I bought the starcraft battle chest, and then a couple years later lost the disk.
So presumably you started out as a legitimate buyer and should be counted as such.
Rather than pay money again, I downloaded it.
Should this be counted as piracy or not? An interesting question. Can an individual be counted as both a legitimate user and a pirate of the same title if he bought it before pirating it?
This ties into the group of people who buy a game, and then download it for the convenience of the drm cracks. (noCD, no online activation, etc...) Lots of legit users fall into this group. Counting them as pirates for the purposes of lost-sales is clearly not applicable.
Every now and then I download it again when I uninstall, reformat, etc... Thusly, number of times downloaded, especially as the game becomes older, does not indicate the actual piracy rate.
Upshot of your post "measuring piracy is hard". And I agree with that 100%.
and windows is not sold, what they sell you is the serial numbered single user license.
Of course windows is sold. You can easily purchase a licensed copy of the software. Its your licensed copy. You may resell it. You may give it away. You own it. Of course they aren't selling you ip ownership but you didn't expect that did you? Windows is sold in pretty much the same way a book or a CD or a movie are sold.
OEM licensing is a bit trickier, but in practice even then its still your licensed copy of windows.
If I can play and beat the game in three hours, and it has no replay value, then it sucks.
Did you enjoy those 3 hours? I find it telling that this didn't even factor into the equation of whether the game was good or not.
Judging a game based on its length or replay-ability is as idiotic as judging a movie by its running time or the content of the DVD/blu-ray special features.
And I can only assume you despise movies and books too which tend to have no "replay value" either, and which also only deliver a few hours of enjoyment for the cost...
I can't cite a study, but I can present a small sample pool of about 10 people I know. When starcraft 1 first came out I pirated it and played it through, as did most of my friends, then in our last year of school, or first year of uni. Truth was, in my small town, the game wasn't even available as an original form for months after release. Years later I the game became available on a local online store for about $5, and I bought it.
a) Without an actual study this is in an anecdote. I'm willing to bet that the number of people who pirated starcraft 1 was 90%+ despite your anecdote.
b) Furthermore, you claim you bought it YEARS LATER for $5. So, the game was what, 50$+ when new? You bought it years later for $5. So you paid ~10% of what you 'should have'.
Yes, there are many games that are good and have lower pirate to owner conversion rates than they should, but some games do actually have high conversion rates
Given you paid ~10% of what you should have, I would argue that even if all of you and your 10 friends did this you STILL pirated 90% of its value. Attempting to justify piracy in this manner is just silly.
That said, is piracy fair to game developers/producers? No, it's not! Is charging $60 for a game that provides only 3~4 times the entertainment time (8 hours game play) of a big budget Hollywood movie that costs way more than the game to produce and distribute? No! And HELL NO, when you consider the comparatively low costs of digital distribution that games are more amenable to. Furthermore, one has to consider that the primary market for the latest release games is broke students and poor high school kids.
Give me a break. This argument is just not well thought out. If its not worth $60 to you than wait until the price is $5. And rationalizing it by comparing it to a movie is just silly... What's next? Should I compare it to dropping a dollar into an arcade machine that finishes you off in under 5 minutes? Suddenly 8hrs for 60 bucks is a good deal. After all '8 hrs of game play' in an arcade might well run you $100+. Or maybe we should compare it to a round of golf on a reasonably prestigious course? $100s of dollars for a few hours worth of walking in a park... and you can replay your video game... your money at the arcade or golf club is just gone.
That said I agree completely that the video game market is defective, and that piracy is symptom not the cause. But I find your arguments are not connecting with the cause at all.
Your so cute. You think you 'bought' a game on steam?
Read the fine print. You didn't purchase a game. You 'purchased' a subscription to a game, and that subscription can be terminated whenever they feel like, or if/when they go out of business or get bought out.
You have no right to return it. You have no right to resell it, lend it to a friend, or even give it away.
And if you were stupid enough to subscribe to 2 different multiplayer games you can't even use them both at the same time. Someone explain to me why exactly I can't play multi-player-game-A while my wife players multi-player-game-B? Oh? No she needs to subscribe to her own copy. Oh... I suppose I could create a new steam account each time I subscribe to a new game, but that's a hassle, and against steams terms of service, which may one day be enforced against me, and leading to a terminated subscription(s).
Steams DRM is only half the problem, at least they are upfront about that. The real issue with steam is that they've tricked people like you into thinking you actually bought something.
Probably the reason for the low pirate-first-buy-later rate is that the game isn't that good and people weren't impressed. You can't complain that people aren't buying your game if your game sucks.
Blow it out your ass. Seriously. The game won multiple awards. The game sold a ton of copies via Wii-ware. They eventually realeased a free trial version with the first few levels, and that prompted it to sell a pile more. If you don't like it, fine. If you didn't think it was worth X$ fine. But singling World of Goo out as a "game that sucks" is just trolling.
The reality, is that there isn't a single game on the market that has a HIGH pirate-first-buy-later rate. Go ahead, name one, name just one!
Bottom line, by your logic there isn't a single game on the market that is any good and that impressed people. And that's patently absurd.
(did you seriously think that the copy in the drive would be the only one???)
This sort of self-destruct is precisely what the original article submitter suggested!! Just read portion of the article summary, quoted below:
"All my most private personal stuff in one place. [...] Best would be a service with a dead-man's switch, so that if I don't access it in, say, three months, it auto-purges. Any thoughts?"
All my most private personal stuff in one place, with a dead-man's switch. Nuff said.:p
Maybe its not what -you- were suggesting, but it is exactly what the article poster was asking for, and which I think is demented. (and it would appear you agree)
Nobody suggests that you have your only copy of that data on the IronKey.
