"Another right wing poster talking out of his ass. It was modded flamebait, but it seems more like offtopic to me."
The problem is you can find faults in just about every single post going, but picking up on relatively minor diversions off topic and modding it off-topic when equally or more off-topic posts but that fit in with Slashdot's biases get moderated informative or insightful is part of the problem. The fact is moderation here absolutely does follow biases of the site's readership and is often used as a tool to suppress dissenting even though sometimes correct information. You can make a fair argument that the posts I linked to shouldn't have been moderated at all, I'd agree with you on that, but moderating them down genuinely is examples of silencing opposing viewpoints the mod in question does not agree with.
"I did not bother reading the other comments, but I don't think the moderation in your examples is flat out wrong"
Troll? really? It's a pretty simple and fair observation.
Responding somewhat to the other person who responded to you and got modded up, I agree also that Slashdot's system is better than many, but I think it's past it's prime all the same. It worked brilliantly in Slashdot's earlier days, but now there are far too many fanboys on here that are more interested in trying to upmod positive comments about their pet brand and downmod opposing comments. This has had the effect of pushing highly informed people with strengths in topics like physics, and computing away from the site, which in turn decreases the amount of well informed people moderating and increases the ratio of ignorant people who are more interested in protecting their pet political viewpoints or brand leading to the deterioration to the point we're at now where there are far far less genuinely intelligent posts than you can learn from on the site now than there used to be. You can still go back to a physics related post from 10+ years ago and learn more from it than you can almost any modern one.
Part the problem is of course also that the site has decided to go down the tabloid trash route of posting flamebait stories to pull in page hits. That in itself has helped reduce the average IQ of Slashdot readers by pushing smart people away, and drawing ever more fanboys and trolls in.
Can you give me a link to the version of Slashdot that you read? It sound much more interesting and informative than this one.
Or are you just reading archived posts from 10 years ago where that was indeed much more the case?
Try and make respectful and informative responses on the subjects the GP listed - try and make an informed argument against gun ownership during American prime time, try criticising Valve's use of DRM, try criticising Apple on a day where the Apple fanboys are having a moderation orgy or vice versa with Android fanboys and Google. These are just a few to start you off, when you've done all these things feel free to come back and repeat your claim.
Oh, and because it wouldn't be right to respond to your post in this way without taking you up on your challenge, how about this post that it took me all of 10 seconds to find by clicking a random story on the front page and browsing at -1? -
Now again I'm not saying I actually agree with many of these comments, but it doesn't really take long to find comments that received an undeserving moderation. This is of course without even looking at the comments that are quite trivially provably wrong but modded up because of certain cliques that rabidly defend their favoured product, political ideology or whatever.
Of course I suppose you could use the "insults and strawmen" argument as a kind of catch all, as one man's criticism of a product is another's insult I suppose, but being pragmatic the fundamental fact remains that there's an awful lot of posts modded up or down that simply should not be modded as such.
Yes, as I said, I most certainly have worked in primary schools and seen first hand that it's nowhere near as demanding as at secondary level where kids hormones are much more problematic in drawing them away from the task at hand - learning.
Ignoring the fact you're assuming that our teachers even actually do do, and hence, are expected to do a good job (judging by our competitiveness in this area in international tables they certainly do not), it's still more about simply making sure you distribute your time sensibly with each child than it is about any inherent level of competence required because the ability to actually help a child learn at this age isn't difficult, despite the fact a suprising amount of teachers are hopeless at it. This is again illustrated by my other point - getting a 2:1 is extremely easy, especially if you study full time, but it requires that you're focussed on getting it, and actually want to get it, rather than just at uni to pass the time, because your parents made you, or because you don't want to go to work. Despite this the number of teachers with 2:2, 3rd or mere passes on their degrees is staggering, and obtaining any of these puts you in the bottom half of the population.
I'd largely agree you had a point about deserving a worthwhile wage if the people doing this job were both expected to excel and were smart and competent enough to really push the boundaries of education and provide a groundbreaking education system to our children but that's not the case in our country, this is neither what happens, nor do people expect or ask for this kind of level of cutting edge excellence in primary teaching and it is similarly for this reason that the current wage levels absolutely cannot be justified for the profession because we're only getting the bottom of the pile below and well below average graduates into it, yet paying well above the national average wage for the role. Teachers aren't doing the profession as a favour to society, giving up their ability to earn more elsewhere, on the contrary, they're overwhelmingly doing it because they couldn't come close to earning the same amount elsewhere with their level of ability. That's before you even factor in the other benefits like excellent pension (even with the proposed changes) and holiday allowance that's between double and triple almost every other profession.
You could make the argument that we should drastically increase primary school teacher wages to attract truly talented people into the profession and kick the majority of the current crop out, but you can't sensibly argue that the current crop deserve the wage and benefits they get for the current level of competence that we have chosen as acceptable to settle on.
"Who said I pirated their PC games, or even game on a PC?"
Erm, you? -
"I pirate Ubi games, 100% of the time because of all the BS that the company has spouted and tried to cram down our throats over the years. And I can promise you, that the seeders never came even close to 20% of their sales, let alone 95%."
The 95% figure was hyperbole related to PC gaming, hence by saying what you said you were admitting you pirate Ubisoft games 100% of the time on the PC.
"But in that same vein of thought, if there's a game I want to play, I'm going to play it. If the company(or publisher) wants me to pay for it, they better be consumer friendly, if they're not, I will steal from them and have no feelings of guilt in doing so."
Yes and as I say that's fine, that's your choice.
What's not fine is that you then cry when they decide to stop producing games for you. If Ubisoft have decided not to produce PC games because people like you pirate them then you have absolutely no right to cry that you can't play their latest games because they decided not to release them on PC.
Well that's what I said, it works differently in practice because companies know that if someone really wants to push them and they know the product is fault they'll lose in a more expensive manner anyway. Also most companies like John Lewis that you mentioned offer 2 year warranty anyway, and by offering that they're giving you extra than the law says they minimally have to.
But I was simply pointing out that in actual law, the original person you were responding to was actually correct with his mention of the 6 months period. There is no statutory 2 year no quibble automatic warranty in the UK.
"But when employees with a degree are compared, those in the public sector earned around 5.7% less than those in the private sector, figures showed."
Yes, but this was fundamentally flawed. Other studies have shown that the reason for this is because people in private sector tend more to be:
- People who have no degree but have achieved well through talent - People who have high end degrees - 2:1, and 1st class
In contrast, those with worse degrees, like 3rd class and 2:2 tend to end up in public sector, and particularly the teaching profession skews this statistic dramatically because a degree is a requirement for the job, but it doesn't have to be a good, or worthwhile degree.
Many, many 3rd class degree graduates go into teaching and this has been a big issue here in the UK to the point where action has been considered to increase the requirement to at least 2:2. 3rd class degrees leave people with little option but public sector because to a private sector employer they look horrendous, and leaving them off your CV begs the question "What did you do for 3 years at uni age?" whilst there is no such questioning when going for your teacher training and much of public sector in general often just asks for a "a degree" as a mere tick box.
