I am upset about being lied to. Plain and simple. This whole Bill of Gamer's Rights and no-DRM scheme they keep advertising sounds to me like blatant false advertising, deception or fraud. They are using this stance as a platform to sell more games and people are buying into it.
I'd be 6000 times happier if they fessed up and actually stated that they use a very lenient or lax DRM instead of boldly saying they have none.
It is DRM because it restricts me from running the application until I either re-install it or activate it. DRM by definition is Digital Copy protection. Google it if you don't trust me: DRM
DRM is tying the software to a hardware signature, as the sig.bin file does. It is generated off several key points of your system and if any of those change, it asks to re-validate. This is the same as the Windows Update DRM that prevents you from replacing every piece of hardware in your machine without having to re-validate your copy.
It bothers me because they lie about not having DRM when it's pretty clear that they do. I cannot take my game files and copy them to my laptop for instance without having to activate it to run again. I also cannot re-install windows over top of my old installations without re-activating it.
As a lingering Metallica fan who enjoyed some of the music post black album, their new songs are like A.D.D. Rock. They don't flow right often switching beat mid song, they are mixed all wrong (drums too loud, vocals as well)... I can't stand to listen to it anymore. I've ventured into Progressive Metal|Rock in order to get my fix of heavy rifts, deep vocals and sound.
I'm only be rated as off topic because this board is filled with Linux zealots... you know, a bunch of free speech types that just want to censor everything that they disagree with.
Keep that attitude and you'll be labeled as a Troll too. Now get off my bridge.;)
When I used Windows though, Outlook Express was my favored email client until I found Thunderbird. As a "Linux Zealot" I will assure you that I don't dislike the supporters of closed software, just anyone spreading fud about it or its supporters.
Don't go crying all over the web because you don't have the proper hardware to run the super-collider. Have you tried turning off the safety measures to speed it up any?
Welcome to unionized America. The more and more we unionize, the more we feel entitled to something (jobs and work.) Now, you take that border issue and the influx of people looking for jobs and work and you have yourself a competitive workplace and angry workers who will have to lower their standard of living to compete. Self entitlement, as stated in an earlier post by someone, is a major factor in that fence.
You forgot the car analogy. Just because I can't fix them, doesn't mean I don't enjoy driving them and am willing to buy another.
But honestly, I agree. Nobody should be categorized as greedy because they don't contribute code. They may just lack the knowledge to do so without kludging up the whole thing with bad code. And that's a good thing! You can enjoy FOSS software or it's efficiency and feature set without knowing how it works.
I'd go out on a limb and say that that mentality is a byproduct of capitalist life. Companies are successful by legally biting each others heads off and people learn by example.
I'm not knocking capitalism, but I think it has been unchecked for far too long.
On the other hand, people *have* simulated rings. (Including myself, I might add.) You find that gravitational encounters between particles in the rings actually pump *up* the ring thickness. It's only with dissipative collisions that you get the ring to collapse down.
I can understand how you say that gravity would increase the thickness (as objects orbiting each other within the belt would naturally interact and deflect) and I understand how collision would damper this. I'm not really disagreeing here. The only problem I have with that at a larger scale (planetary/galactic) is that the planets don't collide with each other to maintain a flat orbit. They may have collided originally, been thrown into inclination opposed to other bodies in the area (Neptune/Pluto?) but eventually, the planetary bodies nearest to them will pull them into a more synchronized orbit. I'm definitely not trying to bend anyone to agree with me completely, but I do hope it raises questions at some level instead of assuming that the "known" data is fact. If that makes sense. As I stated before, the known data in medieval times was that the world was flat. That's what they observed. It took someone thinking outside that norm to spur discovery contrary to the established belief. I'm just simply not satisfied with the current trend toward acceptance of work that seems to fit in so many situations. I'm just afraid that it may be too eagerly accepted like the idea that anything on the bottom side of the Earth would fall of or that we were the center of the universe.
I open my Galactic Civilizations 2 game folder, there is a sig.bin file and an activate.exe file. If you remove the sig.bin file the game will prompt for activation.