Except that this sort of self-destruct is precisely what lots of people appear to be suggesting!! Including the original article submitter -- just read the summary, quoted below:
"All my most private personal stuff in one place. [...] Best would be a service with a dead-man's switch, so that if I don't access it in, say, three months, it auto-purges. Any thoughts?"
All my most private personal stuff in one place, with a dead-man's switch. Nuff said.:p
Assuming a 4-wheeled vehicle, you'd have a signal on average every 15 seconds, right? AFAIK they're not clocked.
Given all 4 wheels will likely hit 25mph at roughly the same time, they will probably all fire at roughly the same time.
How would you know this (either way)? Are you saying they refuse subpoenas on this or that one has never been issued?
Neither. I'm saying -the government- doesn't already have a database of tpms macs to registered vehicle owners, and even if they did it would be unreliable. I'm sure you could probably trace a tpms mac back to the vin and from there back to the registered owner, but its a hell of a lot more effort.
The talk a couple years ago was to check these at sobriety checkpoints. You could do the same at toll booths if you wanted to (I don't think either are in practice).
How? They aren't active at stationary or low speeds.
We call that EZPass in these parts.
Precisely. There is no reason they would -ever- resort to trying to sneak through the back door and try and co-opt tpms into a surveillance system. If they wanted a surveillance system, they'd just ask for a transponder to be added, or run with optical methods.
I still think it's an order of magnitude cheaper if you wanted to do it. Look at this another way - why hasn't EZPass switched over to an all-optical/OCR system?
Cheaper sure, especially historically. And you don't need the ocr at the backend. But realistically, the bulk of the cost is in installation etc not components. And once the backend is in place additional units aren't that much more incrementally expensive.
why hasn't EZPass switched over to an all-optical/OCR system
Good question. Where I live, the newest bridge has both. An optical OCR system to toll regular drivers, or... if you are a frequent user you can get a transponder and pay a reduced rate... but you have to rent the transponder so its its only cheaper if you cross pretty regularly. I really have no idea why you can't just register your plates and pay a monthly 'subscription' for a reduced rate, and have it all done optically... but that's how it was set up.
Most of the other new tolling systems I've seen in other cities all have optical now. Optical is clearly newer, and I don't doubt it costs 'more' but I think costs have dropped to the point that its clearly the direction most new systems are incoporating... and that will drive costs down further.
You addressed some of the regulatory issues surrounding them. But neglected completely the technology limitations. The fact that they don't transmit continuously (or at all at low speeds).
But yes, I'm sure the manufacturer can report which transmitters went with which vin... but they currently are not. And yes, I'm sure the states could mandate them in inspections, but all you'd have to do is swap them out again once you got home... or remove them entirely. That is really the weak spot in the whole system. You can just swap them out yourself, the way people bypass emissions systems or retune their vehicles after they get home from a state inspection. Its virtually undetectable by law enforcement. It keeps honest people honest, and that's about it.
Realistically, if they really wanted to enhance the vehicle tracking system, they'd just augment the license plate to include a transponder of some sort. But honestly, simplicity is best. The advantage of plates is that they are plainly visible to law enforcement, and already serve the purpose of identifying vehicles. They can't easily be tampered with without generally failing the 'can law enforcement detect it' with the unaided eye from his patrol car.
Going at it by way of tracking tire-pressure sensors is simply needlessly complicated way of going at it.
Yeah, I can, but government pays $50,000-$100,000 @ for red-light cameras which are the class of tech you're talking about. They'd probably get off 'cheap' with a $200 worth of parts in an antenna/transponder setup for only $5,000 each.
Its not like the red light camera's are really all that sophisticated either. All the heavy OCR lifting happens at the backend. The individual cameras are pretty simple. You are paying for electrical hookups, conduit, under pavement sensors, integration with the traffic lights, network connectivity, and as you implied there is always the 'enterprise/industrial/government-use' markup to all costs. The costs you see quoted per camera are grossly inflated by installation and maintenance. The actual component cost on the camera and networking tech really isn't all that high either.
The cost of a TPMS would not be substantially lower per unit. Just look at what the per unit costs of transponder operated tollway systems are. Its no $2000.
Further TPMS monitoring would be a lot harder, given that anyone could just switch out their tire pressure transmitters, or remove them entirely. Not to mention lots of cars still don't have them. And its not like there is an established government registration system tracking which car they all belong too either.
License plates are pretty universal and already entirely government regulated and recorded.
Meanwhile tracking license plates is real, toll road systems already exist that do it now. Red-light cameras are real. Photo-radar is real. Its not some 'in theory we can do it'.
Finally, on the technical side: tpms updates are very low power short range updates and typical tpms only broadcast once per minute and only if the wheel is exceeding 25mph. Between those two constraints, you aren't going to get anything from people trundling along in gridlock (tpms won't transmit at all), and at highway speeds...e.g. 60mph, a wheel will send out a low power short range ping once per mile. Good freaking luck intercepting transmissions from a stationary position... especially an 'inexpensive one'.
Well, not yet (that I'm aware of), but its not that far off.
Even today the main cost in camera deployment for red-light and photo-radar camera tech is in the ruggedized camera installations. The actual camera and ocr tech isn't all that expensive.
You can already DIY with a web-cam and the right software.
You know new cars are mandated to have wireless tire pressure monitoring systems from the factory, right? And each tire has a globally-unique MAC?
Its a short range transmitter.