"I don't know about primary school teachers -- they get shorter days, easier marking and less pay anyway -- but both my parents were secondary school teachers, and regularly worked late into the evening marking work. They'd often leave school around when the children left (perhaps 15 minutes later), but bring a stack of books to mark home with them. I think the holidays more-or-less made up for the the "no, mummy and daddy are working"."
As I say I do actually completely agree, secondary teachers do not get it easy, there is much more work, the kids are much more difficult, I do believe they need more pay, but again, as I say, it should come from reduced primary school pay which is more or less just glorified baby sitting - the teaching material mostly involves games and is less than taxing for an adult, the hours are short, and homework is negligible/non-existent. There is something very wrong with people being paid £30k a year to read stories, hand out pre-written tests, do art and craft style exercises, and play games whilst getting 13 weeks leave a year, a final salary pension, and only around a 33hr - 35hr week. Even worse again now that much of it involves just sticking the kids in front of e-learning games. This should be no more than a £25k a year job at the peak of a career in it and the fact there is no distinction between this type of easy teaching and the much harder secondary teaching absolutely stinks.
Hey I can't complain though it works both ways, just as some firms rely on customers to not understand wtf the law actually is to shirk their obligations those of us who are willing to put a bit of effort into seeing what the law actually says can similarly run circles round companies who also don't understand wtf their obligations actually are;)
I've received quite a few discounts over the years, we got £200 off my girlfriends car for example because the young guy at the garage accidently told us the wrong price when I was at the chip and pin terminal and I asked him to confirm that was definitely the right price and he mindlessly said yes, then when they tried to charge the extra I threw the book at them and they let me off, and as I say, Dell replaced my laptop at about 2 years 9 months old or so with a brand new model!
"Wrong. "A newly qualified teacher will earn a minimum of £21,588 (£27,000 in inner London) but could start higher up the scale depending on previous experience."
Yes, you're right, I should've been more clear. My intention was to point to the fact they're at the £30k mark a few years since starting teacher training. Fundamentally the point is much faster than most other new careers progress, hence why the average national salary is only £25k - if everyone else progressed anywhere near as fast that figure would be higher.
"Wrong again. Most primary teachers work at least a 50 hour week. They are often in school by 8 am and leave between 5pm and 6pm, and most bring marking home to do in the evenings (at least another hour per day at home). Secondary teachers tend to work similar hours. This is one of the reasons why I left teaching after doing it for three years."
Completely and utterly false regarding primary school teachers. I worked in IT support in schools for some years, and covered 171 schools, of those 130 or so were primary schools. Gone 4pm there was rarely a teacher in sight, they do NOT work until 5pm/6pm apart from on very rare occasions. The only exception would tend to be head teachers, or those who have volunteered to run after school activities for extra pay. You're more right regarding secondary though, although 6pm tended to be a push there, it was rarely anything other than the caretaker there at that time asking if you could basically fuck off so he could lock up and go home, again with only a few exceptions - i.e. parents evening. I'm not talking about some personal anecdote from a single school I worked in here, I'm talking about multiple years experience in over a hundred schools, having spoken to thousands of teachers in that period. I know precisely what kind of hours the average teacher does, rather than what they claim to do when it comes to pay/pension negotiation time. I often joke with my few friends that are teachers about how they're living the dream as they can get home by 4pm most days to play XBox whilst I don't turn up to join them until 6pm and they're happy to admit it in such an informal setting.
"Bullshit. Once you get above the cleaner level, ie for managerial and technical positions, public sector pay is less than the equivalent in the private sector. People accept lower pay in return for a better pension deal. This is why so many are angry now that their pensions are being cut by the current government."
Completely false, I did 6 years in public sector, and can say first hand that this is absolutely not true. Further, the cross-party (Labour commissioned, Tory and Lib Dem supported) Hutton pensions review, as well as numerous 3rd party studies have found that there is absolutely no evidence that public sector workers receive less pay. I know I didn't whilst I worked there, I couldn't have found more money for the job role I was doing at the time in private sector (IT Support), much less in fact. I did however leave for more money in private sector doing something for which there was no local demand in public sector - software development. Job for job it's a complete fallacy that public sector workers receive less pay in return for a better pension they get equal or better pay, better pensions, and better leave - I was on 30 days after 5 years service up from 25 days, and 15 days off on accrued flexi time as an option too allowing me 45 days off a year, if 15 of them were built up as extra hours elsewhere in the year such as working late. I'm not sure why people like you persist with this fallacy when so many independent (and objective as you can possibly get) reviews and studies have debunked the myth that public sector pays less. It doesn't instill confidence that you're talking with an impartial voice when you push such a long debunked myth:
Agreed, if I've noticed anything about affiliation and licensing it's that many Western military games are happy to license from companies like Boeing, Lockheed and such for their aircraft, but that you rarely see guns like the AK-47 licensed.
It's a classic example of the hypocrisy of American IP enforcement - everything American or to a lesser extent, Western must be licensed for use, but if it's something Iranian, Chinese, or Russian? Meh, just stick it in, who cares about licensing from them.
I'd be suprised if the Twitter comment is true, as it would imply every game to date has had to license every weapon and military vehicle going.
I think it's quite a grey area even then, I know in Desert Strike the Apache had a slightly different tail rotor, presumably to try and avoid any rights infringement and there have been similarly many games since that introduce iconic military equipment with absolutely minor alterations to hide the fact it's otherwise an exact copy.
I'm actually intrigued to get some cold hard facts on this subject, as I wonder how it effects indies - can indie games effectively never produce modern military games due to the fact they'd never be able to afford the licensing deals like EA can? Thus far no one seems to have sued over it, but no one seems to know the exact answer. Certainly it seems to just be a case of license from those likely to sue, and ignore the rest though.
It could be a country based thing, here in the UK teachers get around £30k once their training is complete which is £5k above the UK's national average salary, health isn't an issue here because of the NHS, but their pension scheme is, and still will be with the current proposed government reforms far more generous than the average person in private sector gets, if they even get one. They also get 13 weeks off a year.
In terms of working hours, secondary teachers get it harder as they have more lesson planning to do, more homework to mark and so forth but primary teachers would tend to work 8:30am - 4pm with the odd day of longer hours here and there (parents evening, setting up displays etc.).
Personally I'd argue here in the UK primary teachers get it far far too easy, but secondary school teachers not so much. If anything I think we need a £5k reduction in primary teacher pay and a maybe £3k increase in secondary pay.
You tend to find that in UK public sector in general that the pay is pretty good, and it'll pay more than private sector for most people from the outset of your working life, but if you're career oriented and hard working, then working in private sector starts to pay off in terms of higher salary around 10 years into your working life. If you're not career driven and are content with say, £30k and a fat pension to see you through your entire life then public sector is a much better option in terms of pay, leave allowances and so forth.
On one hand I can see why teachers etc. in the UK complain - the pay structure is very rigid and it is hard to get paid more beyond a certain point if you're career driven, there is a ceiling you tend to hit, which isn't there in private sector if you're good, but on the other hand the fact public sector pays so well and gives such great benefits from the very outset means there are a lot of people starting out with pay and perks well beyond their ability and they keep them all their working life which is why incompetence is a much bigger problem in UK public sector. When you give people £25k - £30k from the outset when they'd only be valued at maybe £15k in public sector they have no financial motivation to sort themselves out so they just sit in those jobs for as long as they can.