I don't argue that collisions didn't have their place, but I'm arguing that gravity also plays a bigger role in this. At least you didn't instantly go out and call me a "crackpot" for thinking about the whole thing and questioning instead of believing "the world was flat because that's what I was told in school."
All I'm basically saying is that the sheet of space/time analogy given is a really bad one. To me, it's kind of like the car analogies floating around here. They don't quite fit and teaching kids to think that the Earth is rolling around on some invisible surface is all wrong.
In order to explain my point a little better, I'm breaking out paint (because it's all I have right at this moment).
Take this massive object with two objects (a/b) in orbit. Let's say that object "a" is a moon and "b" is a ring of small rocks. Over time, the moon will influence all the rocks in the ring and all the ring's rocks will influence the moon. This will cause them to adjust their orbits to match. Well duh, right? All you have to do now is scale this up to the solar system. If two planets are following similar orbits, they will pull an abstract orbiting object into a similar orbit. Scale this up to galaxy proportions and so on. I'd argue that you could also say the same about the moons orbital horizons vs the planetary horizons. Eventually, with every pass of Jupiter, Saturn's rings would be slowly pulled outward and downward until they match the overall horizon of the solar system. In the model above, the two objects will likely collide due to gravity pulling them together, most likely placing spin on the moon and cementing it's place in orbit. Personally, I feel that this is how Earth's moon may have collided with us. If not through a collision orbit, but through gravity pulling it into a similar orbit and eventually into a collision. This is also why I think we have a slightly off perfect rotation which will eventually level out.
That's basically all I'm saying. Whether that is "crackpot", like the poster below thinks, or not... that's how I theorize the disc shapes we see with objects in non-colliding orbits.
I would take that further and state that I still have a problem with the "big bang" theory. Even though someone (don't remember off the top of my head) found traces of energy waves using the big horn telescope, that only explains that we may have been a part of some massive galactic collision (or near collision) in the past. It doesn't explain to me that somehow the entire universe came from a very dense massive object that just up and exploded one day. (Also, for the record, I don't believe that "God" did it either. I just don't think we have enough evidence and scope to determine that at this time.)
Personally, I feel that gravity still affects objects even at great distances leading to the eventual disc shaping that we normally see in clusters of space matter (like our solar system.) I of course, am not a professional scientist and everyone wants me to think that Einstein is right about a big invisible sheet in the sky that we all roll around on trying to reach the center and eventually breaking through as a black hole... but I disagree.
It makes sense to me through, and I'm not sure if I could explain it sell enough to get the idea through, but I'll try.
Let's say you have a cluster of matter all orbiting around this dense body. Eventually, all the matter will begin to attract each other from great distances trying to join through gravity. You will have some bodies orbiting in every direction, but eventually, each of those bodies will affect another and pull them closer and closer. Now, with regular orbit, the bodies (planets here out) will not be sucked into the other planet, but it will be influenced to move closer and follow the same "horizon of orbit" eventually averaging out to the disc shape we all know and love. It may take many millions/billions of years to adjust those planetary bodies into the disc shape, but eventually all objects in the universe will "flatten" out as they find an equilibrium of orbit.
Again, pure speculation, but it somehow makes sense to me. The reason we see this "perfect disc" in Saturn is because the gravitational pull is greater, thus speeding up the process.
Here's my question... pretend you are an investor, you see the stock value is going down. You see that they are shifting advertising routes, losing market share to competitors, losing money on XBox, Zune, whatever... What would entice you to push all your money into that company?
How is that any different than a company doing the same thing. Sure, it raises stock price/dividend over the short term, but it shows you that they don't plan on doing anything outside the flow of "normal business" which they haven't really been practicing for a long time. What makes you feel comfortable about that buy?
You don't think that draining your cash on hand and using debt to purchase will drop that AAA rating? I'm no expert, but I'd consider rating a company AAA if I knew they had money to back any moves made. If I knew they were living on debt, I'd be more cautious.
Yet another reason why guilds are the downfall of the MMO. I could go on for pages on how guilds destroy socialization, trading, zone balance, quest balance, balance in general... but I'll just take the mod point hits for saying that guilds are the unions of modern day America. A lot of people looking for a easy ride who don't understand that they are only hurting themselves and making some power hungry cock sucker even more powerful.