Far more frightening is the reflective metal plate bearing a registered unique series of numbers and digits that all cars are mandated to have attached to the vehicle in plain sight. These plates can be seen and read at considerable distance, and can be trivially traced to the registered owner. Over the last couple decades reliable electronic means of reading this information off of fast moving vehicles has become commonplace.
Its a fairly short hop from there to having a city wide network of camera's tracking every vehicle they see.
But hey, stay focused on the Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems, I'm sure that's the bigger threat.:p
After 10 unsuccessful attempts at entering the passphrase in a row, it destroys the key, never to be recovered again.
If I was transporting a copy of the data across national borders, and I didn't want customs to get a copy... a self-destruct sequence makes a lot of sense. But to have a permanent sword of damocles dangling over the data by a thread... If I valued the data so much that I was willing to go to extremes to protect it... and then set it up to be irrevocably trashed that easily... I might as well just delete it now to save myself the aggravation.
So, I'm looking for something to be absolutely private and secure... "So I was thinking that some sort of web-based storage for files..."
Yeah. That was my first thought too. "Lets put them on the internet."
How about, 1) don't access absolutely private stuff at work. 2) store it on an encrypted drive 3) consider putting instructions in your will that it be destroyed
Other than that, as for a dead-mans switch type thing. Seriously? You'd seriously prefer continually risking losing the documents forever over the slight possibility that someone might hack the encryption and see them after you are dead?
Why not just delete them now and spare yourself the hassle?
First, eBay earns more money if the auction closes with a successful sale and allowing auctions to drag out, even though eBay would earn a few more cents or even dollars, is not as profitable as closing more auctions quickly in the same period of time.
Structure the auction lengths to be a bit shorter by default, with higher bid increments and the auctions will turn over at the same rate.
After all, there are only so many similar items that can successfully compete for attention at any given time. No point in crowding out the good candidates with lots of older junk.
Au contraire. My proposal would have the effect of slightly prolonging active auctions of the 'interesting stuff', while the endless stream of junk that gets no bids at all would actually end sooner. This would have the net effect of increasing the amount of interesting stuff available at any given time.
. Second, there are many more buyers on eBay than sellers and because snipping benefits buyers at the expense of sellers it makes more of their customers happier when they don't limit the practice.
This argument is flawed. An auction being decided by stream of bids in the last 5 seconds is the norm, and sophisticated ebay users have adapted. But for every user that 'adapts' I'm confident several more just leave in frustration or disgust. Conversely, existing ebay users would be unlikely to stop using ebay if sniping were eliminated.
There could be other reasons too that I haven't thought of, but as both parents have said: eBay has had a long time to do something about sniping and they haven't. It's hard to accept that nothing has happened due to lack of technical competence or misunderstanding on eBay's part.
Is it really that hard to accept? I personally find it pretty easy. Especially given the number of outrageously dumb things they HAVE implemented over the years.
I don't quite see how that is playing the lottery.
Sniping has an element of blind luck.
Playing the lottery is investing money in something that statistically is guaranteed to lose me money, but there is a very small chance of a big payout.
Playing the lottery is buying the thrill of anticipation. I think we can both agree its not 'investing money'.:)
Sniping is using a tactic that at worst results in me paying what I'd otherwise have been willing to pay, and is likely to result in me paying less.
From your perspective sure. From the sellers perspective it is a tactic that generally results in them making less on what they are selling than what they'd have gotten in an auction where all the participants are able to bid competitively; openly knowing and having the opportunity to bid against the highest bid before the auction ends.
The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. Sniping is a tax on people who are bad at proxy bidding...:)
It really has nothing whatsoever to do with proxy bidding and everything to do with auctions that accept bids up to a known specific time. In particular another way to "fix" ebay's sniping issue is to have the auction end at a completely random time on the day that it ends instead of having a timer that counts down the seconds. clearly the best strategy will be to bid at the last second of the day before it ends, and hope it ends "soon"... but that's not really much of a strategy.
I snipe, and I always set it to my max bid, and I'm always happy when I lose (I usually do), because I set the amount I did because that's what I think the item is worth.
Well DUH!
The only people who benefit from a sniping system are people who snipe. Regular people and sellers each get screwed. You benefit.
If somebody gets upset because they don't understand proxy bidding, I might suggest that they try going out and buying a lottery ticket instead. That system seems to be designed for them.
LMAO. Its you that are playing the 'lottery' by sniping, where you hope to snag an item for a given amount, and have the auction close before the other participants can reconsider or react to your bid. In a normal auction everyone knows exactly what the price is, and everyone has an opportunity to react to each bid.
The buyer doing the sniping doesn't care if the auction runs 3 months, since they're doing this on 300 other items in parallel and one of them will eventually win, at which point they abandon all the others.
If you extend the auction, sniping software will be re-optimized accordingly. You set your max bid, and the sniping software will wait until 2 minutes before the end and bid 1 increment higher max.
1) And what exactly would that accomplish, -except- drag out the auction longer, and give more people a chance to get in on it, driving the price up higher? The sooner the auction ends the lower the price will be, so better to bid your max early, and let it close quickly.
2) I specifically proposed upping the bid increments to ensure auctions would not run for a protracted length of time.
3) The premise that the sniper doesn't care because he's bidding on hundreds of them doesn't apply to pretty much anything I've ever used ebay for. From models, classic lego, books, etc there is usually between 0 and 2 of the items at any given time. And anything one can buy when there are hundreds available on ebay? I usually just 'buy it now'... or even more likely... 'buy it elsewhere'.
The only person who loses out is the seller, and anybody who actually wanted to win an auction in a timely manner...