One final note is that these comments are oriented more towards office/professional occupations like IT, teaching, finance, marketing, hr, etc. I understand many public sector workers like cleaners and so forth get much lower pay than this and that similarly the likes of hedge fund managers get pay that dwarfs anything public sector.
It's called hyperbole, they weren't saying a cold hard 95% pirate, just that enough do to make it not financially worthwhile supporting the platform.
When someone says "Hey, that's cool" they don't literally mean it's cold you know.
But regardless thanks for proving my point for me, you pirate and try and justify it to yourself with some excuse and then complain when they wont release for the PC at all. That was precisely what I suspected was the case here - many people here are only whining because when they don't even develop the game for the PC at all they can no longer pirate it, not that they ever had any intention of buying it.
So really, you might as well keep on crying, they aren't in the business of making games for you for free which you can pirate.
"But that's not why they're dropping PC, they may be putting on that song and dance."
Okay well you seem to know more about Ubisoft's internal decisions than me then so why are they dropping it if it's not financial? If it's profitable like you say then what is their reason for choosing not to make a profit off that platform?
"But the whole industry knows, that if you make quality games, the PC market is VERY profitable."
Do they? So why are the vast majority of platinum selling titles no longer released on PC and only the exceptionally high selling titles like CoD and Skyrim released?
Activision is a pretty poor example when even most Activision titles aren't even released on the PC nowadays.
It seems to just reiterate the 6 year maximum period for a claim against a product. Other than that the act just seems to be about setting limits for civil procedings relating to things like mortgages and such.
Searching for myself I managed to find this, which does mention 2 years:
But however this is interpreted for a UK consumer still relies on it's implementation under UK law, and as there's no mention of the 2 year limit in any UK legislation then it's of no benefit to UK consumers.
I did find this however, which potentially clears up the confusion:
Effectively it seems to be the case that as the UK's 6 year period exceeds the 2 year period then our law is actually superior and so we have no need to change existing legislation. The downside is the EU law doesn't seem to outlaw putting the burden onto the consumer after 6 months to prove it was faulty from the outset, and so that has remained part of UK law.
Still, if you can find anything to demonstrate otherwise I'd like to see it, I've no doubt it'll come in useful one day, but as it stands it seems to be business as usual with the 6 month rule.
"The best solution there is to not rip things off."
Yes, and if people do copy a few dollars worth of music rather than buying it it's obviously worth making them lose everything over.
"Yes, unfortunately the Obama administration really did screw that up."
Ah, you're a Republican, that explains a lot. You do realise that it was Bush who put them all their in the first place and held them without trial for the first few years before Obama took over and continued the fuckup don't you?
"But things are getting straightened out so that enemy combatants, terrorists, and the like who fit into the awkward space between domestic arrests and uniformed soldiers in combat elsewhere can go back to being tried in a military venue."
So which category do you put the innocent ones into who haven't ever been charged with anything and for which no evidence of them ever being wrongdoers go into? are they the ones you say "the like"?
"In the meantime, your assertions about conditions in Guantanamo are, of course, made-up BS, and you know it."
Really? Which ones? Are you telling me Cuba doesn't actually reach extremely high temperatures? are you suggesting the people at Guantanamo are allowed to walk pretty freely around the prison? That doesn't stack up to even US provided film of the place.
"And endless parade of journalists, Red Cross people, and the like disagree with you, having been there themselves."
Still, nice try at outright making things up to cover the fact that once again you actually don't have a clue about the topic at hand.
"Who cares where they are? If they're in the middle of plotting, executing, or supporting efforts to kill us, and the country in which they're hiding has no will or ability to do anything about it, it's exactly the right thing to do."
So what you're saying is that al Qaeda was justified with 9/11? they were after all attacking a country that had for some time been plotting it's downfall. Similarly, I assume you'd be okay with an Iranian nuke hitting Washington for the same reason? Or is this another one of those issues surrounding your misunderstanding of "neutral" as in "It's fair if the US does it, but no one else".
"Ah, I see. So when a campus cop goes ove the top dealing with people blocking the street, that's a sure sign of actual, nation-wide policy, right?"
I think you need to stop watching Fox news. You seem to genuinely believe that it's okay if beatings/abuse/killings by people in positions of authority happen all over the US regularly as long as their superiors can deny responsibility, whilst if the Iranian government denies responsibility for some of the actions of the republican guard, it's different? Again, you really don't get this neutral thing do you?
Look, if I'm honest, I'm not really disagreeing with you that the Iranian leadership is pretty awful, I'm being difficult to make the point to you that it's not as simple as you think. I'm making the point that it's hard to criticise Iran on the human rights board when the US does have a far far less than perfect track record on it. By letting Iran onto the board, to call out the US on it's abuses it keeps Western governments in check - the last thing they want is to be embarassed over fuckups in their own country and get called out on it by someone as hypocritical as Iran, but without Iran being put in this position it would just mean countries like the US could continue with their abuses uncontested. A bit of international em
Can you point to this in legislation? I believe the GP is right, everything I've seen in the Sale of Goods Act and Consumer Protection Act seems to suggest 6 months statutory burden on the seller to prove user fault, and after 6 months on the buyer. Most companies if you push it wont ask you to prove you weren't at fault though because they know full well that you weren't and that in pushing it to that point could escalate their costs as they may then face small claims court costs, costs for time and money spent trying to get them to accept fault etc. too.
John Lewis isn't just accepting a legal minimum with their 2 years at all, they're just saying that they'll accept fault assuming there is no obvious evidence of user damage no questions asked and deal with the problem up to 2 years. It just gives you piece of mind that they wont try and shirk their obligations by trying to shift burden of proof of cause of fault onto you, which is something you don't have with the likes of Dixons group stores.
I had a look for the 2 year period you mention but can find absolutely no evidence of it in the acts themselves:
Further, all of the consumer advice organisation seem to be agreeing with the 6 months, and again no mention of 2 years so I'm not sure where you dug up the 2 years figure from:
Six months doesn't sound great, but in practice it works well, I've had a leather office chair replaced outright by Staples after 2.5 years because the pump went on it because they knew it should last longer than that, and similarly my Dell laptop was replaced at 3 years and 1 month with a newer model because it was high end and should've lasted longer and they knew they couldn't just shirk it off as "out of warranty now". The maximum period for a claim is 6 years.
"Iran's government policies include criminal enforcement of beard length, and the banning of words like "pizza" (legally, you must refer to them as "elastic loaves" in order to not be prosecuted by the religious dictatorship). It would be interesting to see your food-name-banning references and beard-length-police equivalents in "most" western countries."
Yeah, law enforcement in the US is much more sane, I mean, they just allow civil cases where sharing a few files on Kazaa can leave you destitute and bankrupt with a multi-million dollar fine. It's far more sane!
"To say nothing of routinely gunning down people having protests. If "most of the west" were anything like Iran, there would be thousands dead in mass graves just from the whole "occupy" party-fest that's being held. Of course, you know that."
Yeah, America just performs extraordinary rendition kidnapping foreign citizens from foreign states only to torture them and then hold them without trial under constant civilians and restrictions on their ability to exercise in roasting hot cells at Guantanamo bay. That's between extrajudicial assassinations of foreign nationals inside foreign countries, and pepper spraying innocent protesters in the face at point blank range too of course. Also it's not like the Ohio national guard have ever gunned down innocent protesters at Kent State University either is it.
