I went to the Darwin exhibition in the natural history museum in London the other week. There was a small section with a timeline on the history of the acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution and the only country past the 50s that really seemed to have much trouble with it is the US where it has been repeatedly fought over for the last 30 years or so.
How can arguably the world's number 1 science and technology leader simultaneously be so utterly backwards when it comes to teaching science compared to much of the rest of the world? It makes me wonder how much further ahead the US might be in science and technology if you didn't have these idiots holding your education system back.
I've always found the US quite a paradox in this respect, full of so many of the worlds most intelligent people producing some of the most groundbreaking science and technology research, yet someone as dumb as Sarah Palin can make it all the way to VP nomination and GWB all the way to the whitehouse. What the hell is up with that? I mean here in the UK we had the likes of princess Jade Goody as everyone's little angel but at least there was no hope of her ever running the country.
Why is it the more advanced Western countries seem to get, the more idiocy seems to be celebrated and rewarded?
"Only when they only admit freedom-based societies as voting members will it be a body that can work for actual good. Fear-based societies, who mistreat their own people, have no business telling other countries how to treat their people."
That's not what the UN is about though. The UN is about getting majority international consensus. If you start banning countries from the UN you're not getting democratic international consensus, you're getting a dictatorship where those who control the morals which the UN would admit entry based on dictate how the world should be run. You have to realise that in places like Iran, China and Russia despite their severe oppression of free speech the people of those countries still support their governments. You're effectively saying their voice isn't relevant because they don't want their country to be run the same way as you think it should be run.
Other groups like the Commonwealth have expelled countries when they've been guilty of abusing human rights and that sort of thing before and if those groups want to do it then that's fine because it's designed to only involve a small number of countries but the UN is a world organisation, it has to represent the world, not just a small subset of countries.
Just be glad the majority of countries in the world do support the idea of freedom and that the majority aren't oppressive states, else you might have had somewhere here posting the exact opposite of what you're asking.
It's hypocritical to suggest we should block the viewpoint of entire nations from the world stage because they don't have the same point of view as you because then you're really no better than they are. Even most "free" countries don't allow absolutely free speech anyway - you can't offer a viewpoint that's sympathetic to the nazis in many European nations for example, whereas in Iran you're more than welcome to, but also in Iran if you criticise Islam you'll find yourself in trouble too so I think you'd probably struggle to find any nation on Earth that allows absolute free speech at least, you'd have to do it on partial freedom, but good luck figuring out where the line between partial freedom and real oppression of freedom lies.
What you're asking for is a group that uses it's strength to bully other nations into adhering to its member nation's ways. What the UN does is allows everyone a say and uses democracy to figure out the consensus path. It's much better to show these nations the power of free speech and democracy so that they can figure it out for themselves than it is to try and force them to change in which case they'll probably just get more pissed off and more defiant towards you.
Besides, all organisations that have existed in the manner you mention where they aim to be global but where they also control membership by forcing requirements on nations have ultimately been abused. You only have to look at the likes of the WTO where the US wants everyone in if they adhere to its rules, but where it doesn't adhere to the rules itself and outright ignores rulings against it.
The UN contains pretty much every country in the world apart from Vatican City (by choice) and Taiwan (because it's not officially recognised as an independent nation) as well as one or two other territories because of similar technicalities (i.e. they're not independent countries anyway). It's not just a select group.
lol? so you think scientists can continue to do much of the science they do without any public funding?
What a joke. Do you really believe projects like the LHC absolutely can be funded out of scientists own back pockets? it's not something that any commercial outfit would be willing to fully sponsor.
Who exactly do you think would pay for massive super computers to help produce climate change models to predict the impact when no commercial company would sponsor it (particularly because global warming related climate change results are ultimately bad news for most companies) and if the politicians were refusing to allow public money to spend it too?
You really believe scientists should be magically creating billions of pounds from somewhere to fund all this alone? Seriously where the hell do you expect the money to come from when it's not going to come from corporates and if it's not going to come from the public through lack of political will?
So please tell me, as you seem to suggest that you're a scientist (by your use of the word "We") how you might go about actually finding out these risks in the first place if you have no money to do so? Research equipment doesn't come free you know.