The seller gets the maximum amount that anyone was willing to spend. They don't lose out. And suitable bid increments ensure that the auction won't run all that long.
I've never really understood the complaints about eBay sniping.
I suggest you spend more time considering the issue.
Set your maximum bid at the actual maximum that you want to pay. Whether someone snipes or not, if your bid is the highest you will win. If it's not, you won't.
But this a suboptimal strategy that will result in you paying more for the item than you could otherwise get away with. There is a psychological and competitive aspect to bidding, that induces people to up their bids. By bidding your maximum and then leaving the following will often occur: (Say you bid $100.00)
Here's typical scenario... Another Regular Person X bids against you, $50, and sees that you've outbid them at $51. They think to themselves, $52... yeah, what's another $5, and bid again. ooops outbid by you to $56. Again... what's another couple bucks... oops outbid again at $57. They give up and wander away. You win the auction, at $57.
But if you had sniped, Person X would have bid $50, saw they were top bidder and walked away. You come in and snipe $100 at the last second and you walk away with a winning bid of $51. Not sniping cost you an additional 12%. That basically amounts to a stupid tax on your proposed bidding strategy.
Meanwhile from the sellers perspective, they hate sniping because they "lose" money. The auctions end before the true 'maximum' bid is allowed to be discovered. That 12% you would have saved by sniping is 12% the seller would have gotten.
So regular buyers and regular sellers both are irked by sniping, while the only people who benefit are snipers. The entire point of an auction system is to place goods into the hands of the person willing to pay the highest amount. In economic theory an auction is a 'perfect market' where demand and supply meet exactly. Sniping distorts it by enabling auctions to end before the true price is properly set.
I'd think that the simplest solution would just be to extend the auction slightly every time there is a new high bid. Add 5 or 10 minutes every time the bid increases, and sniping would be totally ineffective.
I also suggested this to ebay 10 years ago, as a simple fix. Technically, I'd say 5 or 10 minutes isn't enough. In practice the auction should probably be extended an extra day so that all interested parties have time to check and revise their bids. (If an auction ends at 3am, having a window of opportunity to revise my bid until 3:10am isn't really enough. You need enough time for participating parties to receive their email notifications that they've been outbid, and to come back and update if they wish.)
Some people have argued that this would extend an auction indefinitely, but I disagree. I would however, bump up the bid increments to help prevent auctions from being drawn out. If a Pez dispenser is going to sell for $1.10, dragging it out another day so someone else can bid $1.20 is just stupid.
Now some sellers value having a fixed closing for auctions for whatever reason and for them... implement a silent auction where all bids are held in secret until the end.
Even at 10%, assuming I knew which ones they were, phone calls would take a couple of hours and visiting probably a couple of days if kept to local friends.
God forbid you spend a couple hours or days talking with and/or visiting friends.
You seem to rely on facebook to maintain stronger friendships, while offloading and distancing yourself from the actual interaction that stronger friendships result in.
Don't get me wrong, The Daily Show is great, but it's not really journalism - they don't break any stories, send reporters out into the field, etc.
I disagree. I agree the daily show isn't really news about the world, rather its news about the news itself.
They do break story's... if they had traditional headlines it would be: Fox news coverage of event X is rampantly partisan. CNN's coverage Y is inept. Glenn Beck contradicts himself on Z. John McCain said this 2 years ago, and the opposite today, and nobody is challenging him on it. Sentator So-and-so defended Bush for doing Z, but condemns Obama for *precisely* the same thing, and nobody is challenging him on it.
Now there is no question that the level of journalistic integrity at the Daily Show isn't all that high, and they'll skewer the truth for a dick and fart joke. The daily show is a comedy show after all though, and no one should expect more, nor hold them to higher standards.
But a lot of the stuff that falls out *is* news, and its tragic that the real news media isn't making this stuff available. Where is the real media on the this stuff? When politicians make contradictory statements, or defend practices made under President X while condemning them under President Y... that's THEIR JOB. And why aren't they exposing the incopetence and partisan pandering in each others ranks. This is important news, and it seems to be willfully ignored.
Te fact of the matter is We SHOULDN'T be getting it just from the Comedy network, and its why the Daily Show, even though its not a news show, is considered (deservedly) to be a source of real news.
It's effectively a moot point as they aren't going to know about such back ups unless you're definitely violating copyright law.
Oh really?
Meaning that they have no way of knowing if you make the copy, only if you distribute said copy over the net, or download as a substitute for backing up.
Or you could just go through customs with your laptop and/or exteneral hard drive where the backup is stored.
Or you could be subject to software down that road that will audit your hard drive and report any suspected infractions... maybe it will have a friendly name like "iTunes 11".
Relying on a law being 'effectively moot' is a bad idea. Better to get rid of it before it finds ways to bite you in the ass.
But it's not as bad as MS and the ever changing EULAs.
I take it you haven't used iTunes lately. I get a 250 page document to agree to on my phone everytime i fool around with a free new app. This is not an MS phenomena.
An independent source-code audit could have saved three lives in that case.
=Could have= saved 3 lives.
Would have cost 10s of thousands? millions?
Pretty much every time someone on the planet dies of accidental causes there is some procedure or process that "could" have saved them.
Life just isn't that safe. And I'd rather not spend every dime of the gdp trying to make it as safe as possible.
When people die its tragic. If its something simple to fix, we fix it. But lets not lay guilt trip down every time anybody dies. Life is dangerous and it wouldn't be worth living if we made it safe, because the only way it will ever be safe is if we lock everyone up in straight jackets in padded rooms.
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I bought the starcraft battle chest, and then a couple years later lost the disk.