I don't understand your logic. Using the in game transfer system to transfer gold you bought online is cheating. However, buying a strategy guide or a subscription to a website with tons of data is perfectly alright? The data you pay for in the strategy guide or map site is all composed by someone in the real world. Gold is composed by someone in the real world. Sharing it with someone for a fee or not is the same in both situations.
I don't like gold farmers as much as the next guy (it makes it hard to get honest things on the auction houses unless you farm yourself or pay for gold since it drives prices through the roof) but the only ways I know of to get rid of them is to not have auction houses and trading -or- make the game easier so people don't feel like they need to buy money to catch up. While I personally wouldn't care about losing auctions/trading, I know a lot of people that would bitch and moan about that loss of mechanic. I preferred the old barter days of the commons tunnel in EQ personally. Auction houses are a horrible way to promote farmers since they have a one point source of trading supported by the game.
Ah, then I misread. I've actually been cool with just 5 downloads figuring it's in case you have a defective unit or something. I've purchased a few games on the PSN and shared with my brothers and parents [to try to get them excited about something other than the photo viewer;) but it's not taking.]
Well, that and there's a bit of a manufacturing cost involved in a tangible object. I don't feel bad shelling out money for an item I can touch, fell or burn if I see fit. Digital data has little cost in duplicating and maintaining in the overall scope of things. It also gets cheaper every day that goes by, so that would mean that music/movie costs should be going down as time goes on at a much steeper rate than a tangible item. (After you pay the artists, transfer costs, and the electric bill, the data should be pretty damn cheap per copy.)
That's my problem with DRM. Greed. I have no problem with it as long as it follows the model of accelerated depreciated cost.
Slashdot Mirror
Read my above post and look up the definition of DRM. DRM IS Digital Copy Protection. Period.
I am upset about being lied to. Plain and simple. This whole Bill of Gamer's Rights and no-DRM scheme they keep advertising sounds to me like blatant false advertising, deception or fraud. They are using this stance as a platform to sell more games and people are buying into it.
I'd be 6000 times happier if they fessed up and actually stated that they use a very lenient or lax DRM instead of boldly saying they have none.
It is DRM because it restricts me from running the application until I either re-install it or activate it. DRM by definition is Digital Copy protection. Google it if you don't trust me:
DRM
DRM is tying the software to a hardware signature, as the sig.bin file does. It is generated off several key points of your system and if any of those change, it asks to re-validate. This is the same as the Windows Update DRM that prevents you from replacing every piece of hardware in your machine without having to re-validate your copy.
It bothers me because they lie about not having DRM when it's pretty clear that they do. I cannot take my game files and copy them to my laptop for instance without having to activate it to run again. I also cannot re-install windows over top of my old installations without re-activating it.
It's been pointed out MANY times that Stardock games do have DRM. I point you to the sig.bin file (which causes a validation check if removed) in your install folder and this image:
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/8435/stardockactivationeo1.png
This is WAY off Topic, so just ignore me:
As a lingering Metallica fan who enjoyed some of the music post black album, their new songs are like A.D.D. Rock. They don't flow right often switching beat mid song, they are mixed all wrong (drums too loud, vocals as well) ... I can't stand to listen to it anymore. I've ventured into Progressive Metal|Rock in order to get my fix of heavy rifts, deep vocals and sound.
I'm only be rated as off topic because this board is filled with Linux zealots... you know, a bunch of free speech types that just want to censor everything that they disagree with.
Keep that attitude and you'll be labeled as a Troll too. Now get off my bridge. ;)
When I used Windows though, Outlook Express was my favored email client until I found Thunderbird. As a "Linux Zealot" I will assure you that I don't dislike the supporters of closed software, just anyone spreading fud about it or its supporters.
Pictures or it didn't happen!
Don't go crying all over the web because you don't have the proper hardware to run the super-collider. Have you tried turning off the safety measures to speed it up any?
