because it at least gives the third party a chance to run. Again, you're being REALLY naive. Oh, I'm being naive? I guess you've never heard of the concept of bounties. I suggest you read some history or current events - they've been commonly used in the past, and even today in the "war on terror".
Often, the benefit of having hundreds or thousands of bounty hunters on your victim's trail outweighs the fact that the victim knows he's being hunted (particularly if the victim already knew someone was after him and was already taking precautions). Do you think no one has an unregistered gun because possing unregistered guns is illegal? What's this, the fallacy of the excluded middle? As a matter of fact, I do believe that fewer people have unregistered guns than would if it were legal. Not none, but fewer.
One third of Xbox 360 owners. You know, those "idiots" who have better things to spend $1000 on than a DRM-laden TV that makes most shows (which are still in SD) look like blurry, blocky crap.
If you don't have an HDTV, don't get the 360 version. It's letterboxed on 4:3 and the text is nearly unreadable (there's a zoom setting, but it doesn't help much).
Then what does he do? He goes online to YouTube and looks around there for "funny stuff". Knowing again - YouTube is blocked at my house. Then I found out he created a facebook page on a school computer. Again
So
It seems like you want to keep him away from this stuff just to prove a point, to show that you can lay down the law. But clearly you can't. He's going to be exposed to this stuff one way or another, and the best solution is for you to just stop worrying and realize that it's OK. If your rules say he can't play a game a tame as The Sims, then it's your rules that ought to change, not his behavior. Create a TRUE rating system. None of this crap T is for teen. Ummm Okay
Every child matures at a different rate, and every parent has a different idea of when various things are "appropriate". What if the game has zero violence but it has nudity? Or what if it has zero sexual content but graphic violence? Some people, like the MPAA ratings board, would give sexual content a much higher age restriction than violence. Others would do the opposite. There is no right answer, it's all subjective. When I was a kid, there was no internet, YouTube or video games you had to worry about (well except Leisure Suit Larry), all we had was HBO at a friends house who had full cable. We could see more on that and Cinimax late at night. That's right, you could see stuff your parents didn't want you to see, and you turned out all right, didn't you? So loosen up.
Really, I don't know why people think this stuff is so dangerous. You know what's going to happen to this kid if he plays GTA a few years before his parents think he's "ready" for it? Nothing. He's going to grow up to be a well-adjusted individual, most likely, just like everyone else. To think otherwise is to buy into Jack Thompson's bullshit ideas about games turning kids into murderous zombies.
Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater doesn't harm anyone in itself: the harm comes later, when the panicked patrons trample each other as they try to escape from the phony fire. By your logic, shouldn't you prosecute the tramplers, not the guy who set off the panic in the first place? How can you be opposed to that indirect harm -- which may not have even been the yeller's intent -- while giving a free pass to the guy who hires a hit man?
Don't let your kids use the computer that has this game installed on it.
or
Keep an eye on your kids while they're using your computer. This way you can prevent them from accessing all sorts of "mature content", not just the stuff that's stored on your hard drive.
or
Let your kids play the damn game if they want to. No one ever died from being exposed to "mature content".
Hmm. That's interesting, because I've read that computer monitors (CRT as well as flat panel) give off electromagnetic radiation, and this radiation is correlated to the type of software that's running on the computer. Televisions also give off the same radiation, correlated to the signal they're tuned into. There's even some evidence that non-electronic objects such as books and people can passively reflect this radiation, selectively absorbing parts of it and causing a characteristic disturbance.
Many species are able to detect this type of radiation -- and this might seem far-fetched, but I have a hunch that humans might be able to do it too, at least with the proper training. If a parent could learn to distinguish between different games, movies, etc. by detecting patterns in the electromagnetic radiation they emit, they might be able to figure out what their kids are up to.
Clearly, this needs to be studied more before we can draw any conclusions, but I'm willing to do the research if someone wants to fund it.
Also, if the kid has access to the computer, he's likely to have access to the installation media too, so he can just reinstall. I guess you could put the disc in a safe... or, like I said, don't buy it in the first place if you don't want your kids to play it.