So presumably you started out as a legitimate buyer and should be counted as such.
Rather than pay money again, I downloaded it.
Should this be counted as piracy or not? An interesting question. Can an individual be counted as both a legitimate user and a pirate of the same title if he bought it before pirating it?
This ties into the group of people who buy a game, and then download it for the convenience of the drm cracks. (noCD, no online activation, etc...) Lots of legit users fall into this group. Counting them as pirates for the purposes of lost-sales is clearly not applicable.
Every now and then I download it again when I uninstall, reformat, etc... Thusly, number of times downloaded, especially as the game becomes older, does not indicate the actual piracy rate.
Upshot of your post "measuring piracy is hard". And I agree with that 100%.
and windows is not sold, what they sell you is the serial numbered single user license.
Of course windows is sold. You can easily purchase a licensed copy of the software. Its your licensed copy. You may resell it. You may give it away. You own it. Of course they aren't selling you ip ownership but you didn't expect that did you? Windows is sold in pretty much the same way a book or a CD or a movie are sold.
OEM licensing is a bit trickier, but in practice even then its still your licensed copy of windows.
If I can play and beat the game in three hours, and it has no replay value, then it sucks.
Did you enjoy those 3 hours? I find it telling that this didn't even factor into the equation of whether the game was good or not.
Judging a game based on its length or replay-ability is as idiotic as judging a movie by its running time or the content of the DVD/blu-ray special features.
And I can only assume you despise movies and books too which tend to have no "replay value" either, and which also only deliver a few hours of enjoyment for the cost...
I can't cite a study, but I can present a small sample pool of about 10 people I know. When starcraft 1 first came out I pirated it and played it through, as did most of my friends, then in our last year of school, or first year of uni. Truth was, in my small town, the game wasn't even available as an original form for months after release. Years later I the game became available on a local online store for about $5, and I bought it.
a) Without an actual study this is in an anecdote. I'm willing to bet that the number of people who pirated starcraft 1 was 90%+ despite your anecdote.
b) Furthermore, you claim you bought it YEARS LATER for $5. So, the game was what, 50$+ when new? You bought it years later for $5. So you paid ~10% of what you 'should have'.
Yes, there are many games that are good and have lower pirate to owner conversion rates than they should, but some games do actually have high conversion rates
Given you paid ~10% of what you should have, I would argue that even if all of you and your 10 friends did this you STILL pirated 90% of its value. Attempting to justify piracy in this manner is just silly.
That said, is piracy fair to game developers/producers? No, it's not! Is charging $60 for a game that provides only 3~4 times the entertainment time (8 hours game play) of a big budget Hollywood movie that costs way more than the game to produce and distribute? No! And HELL NO, when you consider the comparatively low costs of digital distribution that games are more amenable to. Furthermore, one has to consider that the primary market for the latest release games is broke students and poor high school kids.
Give me a break. This argument is just not well thought out. If its not worth $60 to you than wait until the price is $5. And rationalizing it by comparing it to a movie is just silly... What's next? Should I compare it to dropping a dollar into an arcade machine that finishes you off in under 5 minutes? Suddenly 8hrs for 60 bucks is a good deal. After all '8 hrs of game play' in an arcade might well run you $100+. Or maybe we should compare it to a round of golf on a reasonably prestigious course? $100s of dollars for a few hours worth of walking in a park... and you can replay your video game... your money at the arcade or golf club is just gone.
That said I agree completely that the video game market is defective, and that piracy is symptom not the cause. But I find your arguments are not connecting with the cause at all.
Your so cute. You think you 'bought' a game on steam?
Read the fine print. You didn't purchase a game. You 'purchased' a subscription to a game, and that subscription can be terminated whenever they feel like, or if/when they go out of business or get bought out.
You have no right to return it. You have no right to resell it, lend it to a friend, or even give it away.
And if you were stupid enough to subscribe to 2 different multiplayer games you can't even use them both at the same time. Someone explain to me why exactly I can't play multi-player-game-A while my wife players multi-player-game-B? Oh? No she needs to subscribe to her own copy. Oh... I suppose I could create a new steam account each time I subscribe to a new game, but that's a hassle, and against steams terms of service, which may one day be enforced against me, and leading to a terminated subscription(s).
Steams DRM is only half the problem, at least they are upfront about that. The real issue with steam is that they've tricked people like you into thinking you actually bought something.
If I wanted one (I don't) I could go to the local Apple Store here in Oregon and pick one up. No shipping, no tax.
And in Oregon gas is free! :p
Probably the reason for the low pirate-first-buy-later rate is that the game isn't that good and people weren't impressed. You can't complain that people aren't buying your game if your game sucks.
Blow it out your ass. Seriously. The game won multiple awards. The game sold a ton of copies via Wii-ware. They eventually realeased a free trial version with the first few levels, and that prompted it to sell a pile more. If you don't like it, fine. If you didn't think it was worth X$ fine. But singling World of Goo out as a "game that sucks" is just trolling.
The reality, is that there isn't a single game on the market that has a HIGH pirate-first-buy-later rate. Go ahead, name one, name just one!
Bottom line, by your logic there isn't a single game on the market that is any good and that impressed people. And that's patently absurd.
(did you seriously think that the copy in the drive would be the only one???)
This sort of self-destruct is precisely what the original article submitter suggested!! Just read portion of the article summary, quoted below:
"All my most private personal stuff in one place. [...] Best would be a service with a dead-man's switch, so that if I don't access it in, say, three months, it auto-purges. Any thoughts?"