Point taken. I guess I should be moving to Europe sometime soon. ;)
Welcome to unionized America. The more and more we unionize, the more we feel entitled to something (jobs and work.) Now, you take that border issue and the influx of people looking for jobs and work and you have yourself a competitive workplace and angry workers who will have to lower their standard of living to compete. Self entitlement, as stated in an earlier post by someone, is a major factor in that fence.
You forgot the car analogy. Just because I can't fix them, doesn't mean I don't enjoy driving them and am willing to buy another.
But honestly, I agree. Nobody should be categorized as greedy because they don't contribute code. They may just lack the knowledge to do so without kludging up the whole thing with bad code. And that's a good thing! You can enjoy FOSS software or it's efficiency and feature set without knowing how it works.
I'd go out on a limb and say that that mentality is a byproduct of capitalist life. Companies are successful by legally biting each others heads off and people learn by example.
I'm not knocking capitalism, but I think it has been unchecked for far too long.
On the other hand, people *have* simulated rings. (Including myself, I might add.) You find that gravitational encounters between particles in the rings actually pump *up* the ring thickness. It's only with dissipative collisions that you get the ring to collapse down.
I can understand how you say that gravity would increase the thickness (as objects orbiting each other within the belt would naturally interact and deflect) and I understand how collision would damper this. I'm not really disagreeing here. The only problem I have with that at a larger scale (planetary/galactic) is that the planets don't collide with each other to maintain a flat orbit. They may have collided originally, been thrown into inclination opposed to other bodies in the area (Neptune/Pluto?) but eventually, the planetary bodies nearest to them will pull them into a more synchronized orbit. I'm definitely not trying to bend anyone to agree with me completely, but I do hope it raises questions at some level instead of assuming that the "known" data is fact. If that makes sense. As I stated before, the known data in medieval times was that the world was flat. That's what they observed. It took someone thinking outside that norm to spur discovery contrary to the established belief. I'm just simply not satisfied with the current trend toward acceptance of work that seems to fit in so many situations. I'm just afraid that it may be too eagerly accepted like the idea that anything on the bottom side of the Earth would fall of or that we were the center of the universe.
I open my Galactic Civilizations 2 game folder, there is a sig.bin file and an activate.exe file. If you remove the sig.bin file the game will prompt for activation.
Also: http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/8435/stardockactivationeo1.png
I don't argue that collisions didn't have their place, but I'm arguing that gravity also plays a bigger role in this. At least you didn't instantly go out and call me a "crackpot" for thinking about the whole thing and questioning instead of believing "the world was flat because that's what I was told in school."
All I'm basically saying is that the sheet of space/time analogy given is a really bad one. To me, it's kind of like the car analogies floating around here. They don't quite fit and teaching kids to think that the Earth is rolling around on some invisible surface is all wrong.
In order to explain my point a little better, I'm breaking out paint (because it's all I have right at this moment).
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/7175/orbityb0.png
Take this massive object with two objects (a/b) in orbit. Let's say that object "a" is a moon and "b" is a ring of small rocks. Over time, the moon will influence all the rocks in the ring and all the ring's rocks will influence the moon. This will cause them to adjust their orbits to match. Well duh, right? All you have to do now is scale this up to the solar system. If two planets are following similar orbits, they will pull an abstract orbiting object into a similar orbit. Scale this up to galaxy proportions and so on. I'd argue that you could also say the same about the moons orbital horizons vs the planetary horizons. Eventually, with every pass of Jupiter, Saturn's rings would be slowly pulled outward and downward until they match the overall horizon of the solar system. In the model above, the two objects will likely collide due to gravity pulling them together, most likely placing spin on the moon and cementing it's place in orbit. Personally, I feel that this is how Earth's moon may have collided with us. If not through a collision orbit, but through gravity pulling it into a similar orbit and eventually into a collision. This is also why I think we have a slightly off perfect rotation which will eventually level out.
That's basically all I'm saying. Whether that is "crackpot", like the poster below thinks, or not... that's how I theorize the disc shapes we see with objects in non-colliding orbits.
I would take that further and state that I still have a problem with the "big bang" theory. Even though someone (don't remember off the top of my head) found traces of energy waves using the big horn telescope, that only explains that we may have been a part of some massive galactic collision (or near collision) in the past. It doesn't explain to me that somehow the entire universe came from a very dense massive object that just up and exploded one day. (Also, for the record, I don't believe that "God" did it either. I just don't think we have enough evidence and scope to determine that at this time.)