That's his point though, financial security tends to improve with age, as you get older you tend to have more money to buy games with.
It's the same for me, as I've got older I've started to spend more and more on games and haven't pirated a game in many many years now.
This is really what piracy comes down to - not people being cheap skates, but doing it simply because they want the content, but can't afford it. This is why the "lost sale" concept is a fallacy, piracy is about affordability of content and little else.
To be fair I suspect it's actually just more subtle than as mentioned in TFA.
This is The Daily Mail writing on an article from The Times, it may as well be the KKK writing on an article from the Nazis.
Realistically this is just their weekly attempt at stirring up hatred for muslims as both The Times and The Daily Mail are staunch supporters of christianity and christian values (Porn is evil etc.), and are far right to boot.
They hate anything that isn't a white British Christian and use their publications weekly to push that agenda.
I suspect the truth is something more along the lines of "One or two muslim kids weren't smart enough to cope with the course content so used some shitty excuse about it being against their religion and walked out the class, so we extrapolated this to say lots and lots of muslims are doing it, far more than any christian kids who have ever given up on a class with some shitty excuse because it was too hard for them.".
The additional irony is their "Even Richard Dawkins experienced this!" - yes, Richard Dawkins, their usual arch enemy because he doesn't believe in god.
You only have to look at their style of writing to see my point:
"Similar to the beliefs expressed by fundamentalist Christians, Muslim opponents to Darwinism maintain that Allah created the world, mankind and all known species in a single act."
Note the fundamentalist Christians vs. Muslims - so if they have this belief and are Christian they're fundamentalists, but for muslims there's no such distinction - it's not just the fundamentalists, all muslims are the same! - that's what they're implying. It's bullshit.
Sure it'd be nice if the people in question just admitted they don't really like the course or can't keep up, but some people have too much pride to simply admit that.
"You start off very well by comparing numbers as if they mean something, and then when you admit that we don't know Steam's numbers, you try to state that the numbers don't mean anything, because of the bottom line."
So out of interest, you seem to be implying I'm wrong about it being about the bottom line at the end of the day, what do you propose is the reason for developers skipping the PC as a platform so often when developing AAA titles then?
Aversion to making a profit?
Hatred of PC gamers?
The developers themselves are console platform fanboys even though they do the development on PCs?
A lot of people have made the implication you have without a rational explanation as to why these companies would avoid the platform if there is as they imply, so much profit to be made by supporting it.
It's all very well to shoot down an argument, but if you can't give a good reason as to why that argument is wrong and an alternative explanation for the scenario then you might as well believe the earth is 6000 years old, is flat, and that global warming isn't happening.
If you have a better explanation though, I'd love to hear it - unlike many hear I'm quite open to accepting a new explanation and point of view if it makes sense and is well founded. If you don't have a better more rational explanation though I can only assume I'm right, and as usual, the fanboys are just in a pissy huff about their pet platform being neglected.
At the end of the day companies like Ubisoft are out to make money - we may not have Steam sales figures, but they know exactly how much money they've made and if it ceases to be worthwhile, they'll cease to do it. All they are basically saying in TFA is "We've reached the point where it's no longer worthwhile, if all the piracy figures were sales figures then it would be worthwhile, but as they're not then it's not worthwhile". I'm not sure what's so wrong about that other than single platform crybabies upset that they're not going to get a new game, even though they claim they "don't want it anyway".
I don't disagree with your last paragraph, I still think UO was the best MMO to date, and Quake 1 still my favourite all time FPS. I'm also dissapointed that many classic games haven't had worthwhile remakes or new franchises based around that gameplay - from desert strike to syndicate, and magic carpet to cannon fodder, there's a lot of good old game types lost in time but that are still more fun than made modern state of the art games. Gameplay is king for sure.
Thank you for adding the only sane, rational post to the discussion. Every single other response has missed the point with "But VGChartz is WRONG!" or "The PC is still the best" whilst ignoring my core point - that many developers have ditched and are ditching the PC as a platform because of the raw numbers they make in profit.
The worst part is they miss the sheer contradiction in their own arguments - "Console gaming isn't more profitable, Microsoft and Sony take a cut!" - what? and they think Valve offers their Steam services for free?
As I mentioned previously that has been entirely missed - the decision to stop supporting the PC for certain titles is entirely down to the net profit and if the net profit is negative or small, then their time is better spent on something where the net profit is high, and a lot of that means working on console DLC or new console titles instead.
So again, thanks for adding your rational and informed voice to the conversation, it's a shame the zealots are too blinded by their fanboyism to recognise the fallacy of their arguments, and more importantly - miss the fundamental point. Perhaps the worst part is now I've posed the cost question to them - i.e. "Why are developers abandoning the platform if there's worthwhile profit to be made?" I can already predict the responses - "They're not abandoning the platform, the PC has loads of AAA titles getting released for it!", and so we're back to square one - the article itself which shows that's clearly not the case.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussion here because the fanboys nowadays are so childish and irrational over the issue but hey, no skin off my back I guess. As I say, I've got both platforms, so when in their ignorance their favourite platform fades away it wont cause me any inconvenience. They're already missing out on countless really good console titles whilst they wait months between the odd good PC title here and there.
Well if you what you say is true- that digital sales massively increase profits, that the PC isn't more expensive to develop for, and that this is just Ubisoft whining. Then why have so many other studios ditched the PC? Why are so many of today's total AAA titles not ended up on the PC? Why would these companies turn down the chance to make so much more profit on a title?
As I pointed to in my post, even ignoring the figures these firms have decided the PC is unprofitable regardless - and they've done this based on the resultant profits they gain from sales - obviously they've deemed these aren't enough to make the PC worthwhile.
Short of stupid conspiracy theories I see little reason why else companies would have abandoned the platform for their AAA titles.
Or are the PC zealots now going to start claiming companies haven't abandoned the platform? If so I can gladly list a few hundred games over the last few years that were high budget, million+ selling, but haven't ever ended up on the PC.
Yes, but I covered precisely this point in my post.
If companies are pulling out of the market regardless because it's not profitable it demonstrates that no matter how many more digital sales there are, they're obviously not enough to make it a platform worthwhile porting to, and that's really my core point regardless of the actual figures.
It's not like they're avoiding the PC platform out of spite, if there's profit there they'd support it, but there isn't, so they're not, it's really that simple.
Slashdot Mirror
"Another right wing poster talking out of his ass. It was modded flamebait, but it seems more like offtopic to me."
The problem is you can find faults in just about every single post going, but picking up on relatively minor diversions off topic and modding it off-topic when equally or more off-topic posts but that fit in with Slashdot's biases get moderated informative or insightful is part of the problem. The fact is moderation here absolutely does follow biases of the site's readership and is often used as a tool to suppress dissenting even though sometimes correct information. You can make a fair argument that the posts I linked to shouldn't have been moderated at all, I'd agree with you on that, but moderating them down genuinely is examples of silencing opposing viewpoints the mod in question does not agree with.
"I did not bother reading the other comments, but I don't think the moderation in your examples is flat out wrong"
Have a look at the last one:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2550440&cid=38210984
Troll? really? It's a pretty simple and fair observation.