All my most private personal stuff in one place, with a dead-man's switch. Nuff said. :p
Maybe its not what -you- were suggesting, but it is exactly what the article poster was asking for, and which I think is demented. (and it would appear you agree)
Nobody suggests that you have your only copy of that data on the IronKey.
Except that this sort of self-destruct is precisely what lots of people appear to be suggesting!! Including the original article submitter -- just read the summary, quoted below:
"All my most private personal stuff in one place. [...] Best would be a service with a dead-man's switch, so that if I don't access it in, say, three months, it auto-purges. Any thoughts?"
All my most private personal stuff in one place, with a dead-man's switch. Nuff said. :p
Assuming a 4-wheeled vehicle, you'd have a signal on average every 15 seconds, right? AFAIK they're not clocked. Given all 4 wheels will likely hit 25mph at roughly the same time, they will probably all fire at roughly the same time. How would you know this (either way)? Are you saying they refuse subpoenas on this or that one has never been issued? Neither. I'm saying -the government- doesn't already have a database of tpms macs to registered vehicle owners, and even if they did it would be unreliable. I'm sure you could probably trace a tpms mac back to the vin and from there back to the registered owner, but its a hell of a lot more effort. The talk a couple years ago was to check these at sobriety checkpoints. You could do the same at toll booths if you wanted to (I don't think either are in practice). How? They aren't active at stationary or low speeds. We call that EZPass in these parts. Precisely. There is no reason they would -ever- resort to trying to sneak through the back door and try and co-opt tpms into a surveillance system. If they wanted a surveillance system, they'd just ask for a transponder to be added, or run with optical methods. I still think it's an order of magnitude cheaper if you wanted to do it. Look at this another way - why hasn't EZPass switched over to an all-optical/OCR system? Cheaper sure, especially historically. And you don't need the ocr at the backend. But realistically, the bulk of the cost is in installation etc not components. And once the backend is in place additional units aren't that much more incrementally expensive. why hasn't EZPass switched over to an all-optical/OCR system Good question. Where I live, the newest bridge has both. An optical OCR system to toll regular drivers, or... if you are a frequent user you can get a transponder and pay a reduced rate... but you have to rent the transponder so its its only cheaper if you cross pretty regularly. I really have no idea why you can't just register your plates and pay a monthly 'subscription' for a reduced rate, and have it all done optically... but that's how it was set up. Most of the other new tolling systems I've seen in other cities all have optical now. Optical is clearly newer, and I don't doubt it costs 'more' but I think costs have dropped to the point that its clearly the direction most new systems are incoporating... and that will drive costs down further.
You addressed some of the regulatory issues surrounding them. But neglected completely the technology limitations. The fact that they don't transmit continuously (or at all at low speeds).
But yes, I'm sure the manufacturer can report which transmitters went with which vin... but they currently are not. And yes, I'm sure the states could mandate them in inspections, but all you'd have to do is swap them out again once you got home... or remove them entirely. That is really the weak spot in the whole system. You can just swap them out yourself, the way people bypass emissions systems or retune their vehicles after they get home from a state inspection. Its virtually undetectable by law enforcement. It keeps honest people honest, and that's about it.
Realistically, if they really wanted to enhance the vehicle tracking system, they'd just augment the license plate to include a transponder of some sort. But honestly, simplicity is best. The advantage of plates is that they are plainly visible to law enforcement, and already serve the purpose of identifying vehicles. They can't easily be tampered with without generally failing the 'can law enforcement detect it' with the unaided eye from his patrol car.
Going at it by way of tracking tire-pressure sensors is simply needlessly complicated way of going at it.
Yeah, I can, but government pays $50,000-$100,000 @ for red-light cameras which are the class of tech you're talking about. They'd probably get off 'cheap' with a $200 worth of parts in an antenna/transponder setup for only $5,000 each.
Its not like the red light camera's are really all that sophisticated either. All the heavy OCR lifting happens at the backend. The individual cameras are pretty simple. You are paying for electrical hookups, conduit, under pavement sensors, integration with the traffic lights, network connectivity, and as you implied there is always the 'enterprise/industrial/government-use' markup to all costs. The costs you see quoted per camera are grossly inflated by installation and maintenance. The actual component cost on the camera and networking tech really isn't all that high either.
The cost of a TPMS would not be substantially lower per unit. Just look at what the per unit costs of transponder operated tollway systems are. Its no $2000.
Further TPMS monitoring would be a lot harder, given that anyone could just switch out their tire pressure transmitters, or remove them entirely. Not to mention lots of cars still don't have them. And its not like there is an established government registration system tracking which car they all belong too either.
License plates are pretty universal and already entirely government regulated and recorded.
Meanwhile tracking license plates is real, toll road systems already exist that do it now. Red-light cameras are real. Photo-radar is real. Its not some 'in theory we can do it'.
Finally, on the technical side: tpms updates are very low power short range updates and typical tpms only broadcast once per minute and only if the wheel is exceeding 25mph. Between those two constraints, you aren't going to get anything from people trundling along in gridlock (tpms won't transmit at all), and at highway speeds...e.g. 60mph, a wheel will send out a low power short range ping once per mile. Good freaking luck intercepting transmissions from a stationary position... especially an 'inexpensive one'.
What's the cost?
"There's an app for that!"
Well, not yet (that I'm aware of), but its not that far off.
Even today the main cost in camera deployment for red-light and photo-radar camera tech is in the ruggedized camera installations. The actual camera and ocr tech isn't all that expensive.
You can already DIY with a web-cam and the right software.
You know new cars are mandated to have wireless tire pressure monitoring systems from the factory, right? And each tire has a globally-unique MAC?
Its a short range transmitter.