Agreed, which only re-enforces my idea below about why things migrate to disc shapes.
Personally, I feel that gravity still affects objects even at great distances leading to the eventual disc shaping that we normally see in clusters of space matter (like our solar system.) I of course, am not a professional scientist and everyone wants me to think that Einstein is right about a big invisible sheet in the sky that we all roll around on trying to reach the center and eventually breaking through as a black hole... but I disagree.
It makes sense to me through, and I'm not sure if I could explain it sell enough to get the idea through, but I'll try.
Let's say you have a cluster of matter all orbiting around this dense body. Eventually, all the matter will begin to attract each other from great distances trying to join through gravity. You will have some bodies orbiting in every direction, but eventually, each of those bodies will affect another and pull them closer and closer. Now, with regular orbit, the bodies (planets here out) will not be sucked into the other planet, but it will be influenced to move closer and follow the same "horizon of orbit" eventually averaging out to the disc shape we all know and love. It may take many millions/billions of years to adjust those planetary bodies into the disc shape, but eventually all objects in the universe will "flatten" out as they find an equilibrium of orbit.
Again, pure speculation, but it somehow makes sense to me. The reason we see this "perfect disc" in Saturn is because the gravitational pull is greater, thus speeding up the process.
Here's my question... pretend you are an investor, you see the stock value is going down. You see that they are shifting advertising routes, losing market share to competitors, losing money on XBox, Zune, whatever... What would entice you to push all your money into that company?
How is that any different than a company doing the same thing. Sure, it raises stock price/dividend over the short term, but it shows you that they don't plan on doing anything outside the flow of "normal business" which they haven't really been practicing for a long time. What makes you feel comfortable about that buy?
You don't think that draining your cash on hand and using debt to purchase will drop that AAA rating? I'm no expert, but I'd consider rating a company AAA if I knew they had money to back any moves made. If I knew they were living on debt, I'd be more cautious.
1929
Yet another reason why guilds are the downfall of the MMO. I could go on for pages on how guilds destroy socialization, trading, zone balance, quest balance, balance in general... but I'll just take the mod point hits for saying that guilds are the unions of modern day America. A lot of people looking for a easy ride who don't understand that they are only hurting themselves and making some power hungry cock sucker even more powerful.
I don't understand your logic. Using the in game transfer system to transfer gold you bought online is cheating. However, buying a strategy guide or a subscription to a website with tons of data is perfectly alright? The data you pay for in the strategy guide or map site is all composed by someone in the real world. Gold is composed by someone in the real world. Sharing it with someone for a fee or not is the same in both situations.
I don't like gold farmers as much as the next guy (it makes it hard to get honest things on the auction houses unless you farm yourself or pay for gold since it drives prices through the roof) but the only ways I know of to get rid of them is to not have auction houses and trading -or- make the game easier so people don't feel like they need to buy money to catch up. While I personally wouldn't care about losing auctions/trading, I know a lot of people that would bitch and moan about that loss of mechanic. I preferred the old barter days of the commons tunnel in EQ personally. Auction houses are a horrible way to promote farmers since they have a one point source of trading supported by the game.
Ah, then I misread. I've actually been cool with just 5 downloads figuring it's in case you have a defective unit or something. I've purchased a few games on the PSN and shared with my brothers and parents [to try to get them excited about something other than the photo viewer ;) but it's not taking.]
Games "purchased" from the PSN have a 5 download limit (unless they've changed it.)
Well, that and there's a bit of a manufacturing cost involved in a tangible object. I don't feel bad shelling out money for an item I can touch, fell or burn if I see fit. Digital data has little cost in duplicating and maintaining in the overall scope of things. It also gets cheaper every day that goes by, so that would mean that music/movie costs should be going down as time goes on at a much steeper rate than a tangible item. (After you pay the artists, transfer costs, and the electric bill, the data should be pretty damn cheap per copy.)
That's my problem with DRM. Greed. I have no problem with it as long as it follows the model of accelerated depreciated cost.