Responding somewhat to the other person who responded to you and got modded up, I agree also that Slashdot's system is better than many, but I think it's past it's prime all the same. It worked brilliantly in Slashdot's earlier days, but now there are far too many fanboys on here that are more interested in trying to upmod positive comments about their pet brand and downmod opposing comments. This has had the effect of pushing highly informed people with strengths in topics like physics, and computing away from the site, which in turn decreases the amount of well informed people moderating and increases the ratio of ignorant people who are more interested in protecting their pet political viewpoints or brand leading to the deterioration to the point we're at now where there are far far less genuinely intelligent posts than you can learn from on the site now than there used to be. You can still go back to a physics related post from 10+ years ago and learn more from it than you can almost any modern one.
Part the problem is of course also that the site has decided to go down the tabloid trash route of posting flamebait stories to pull in page hits. That in itself has helped reduce the average IQ of Slashdot readers by pushing smart people away, and drawing ever more fanboys and trolls in.
Can you give me a link to the version of Slashdot that you read? It sound much more interesting and informative than this one.
Or are you just reading archived posts from 10 years ago where that was indeed much more the case?
Try and make respectful and informative responses on the subjects the GP listed - try and make an informed argument against gun ownership during American prime time, try criticising Valve's use of DRM, try criticising Apple on a day where the Apple fanboys are having a moderation orgy or vice versa with Android fanboys and Google. These are just a few to start you off, when you've done all these things feel free to come back and repeat your claim.
Oh, and because it wouldn't be right to respond to your post in this way without taking you up on your challenge, how about this post that it took me all of 10 seconds to find by clicking a random story on the front page and browsing at -1? -
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2550822&cid=38213206
If you can come up with a reason as to why it's fair for this post to be -1: Offtopic I'd love to hear it. Here have a few more:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2550750&cid=38212350 (I may disagree and think he is wrong, but it's a fair comment, not deserving of downmod)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2550440&cid=38210484
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2550440&cid=38212666
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2550440&cid=38210488
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2550440&cid=38210984
Now again I'm not saying I actually agree with many of these comments, but it doesn't really take long to find comments that received an undeserving moderation. This is of course without even looking at the comments that are quite trivially provably wrong but modded up because of certain cliques that rabidly defend their favoured product, political ideology or whatever.
Of course I suppose you could use the "insults and strawmen" argument as a kind of catch all, as one man's criticism of a product is another's insult I suppose, but being pragmatic the fundamental fact remains that there's an awful lot of posts modded up or down that simply should not be modded as such.
Yes, as I said, I most certainly have worked in primary schools and seen first hand that it's nowhere near as demanding as at secondary level where kids hormones are much more problematic in drawing them away from the task at hand - learning.
Ignoring the fact you're assuming that our teachers even actually do do, and hence, are expected to do a good job (judging by our competitiveness in this area in international tables they certainly do not), it's still more about simply making sure you distribute your time sensibly with each child than it is about any inherent level of competence required because the ability to actually help a child learn at this age isn't difficult, despite the fact a suprising amount of teachers are hopeless at it. This is again illustrated by my other point - getting a 2:1 is extremely easy, especially if you study full time, but it requires that you're focussed on getting it, and actually want to get it, rather than just at uni to pass the time, because your parents made you, or because you don't want to go to work. Despite this the number of teachers with 2:2, 3rd or mere passes on their degrees is staggering, and obtaining any of these puts you in the bottom half of the population.
I'd largely agree you had a point about deserving a worthwhile wage if the people doing this job were both expected to excel and were smart and competent enough to really push the boundaries of education and provide a groundbreaking education system to our children but that's not the case in our country, this is neither what happens, nor do people expect or ask for this kind of level of cutting edge excellence in primary teaching and it is similarly for this reason that the current wage levels absolutely cannot be justified for the profession because we're only getting the bottom of the pile below and well below average graduates into it, yet paying well above the national average wage for the role. Teachers aren't doing the profession as a favour to society, giving up their ability to earn more elsewhere, on the contrary, they're overwhelmingly doing it because they couldn't come close to earning the same amount elsewhere with their level of ability. That's before you even factor in the other benefits like excellent pension (even with the proposed changes) and holiday allowance that's between double and triple almost every other profession.
You could make the argument that we should drastically increase primary school teacher wages to attract truly talented people into the profession and kick the majority of the current crop out, but you can't sensibly argue that the current crop deserve the wage and benefits they get for the current level of competence that we have chosen as acceptable to settle on.
"Who said I pirated their PC games, or even game on a PC?"
Erm, you? -
"I pirate Ubi games, 100% of the time because of all the BS that the company has spouted and tried to cram down our throats over the years. And I can promise you, that the seeders never came even close to 20% of their sales, let alone 95%."
The 95% figure was hyperbole related to PC gaming, hence by saying what you said you were admitting you pirate Ubisoft games 100% of the time on the PC.
"But in that same vein of thought, if there's a game I want to play, I'm going to play it. If the company(or publisher) wants me to pay for it, they better be consumer friendly, if they're not, I will steal from them and have no feelings of guilt in doing so."
Yes and as I say that's fine, that's your choice.
What's not fine is that you then cry when they decide to stop producing games for you. If Ubisoft have decided not to produce PC games because people like you pirate them then you have absolutely no right to cry that you can't play their latest games because they decided not to release them on PC.
Well that's what I said, it works differently in practice because companies know that if someone really wants to push them and they know the product is fault they'll lose in a more expensive manner anyway. Also most companies like John Lewis that you mentioned offer 2 year warranty anyway, and by offering that they're giving you extra than the law says they minimally have to.
But I was simply pointing out that in actual law, the original person you were responding to was actually correct with his mention of the 6 months period. There is no statutory 2 year no quibble automatic warranty in the UK.
"But when employees with a degree are compared, those in the public sector earned around 5.7% less than those in the private sector, figures showed."
Yes, but this was fundamentally flawed. Other studies have shown that the reason for this is because people in private sector tend more to be:
- People who have no degree but have achieved well through talent
- People who have high end degrees - 2:1, and 1st class
In contrast, those with worse degrees, like 3rd class and 2:2 tend to end up in public sector, and particularly the teaching profession skews this statistic dramatically because a degree is a requirement for the job, but it doesn't have to be a good, or worthwhile degree.
Many, many 3rd class degree graduates go into teaching and this has been a big issue here in the UK to the point where action has been considered to increase the requirement to at least 2:2. 3rd class degrees leave people with little option but public sector because to a private sector employer they look horrendous, and leaving them off your CV begs the question "What did you do for 3 years at uni age?" whilst there is no such questioning when going for your teacher training and much of public sector in general often just asks for a "a degree" as a mere tick box.
"I don't know about primary school teachers -- they get shorter days, easier marking and less pay anyway -- but both my parents were secondary school teachers, and regularly worked late into the evening marking work. They'd often leave school around when the children left (perhaps 15 minutes later), but bring a stack of books to mark home with them. I think the holidays more-or-less made up for the the "no, mummy and daddy are working"."