Far more frightening is the reflective metal plate bearing a registered unique series of numbers and digits that all cars are mandated to have attached to the vehicle in plain sight. These plates can be seen and read at considerable distance, and can be trivially traced to the registered owner. Over the last couple decades reliable electronic means of reading this information off of fast moving vehicles has become commonplace.
Its a fairly short hop from there to having a city wide network of camera's tracking every vehicle they see.
But hey, stay focused on the Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems, I'm sure that's the bigger threat. :p
After 10 unsuccessful attempts at entering the passphrase in a row, it destroys the key, never to be recovered again.
If I was transporting a copy of the data across national borders, and I didn't want customs to get a copy... a self-destruct sequence makes a lot of sense. But to have a permanent sword of damocles dangling over the data by a thread... If I valued the data so much that I was willing to go to extremes to protect it... and then set it up to be irrevocably trashed that easily... I might as well just delete it now to save myself the aggravation.
So, I'm looking for something to be absolutely private and secure...
"So I was thinking that some sort of web-based storage for files..."
Yeah. That was my first thought too. "Lets put them on the internet."
How about,
1) don't access absolutely private stuff at work.
2) store it on an encrypted drive
3) consider putting instructions in your will that it be destroyed
Other than that, as for a dead-mans switch type thing. Seriously? You'd seriously prefer continually risking losing the documents forever over the slight possibility that someone might hack the encryption and see them after you are dead?
Why not just delete them now and spare yourself the hassle?
First, eBay earns more money if the auction closes with a successful sale and allowing auctions to drag out, even though eBay would earn a few more cents or even dollars, is not as profitable as closing more auctions quickly in the same period of time.
Structure the auction lengths to be a bit shorter by default, with higher bid increments and the auctions will turn over at the same rate.
After all, there are only so many similar items that can successfully compete for attention at any given time. No point in crowding out the good candidates with lots of older junk.
Au contraire. My proposal would have the effect of slightly prolonging active auctions of the 'interesting stuff', while the endless stream of junk that gets no bids at all would actually end sooner. This would have the net effect of increasing the amount of interesting stuff available at any given time.
. Second, there are many more buyers on eBay than sellers and because snipping benefits buyers at the expense of sellers it makes more of their customers happier when they don't limit the practice.
This argument is flawed. An auction being decided by stream of bids in the last 5 seconds is the norm, and sophisticated ebay users have adapted. But for every user that 'adapts' I'm confident several more just leave in frustration or disgust. Conversely, existing ebay users would be unlikely to stop using ebay if sniping were eliminated.
There could be other reasons too that I haven't thought of, but as both parents have said: eBay has had a long time to do something about sniping and they haven't. It's hard to accept that nothing has happened due to lack of technical competence or misunderstanding on eBay's part.
Is it really that hard to accept? I personally find it pretty easy. Especially given the number of outrageously dumb things they HAVE implemented over the years.
I don't quite see how that is playing the lottery.
Sniping has an element of blind luck.
Playing the lottery is investing money in something that statistically is guaranteed to lose me money, but there is a very small chance of a big payout.
Playing the lottery is buying the thrill of anticipation. I think we can both agree its not 'investing money'. :)
Sniping is using a tactic that at worst results in me paying what I'd otherwise have been willing to pay, and is likely to result in me paying less.
From your perspective sure. From the sellers perspective it is a tactic that generally results in them making less on what they are selling than what they'd have gotten in an auction where all the participants are able to bid competitively; openly knowing and having the opportunity to bid against the highest bid before the auction ends.
The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. Sniping is a tax on people who are bad at proxy bidding... :)
It really has nothing whatsoever to do with proxy bidding and everything to do with auctions that accept bids up to a known specific time. In particular another way to "fix" ebay's sniping issue is to have the auction end at a completely random time on the day that it ends instead of having a timer that counts down the seconds. clearly the best strategy will be to bid at the last second of the day before it ends, and hope it ends "soon"... but that's not really much of a strategy.
I snipe, and I always set it to my max bid, and I'm always happy when I lose (I usually do), because I set the amount I did because that's what I think the item is worth.
Well DUH!
The only people who benefit from a sniping system are people who snipe. Regular people and sellers each get screwed. You benefit.
If somebody gets upset because they don't understand proxy bidding, I might suggest that they try going out and buying a lottery ticket instead. That system seems to be designed for them.
LMAO. Its you that are playing the 'lottery' by sniping, where you hope to snag an item for a given amount, and have the auction close before the other participants can reconsider or react to your bid. In a normal auction everyone knows exactly what the price is, and everyone has an opportunity to react to each bid.
The buyer doing the sniping doesn't care if the auction runs 3 months, since they're doing this on 300 other items in parallel and one of them will eventually win, at which point they abandon all the others.
If you extend the auction, sniping software will be re-optimized accordingly. You set your max bid, and the sniping software will wait until 2 minutes before the end and bid 1 increment higher max.
1) And what exactly would that accomplish, -except- drag out the auction longer, and give more people a chance to get in on it, driving the price up higher? The sooner the auction ends the lower the price will be, so better to bid your max early, and let it close quickly.
2) I specifically proposed upping the bid increments to ensure auctions would not run for a protracted length of time.
3) The premise that the sniper doesn't care because he's bidding on hundreds of them doesn't apply to pretty much anything I've ever used ebay for. From models, classic lego, books, etc there is usually between 0 and 2 of the items at any given time. And anything one can buy when there are hundreds available on ebay? I usually just 'buy it now'... or even more likely... 'buy it elsewhere'.
The only person who loses out is the seller, and anybody who actually wanted to win an auction in a timely manner...