As I say I do actually completely agree, secondary teachers do not get it easy, there is much more work, the kids are much more difficult, I do believe they need more pay, but again, as I say, it should come from reduced primary school pay which is more or less just glorified baby sitting - the teaching material mostly involves games and is less than taxing for an adult, the hours are short, and homework is negligible/non-existent. There is something very wrong with people being paid £30k a year to read stories, hand out pre-written tests, do art and craft style exercises, and play games whilst getting 13 weeks leave a year, a final salary pension, and only around a 33hr - 35hr week. Even worse again now that much of it involves just sticking the kids in front of e-learning games. This should be no more than a £25k a year job at the peak of a career in it and the fact there is no distinction between this type of easy teaching and the much harder secondary teaching absolutely stinks.
"You just don't realize how explosive your consumer electronics can be when they go bad."
This isn't about consumer electronics going bad, this is about your testimony against the boss.
We'll get you next time!
Hey I can't complain though it works both ways, just as some firms rely on customers to not understand wtf the law actually is to shirk their obligations those of us who are willing to put a bit of effort into seeing what the law actually says can similarly run circles round companies who also don't understand wtf their obligations actually are ;)
I've received quite a few discounts over the years, we got £200 off my girlfriends car for example because the young guy at the garage accidently told us the wrong price when I was at the chip and pin terminal and I asked him to confirm that was definitely the right price and he mindlessly said yes, then when they tried to charge the extra I threw the book at them and they let me off, and as I say, Dell replaced my laptop at about 2 years 9 months old or so with a brand new model!
"Wrong. "A newly qualified teacher will earn a minimum of £21,588 (£27,000 in inner London) but could start higher up the scale depending on previous experience."
Yes, you're right, I should've been more clear. My intention was to point to the fact they're at the £30k mark a few years since starting teacher training. Fundamentally the point is much faster than most other new careers progress, hence why the average national salary is only £25k - if everyone else progressed anywhere near as fast that figure would be higher.
"Wrong again. Most primary teachers work at least a 50 hour week. They are often in school by 8 am and leave between 5pm and 6pm, and most bring marking home to do in the evenings (at least another hour per day at home). Secondary teachers tend to work similar hours. This is one of the reasons why I left teaching after doing it for three years."
Completely and utterly false regarding primary school teachers. I worked in IT support in schools for some years, and covered 171 schools, of those 130 or so were primary schools. Gone 4pm there was rarely a teacher in sight, they do NOT work until 5pm/6pm apart from on very rare occasions. The only exception would tend to be head teachers, or those who have volunteered to run after school activities for extra pay. You're more right regarding secondary though, although 6pm tended to be a push there, it was rarely anything other than the caretaker there at that time asking if you could basically fuck off so he could lock up and go home, again with only a few exceptions - i.e. parents evening. I'm not talking about some personal anecdote from a single school I worked in here, I'm talking about multiple years experience in over a hundred schools, having spoken to thousands of teachers in that period. I know precisely what kind of hours the average teacher does, rather than what they claim to do when it comes to pay/pension negotiation time. I often joke with my few friends that are teachers about how they're living the dream as they can get home by 4pm most days to play XBox whilst I don't turn up to join them until 6pm and they're happy to admit it in such an informal setting.
"Bullshit. Once you get above the cleaner level, ie for managerial and technical positions, public sector pay is less than the equivalent in the private sector. People accept lower pay in return for a better pension deal. This is why so many are angry now that their pensions are being cut by the current government."
Completely false, I did 6 years in public sector, and can say first hand that this is absolutely not true. Further, the cross-party (Labour commissioned, Tory and Lib Dem supported) Hutton pensions review, as well as numerous 3rd party studies have found that there is absolutely no evidence that public sector workers receive less pay. I know I didn't whilst I worked there, I couldn't have found more money for the job role I was doing at the time in private sector (IT Support), much less in fact. I did however leave for more money in private sector doing something for which there was no local demand in public sector - software development. Job for job it's a complete fallacy that public sector workers receive less pay in return for a better pension they get equal or better pay, better pensions, and better leave - I was on 30 days after 5 years service up from 25 days, and 15 days off on accrued flexi time as an option too allowing me 45 days off a year, if 15 of them were built up as extra hours elsewhere in the year such as working late. I'm not sure why people like you persist with this fallacy when so many independent (and objective as you can possibly get) reviews and studies have debunked the myth that public sector pays less. It doesn't instill confidence that you're talking with an impartial voice when you push such a long debunked myth:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/local-government-netwo
Are you actually talking about the UK here? It doesn't sound like it.
Most primary school teachers in the UK do their lesson planning in their free periods between teaching.
Agreed, if I've noticed anything about affiliation and licensing it's that many Western military games are happy to license from companies like Boeing, Lockheed and such for their aircraft, but that you rarely see guns like the AK-47 licensed.
It's a classic example of the hypocrisy of American IP enforcement - everything American or to a lesser extent, Western must be licensed for use, but if it's something Iranian, Chinese, or Russian? Meh, just stick it in, who cares about licensing from them.
I'd be suprised if the Twitter comment is true, as it would imply every game to date has had to license every weapon and military vehicle going.
I think it's quite a grey area even then, I know in Desert Strike the Apache had a slightly different tail rotor, presumably to try and avoid any rights infringement and there have been similarly many games since that introduce iconic military equipment with absolutely minor alterations to hide the fact it's otherwise an exact copy.
I'm actually intrigued to get some cold hard facts on this subject, as I wonder how it effects indies - can indie games effectively never produce modern military games due to the fact they'd never be able to afford the licensing deals like EA can? Thus far no one seems to have sued over it, but no one seems to know the exact answer. Certainly it seems to just be a case of license from those likely to sue, and ignore the rest though.
It could be a country based thing, here in the UK teachers get around £30k once their training is complete which is £5k above the UK's national average salary, health isn't an issue here because of the NHS, but their pension scheme is, and still will be with the current proposed government reforms far more generous than the average person in private sector gets, if they even get one. They also get 13 weeks off a year.
In terms of working hours, secondary teachers get it harder as they have more lesson planning to do, more homework to mark and so forth but primary teachers would tend to work 8:30am - 4pm with the odd day of longer hours here and there (parents evening, setting up displays etc.).
Personally I'd argue here in the UK primary teachers get it far far too easy, but secondary school teachers not so much. If anything I think we need a £5k reduction in primary teacher pay and a maybe £3k increase in secondary pay.
You tend to find that in UK public sector in general that the pay is pretty good, and it'll pay more than private sector for most people from the outset of your working life, but if you're career oriented and hard working, then working in private sector starts to pay off in terms of higher salary around 10 years into your working life. If you're not career driven and are content with say, £30k and a fat pension to see you through your entire life then public sector is a much better option in terms of pay, leave allowances and so forth.
On one hand I can see why teachers etc. in the UK complain - the pay structure is very rigid and it is hard to get paid more beyond a certain point if you're career driven, there is a ceiling you tend to hit, which isn't there in private sector if you're good, but on the other hand the fact public sector pays so well and gives such great benefits from the very outset means there are a lot of people starting out with pay and perks well beyond their ability and they keep them all their working life which is why incompetence is a much bigger problem in UK public sector. When you give people £25k - £30k from the outset when they'd only be valued at maybe £15k in public sector they have no financial motivation to sort themselves out so they just sit in those jobs for as long as they can.
One final note is that these comments are oriented more towards office/professional occupations like IT, teaching, finance, marketing, hr, etc. I understand many public sector workers like cleaners and so forth get much lower pay than this and that similarly the likes of hedge fund managers get pay that dwarfs anything public sector.
It's called hyperbole, they weren't saying a cold hard 95% pirate, just that enough do to make it not financially worthwhile supporting the platform.
When someone says "Hey, that's cool" they don't literally mean it's cold you know.
But regardless thanks for proving my point for me, you pirate and try and justify it to yourself with some excuse and then complain when they wont release for the PC at all. That was precisely what I suspected was the case here - many people here are only whining because when they don't even develop the game for the PC at all they can no longer pirate it, not that they ever had any intention of buying it.
So really, you might as well keep on crying, they aren't in the business of making games for you for free which you can pirate.
"But that's not why they're dropping PC, they may be putting on that song and dance."
Okay well you seem to know more about Ubisoft's internal decisions than me then so why are they dropping it if it's not financial? If it's profitable like you say then what is their reason for choosing not to make a profit off that platform?
"But the whole industry knows, that if you make quality games, the PC market is VERY profitable."
Do they? So why are the vast majority of platinum selling titles no longer released on PC and only the exceptionally high selling titles like CoD and Skyrim released?
Activision is a pretty poor example when even most Activision titles aren't even released on the PC nowadays.
I can't see anything in the act about that:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/58
It seems to just reiterate the 6 year maximum period for a claim against a product. Other than that the act just seems to be about setting limits for civil procedings relating to things like mortgages and such.
Searching for myself I managed to find this, which does mention 2 years:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=en&numdoc=31999L0044&model=guichett
But however this is interpreted for a UK consumer still relies on it's implementation under UK law, and as there's no mention of the 2 year limit in any UK legislation then it's of no benefit to UK consumers.
I did find this however, which potentially clears up the confusion:
http://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/wordpress/eu-2-year-guarantee-sales-of-goods-act-gives-us-6-years-to-claim-for-faulty-appliances/
Effectively it seems to be the case that as the UK's 6 year period exceeds the 2 year period then our law is actually superior and so we have no need to change existing legislation. The downside is the EU law doesn't seem to outlaw putting the burden onto the consumer after 6 months to prove it was faulty from the outset, and so that has remained part of UK law.
Still, if you can find anything to demonstrate otherwise I'd like to see it, I've no doubt it'll come in useful one day, but as it stands it seems to be business as usual with the 6 month rule.
"The best solution there is to not rip things off."
Yes, and if people do copy a few dollars worth of music rather than buying it it's obviously worth making them lose everything over.
"Yes, unfortunately the Obama administration really did screw that up."
Ah, you're a Republican, that explains a lot. You do realise that it was Bush who put them all their in the first place and held them without trial for the first few years before Obama took over and continued the fuckup don't you?
"But things are getting straightened out so that enemy combatants, terrorists, and the like who fit into the awkward space between domestic arrests and uniformed soldiers in combat elsewhere can go back to being tried in a military venue."
So which category do you put the innocent ones into who haven't ever been charged with anything and for which no evidence of them ever being wrongdoers go into? are they the ones you say "the like"?
"In the meantime, your assertions about conditions in Guantanamo are, of course, made-up BS, and you know it."
Really? Which ones? Are you telling me Cuba doesn't actually reach extremely high temperatures? are you suggesting the people at Guantanamo are allowed to walk pretty freely around the prison? That doesn't stack up to even US provided film of the place.
"And endless parade of journalists, Red Cross people, and the like disagree with you, having been there themselves."
Well, no actually:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3179858.stm
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/07/cia-medics-guantanamo-torture-red-cross
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6526589.stm
Still, nice try at outright making things up to cover the fact that once again you actually don't have a clue about the topic at hand.
"Who cares where they are? If they're in the middle of plotting, executing, or supporting efforts to kill us, and the country in which they're hiding has no will or ability to do anything about it, it's exactly the right thing to do."
So what you're saying is that al Qaeda was justified with 9/11? they were after all attacking a country that had for some time been plotting it's downfall. Similarly, I assume you'd be okay with an Iranian nuke hitting Washington for the same reason? Or is this another one of those issues surrounding your misunderstanding of "neutral" as in "It's fair if the US does it, but no one else".
"Ah, I see. So when a campus cop goes ove the top dealing with people blocking the street, that's a sure sign of actual, nation-wide policy, right?"
I think you need to stop watching Fox news. You seem to genuinely believe that it's okay if beatings/abuse/killings by people in positions of authority happen all over the US regularly as long as their superiors can deny responsibility, whilst if the Iranian government denies responsibility for some of the actions of the republican guard, it's different? Again, you really don't get this neutral thing do you?
Look, if I'm honest, I'm not really disagreeing with you that the Iranian leadership is pretty awful, I'm being difficult to make the point to you that it's not as simple as you think. I'm making the point that it's hard to criticise Iran on the human rights board when the US does have a far far less than perfect track record on it. By letting Iran onto the board, to call out the US on it's abuses it keeps Western governments in check - the last thing they want is to be embarassed over fuckups in their own country and get called out on it by someone as hypocritical as Iran, but without Iran being put in this position it would just mean countries like the US could continue with their abuses uncontested. A bit of international em
Unfortunately it would seem someone does, seeing as I got modded down for that.
I guess someone reads the Daily Mail, or is as xenophobic, ignorant, and far right as it's readership if they don't.
Can you point to this in legislation? I believe the GP is right, everything I've seen in the Sale of Goods Act and Consumer Protection Act seems to suggest 6 months statutory burden on the seller to prove user fault, and after 6 months on the buyer. Most companies if you push it wont ask you to prove you weren't at fault though because they know full well that you weren't and that in pushing it to that point could escalate their costs as they may then face small claims court costs, costs for time and money spent trying to get them to accept fault etc. too.
John Lewis isn't just accepting a legal minimum with their 2 years at all, they're just saying that they'll accept fault assuming there is no obvious evidence of user damage no questions asked and deal with the problem up to 2 years. It just gives you piece of mind that they wont try and shirk their obligations by trying to shift burden of proof of cause of fault onto you, which is something you don't have with the likes of Dixons group stores.
I had a look for the 2 year period you mention but can find absolutely no evidence of it in the acts themselves:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/54
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1987/43
Further, all of the consumer advice organisation seem to be agreeing with the 6 months, and again no mention of 2 years so I'm not sure where you dug up the 2 years figure from:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/consumer-rights-refunds-exchange
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_world/consumer_affairs/buying_goods_your_rights.htm
http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/sale-of-goods/understanding-the-sale-of-goods-act/your-rights/
Six months doesn't sound great, but in practice it works well, I've had a leather office chair replaced outright by Staples after 2.5 years because the pump went on it because they knew it should last longer than that, and similarly my Dell laptop was replaced at 3 years and 1 month with a newer model because it was high end and should've lasted longer and they knew they couldn't just shirk it off as "out of warranty now". The maximum period for a claim is 6 years.
"Iran's government policies include criminal enforcement of beard length, and the banning of words like "pizza" (legally, you must refer to them as "elastic loaves" in order to not be prosecuted by the religious dictatorship). It would be interesting to see your food-name-banning references and beard-length-police equivalents in "most" western countries."