The seller gets the maximum amount that anyone was willing to spend. They don't lose out.
And suitable bid increments ensure that the auction won't run all that long.
I've never really understood the complaints about eBay sniping.
I suggest you spend more time considering the issue.
Set your maximum bid at the actual maximum that you want to pay. Whether someone snipes or not, if your bid is the highest you will win. If it's not, you won't.
But this a suboptimal strategy that will result in you paying more for the item than you could otherwise get away with. There is a psychological and competitive aspect to bidding, that induces people to up their bids. By bidding your maximum and then leaving the following will often occur: (Say you bid $100.00)
Here's typical scenario... ... yeah, what's another $5, and bid again. ooops outbid by you to $56. Again... what's another couple bucks... oops outbid again at $57. They give up and wander away. You win the auction, at $57.
Another Regular Person X bids against you, $50, and sees that you've outbid them at $51. They think to themselves, $52
But if you had sniped, Person X would have bid $50, saw they were top bidder and walked away. You come in and snipe $100 at the last second and you walk away with a winning bid of $51. Not sniping cost you an additional 12%. That basically amounts to a stupid tax on your proposed bidding strategy.
Meanwhile from the sellers perspective, they hate sniping because they "lose" money. The auctions end before the true 'maximum' bid is allowed to be discovered. That 12% you would have saved by sniping is 12% the seller would have gotten.
So regular buyers and regular sellers both are irked by sniping, while the only people who benefit are snipers. The entire point of an auction system is to place goods into the hands of the person willing to pay the highest amount. In economic theory an auction is a 'perfect market' where demand and supply meet exactly. Sniping distorts it by enabling auctions to end before the true price is properly set.
I'd think that the simplest solution would just be to extend the auction slightly every time there is a new high bid. Add 5 or 10 minutes every time the bid increases, and sniping would be totally ineffective.
I also suggested this to ebay 10 years ago, as a simple fix. Technically, I'd say 5 or 10 minutes isn't enough. In practice the auction should probably be extended an extra day so that all interested parties have time to check and revise their bids. (If an auction ends at 3am, having a window of opportunity to revise my bid until 3:10am isn't really enough. You need enough time for participating parties to receive their email notifications that they've been outbid, and to come back and update if they wish.)
Some people have argued that this would extend an auction indefinitely, but I disagree. I would however, bump up the bid increments to help prevent auctions from being drawn out. If a Pez dispenser is going to sell for $1.10, dragging it out another day so someone else can bid $1.20 is just stupid.
Now some sellers value having a fixed closing for auctions for whatever reason and for them... implement a silent auction where all bids are held in secret until the end.
Even at 10%, assuming I knew which ones they were, phone calls would take a couple of hours and visiting probably a couple of days if kept to local friends.
God forbid you spend a couple hours or days talking with and/or visiting friends.
You seem to rely on facebook to maintain stronger friendships, while offloading and distancing yourself from the actual interaction that stronger friendships result in.
Don't get me wrong, The Daily Show is great, but it's not really journalism - they don't break any stories, send reporters out into the field, etc.
I disagree. I agree the daily show isn't really news about the world, rather its news about the news itself.
They do break story's... if they had traditional headlines it would be:
Fox news coverage of event X is rampantly partisan.
CNN's coverage Y is inept.
Glenn Beck contradicts himself on Z.
John McCain said this 2 years ago, and the opposite today, and nobody is challenging him on it.
Sentator So-and-so defended Bush for doing Z, but condemns Obama for *precisely* the same thing, and nobody is challenging him on it.
Now there is no question that the level of journalistic integrity at the Daily Show isn't all that high, and they'll skewer the truth for a dick and fart joke. The daily show is a comedy show after all though, and no one should expect more, nor hold them to higher standards.
But a lot of the stuff that falls out *is* news, and its tragic that the real news media isn't making this stuff available. Where is the real media on the this stuff? When politicians make contradictory statements, or defend practices made under President X while condemning them under President Y... that's THEIR JOB. And why aren't they exposing the incopetence and partisan pandering in each others ranks. This is important news, and it seems to be willfully ignored.
Te fact of the matter is We SHOULDN'T be getting it just from the Comedy network, and its why the Daily Show, even though its not a news show, is considered (deservedly) to be a source of real news.
It's effectively a moot point as they aren't going to know about such back ups unless you're definitely violating copyright law.
Oh really?
Meaning that they have no way of knowing if you make the copy, only if you distribute said copy over the net, or download as a substitute for backing up.
Or you could just go through customs with your laptop and/or exteneral hard drive where the backup is stored.
Or you could be subject to software down that road that will audit your hard drive and report any suspected infractions... maybe it will have a friendly name like "iTunes 11".
Relying on a law being 'effectively moot' is a bad idea. Better to get rid of it before it finds ways to bite you in the ass.
But it's not as bad as MS and the ever changing EULAs.
I take it you haven't used iTunes lately. I get a 250 page document to agree to on my phone everytime i fool around with a free new app. This is not an MS phenomena.
An independent source-code audit could have saved three lives in that case.
=Could have= saved 3 lives.
Would have cost 10s of thousands? millions?
Pretty much every time someone on the planet dies of accidental causes there is some procedure or process that "could" have saved them.
Life just isn't that safe. And I'd rather not spend every dime of the gdp trying to make it as safe as possible.
When people die its tragic. If its something simple to fix, we fix it. But lets not lay guilt trip down every time anybody dies. Life is dangerous and it wouldn't be worth living if we made it safe, because the only way it will ever be safe is if we lock everyone up in straight jackets in padded rooms.