Yeah, law enforcement in the US is much more sane, I mean, they just allow civil cases where sharing a few files on Kazaa can leave you destitute and bankrupt with a multi-million dollar fine. It's far more sane!
"To say nothing of routinely gunning down people having protests. If "most of the west" were anything like Iran, there would be thousands dead in mass graves just from the whole "occupy" party-fest that's being held. Of course, you know that."
Yeah, America just performs extraordinary rendition kidnapping foreign citizens from foreign states only to torture them and then hold them without trial under constant civilians and restrictions on their ability to exercise in roasting hot cells at Guantanamo bay. That's between extrajudicial assassinations of foreign nationals inside foreign countries, and pepper spraying innocent protesters in the face at point blank range too of course. Also it's not like the Ohio national guard have ever gunned down innocent protesters at Kent State University either is it.
I don't think you understand what neutral means.
That's his point though, financial security tends to improve with age, as you get older you tend to have more money to buy games with.
It's the same for me, as I've got older I've started to spend more and more on games and haven't pirated a game in many many years now.
This is really what piracy comes down to - not people being cheap skates, but doing it simply because they want the content, but can't afford it. This is why the "lost sale" concept is a fallacy, piracy is about affordability of content and little else.
To be fair I suspect it's actually just more subtle than as mentioned in TFA.
This is The Daily Mail writing on an article from The Times, it may as well be the KKK writing on an article from the Nazis.
Realistically this is just their weekly attempt at stirring up hatred for muslims as both The Times and The Daily Mail are staunch supporters of christianity and christian values (Porn is evil etc.), and are far right to boot.
They hate anything that isn't a white British Christian and use their publications weekly to push that agenda.
I suspect the truth is something more along the lines of "One or two muslim kids weren't smart enough to cope with the course content so used some shitty excuse about it being against their religion and walked out the class, so we extrapolated this to say lots and lots of muslims are doing it, far more than any christian kids who have ever given up on a class with some shitty excuse because it was too hard for them.".
The additional irony is their "Even Richard Dawkins experienced this!" - yes, Richard Dawkins, their usual arch enemy because he doesn't believe in god.
You only have to look at their style of writing to see my point:
"Similar to the beliefs expressed by fundamentalist Christians, Muslim opponents to Darwinism maintain that Allah created the world, mankind and all known species in a single act."
Note the fundamentalist Christians vs. Muslims - so if they have this belief and are Christian they're fundamentalists, but for muslims there's no such distinction - it's not just the fundamentalists, all muslims are the same! - that's what they're implying. It's bullshit.
Sure it'd be nice if the people in question just admitted they don't really like the course or can't keep up, but some people have too much pride to simply admit that.
"You start off very well by comparing numbers as if they mean something, and then when you admit that we don't know Steam's numbers, you try to state that the numbers don't mean anything, because of the bottom line."
So out of interest, you seem to be implying I'm wrong about it being about the bottom line at the end of the day, what do you propose is the reason for developers skipping the PC as a platform so often when developing AAA titles then?
Aversion to making a profit?
Hatred of PC gamers?
The developers themselves are console platform fanboys even though they do the development on PCs?
A lot of people have made the implication you have without a rational explanation as to why these companies would avoid the platform if there is as they imply, so much profit to be made by supporting it.
It's all very well to shoot down an argument, but if you can't give a good reason as to why that argument is wrong and an alternative explanation for the scenario then you might as well believe the earth is 6000 years old, is flat, and that global warming isn't happening.
If you have a better explanation though, I'd love to hear it - unlike many hear I'm quite open to accepting a new explanation and point of view if it makes sense and is well founded. If you don't have a better more rational explanation though I can only assume I'm right, and as usual, the fanboys are just in a pissy huff about their pet platform being neglected.
At the end of the day companies like Ubisoft are out to make money - we may not have Steam sales figures, but they know exactly how much money they've made and if it ceases to be worthwhile, they'll cease to do it. All they are basically saying in TFA is "We've reached the point where it's no longer worthwhile, if all the piracy figures were sales figures then it would be worthwhile, but as they're not then it's not worthwhile". I'm not sure what's so wrong about that other than single platform crybabies upset that they're not going to get a new game, even though they claim they "don't want it anyway".
I don't disagree with your last paragraph, I still think UO was the best MMO to date, and Quake 1 still my favourite all time FPS. I'm also dissapointed that many classic games haven't had worthwhile remakes or new franchises based around that gameplay - from desert strike to syndicate, and magic carpet to cannon fodder, there's a lot of good old game types lost in time but that are still more fun than made modern state of the art games. Gameplay is king for sure.
Thank you for adding the only sane, rational post to the discussion. Every single other response has missed the point with "But VGChartz is WRONG!" or "The PC is still the best" whilst ignoring my core point - that many developers have ditched and are ditching the PC as a platform because of the raw numbers they make in profit.
The worst part is they miss the sheer contradiction in their own arguments - "Console gaming isn't more profitable, Microsoft and Sony take a cut!" - what? and they think Valve offers their Steam services for free?
As I mentioned previously that has been entirely missed - the decision to stop supporting the PC for certain titles is entirely down to the net profit and if the net profit is negative or small, then their time is better spent on something where the net profit is high, and a lot of that means working on console DLC or new console titles instead.
So again, thanks for adding your rational and informed voice to the conversation, it's a shame the zealots are too blinded by their fanboyism to recognise the fallacy of their arguments, and more importantly - miss the fundamental point. Perhaps the worst part is now I've posed the cost question to them - i.e. "Why are developers abandoning the platform if there's worthwhile profit to be made?" I can already predict the responses - "They're not abandoning the platform, the PC has loads of AAA titles getting released for it!", and so we're back to square one - the article itself which shows that's clearly not the case.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussion here because the fanboys nowadays are so childish and irrational over the issue but hey, no skin off my back I guess. As I say, I've got both platforms, so when in their ignorance their favourite platform fades away it wont cause me any inconvenience. They're already missing out on countless really good console titles whilst they wait months between the odd good PC title here and there.
Well if you what you say is true- that digital sales massively increase profits, that the PC isn't more expensive to develop for, and that this is just Ubisoft whining. Then why have so many other studios ditched the PC? Why are so many of today's total AAA titles not ended up on the PC? Why would these companies turn down the chance to make so much more profit on a title?
As I pointed to in my post, even ignoring the figures these firms have decided the PC is unprofitable regardless - and they've done this based on the resultant profits they gain from sales - obviously they've deemed these aren't enough to make the PC worthwhile.
Short of stupid conspiracy theories I see little reason why else companies would have abandoned the platform for their AAA titles.
Or are the PC zealots now going to start claiming companies haven't abandoned the platform? If so I can gladly list a few hundred games over the last few years that were high budget, million+ selling, but haven't ever ended up on the PC.
Yes, but I covered precisely this point in my post.
If companies are pulling out of the market regardless because it's not profitable it demonstrates that no matter how many more digital sales there are, they're obviously not enough to make it a platform worthwhile porting to, and that's really my core point regardless of the actual figures.
It's not like they're avoiding the PC platform out of spite, if there's profit there they'd support it, but there isn't, so they're not, it's really that simple.