I didn't say I disagreed that we should have plans in place for this sort of thing. My post was in response to the parent post to mine. He seemed to be suggesting that we should all consider living a survivalist lifestyle in the unlikely scenario that we may be hit by this kind of event. I was responding to that, because clearly I do not think throwing everything you know and own away and changing your entire life and living a survivalist lifestyle just in case something may or may not happen is the brightest of ideas.
Slashdot uses a threaded posting layout, try following the full thread rather than just picking out individual posts and assuming they're a direct response to TFA before responding in such an arrogant manner next time.
If anything I agree with you totally, this issue should be taken seriously, but the solution shouldn't involve changing your entire lifestyle and living by yourself in the wilderness off of the wilderness like the parent I was responding to seemed to be suggesting.
The point is, scientists rely on officials for funding, and certainly here in the UK at least the politicians would rather spend money on things like DNA databases and supression of it's citizens than anything that they see as such an inconvenience as science.
To put it into context with some figures, the British government is working on an ID card scheme which has been predicted to cost as much as £18bn despite no opposition parties being for the scheme and despite the citizens and many other top figures such as the ex-security services chief being against it. The government also cut £80 million of funding for science a year or so ago meaning we had to cut some important research projects, see here:
Of course, Britain is only one of many countries but it's still a good example of how well politicians and science go together. If Britain's Labour government can spend £18bn on a scheme no one wants and which is essentially unworkable whilst telling scientists they have to cut £80m of projects, it shows how important science is to politicians.
Make no mistake, "officials" most definitely are at fault. There are plenty of scientists willing to do the science but they can't do it alone, without funding, in their garage.
You're suggesting that because a freak event may or may not happen in someone's lifetime that they should consider living a life that they personally found miserable, so that they could point and say "Hah! I told you so!" for a few days before everyone gets power back and start playing on their XBox's in their nice warm heated houses again?
I'm not convinced it's worth drastically altering your life away from what you know and enjoy for something that may or may not ever actually happen and when it does would realistically just inconvenience you for a short period of time before getting back to normal (it wouldn't be as bad as the summary/article suggests anymore than we'd be getting blown up by terrorists daily if we listened to the Bush/British governments).
The article cites Quebec in 1989 as an example, yet today Quebec doesn't seem to be the desolate Fallout style wasteland where everyone is fending for themselves and millions die that the article infers might happen.
"Ah, but this isn't true. We buy lots of things that we have no expectation of being able to resell it. If our hypothetical person X buys a cup of coffee, walks into his office and is fired - can he sell the cup of coffee? It would be rare circumstance in which he could.
Anything personalized falls into this category; I don't want to buy your business cards off you, your nameplate, any of that. I might spend a lot of money on a portrait of my family, but there isn't going to be much chance anyone is going to buy that from me. One can buy cell phone service plans, house insurance, food, gourmet food, rose bulbs, club memberships, magazines - never with the thought that these things will be able to be traded in for something else if your circumstance changes."
Erm, your argument has fallen flat on it's face because you can in fact sell all of these things. People may not want to buy them, but you can sell them, and that's the key difference. Valve is actively preventing you selling a Steam game because there is no way to transfer it to a new owner whereas there is nothing stopping you transferring the cup of coffee, the nameplate, the business cards and so on. To use your analogy, it would be akin to trying to sell the nameplate to someone willing to buy it, them giving you the cash, then the guy who made the nameplate originally coming along and physically preventing you from handing it over to the guy, that's effectively what this type of DRM is doing.
You're confusing "not being able to sell" with "no one wanting to buy", of course, these are two completely different things.
"That is an assumption on your part. Networking back-ends can be complicated"
Ah, another straw man. Whatever Steam's SDK adds does not need to be attached to the DRM components it adds, anything it adds over and above DRM could be implemented without also implementing DRM.
Both points you've raised are fundamentally flawed in ways so easy to spot I can only guess you're playing devils advocate for the sake of it, even when you have no valid point to back that stance up with. Particularly in the case of the initial point, I'm amazed if anyone would intentionally make such a flawed comparison.
I'm going to approach this from another point of view. That of someone who doesn't sell on games, I understand the idea of that upsets some people, but stick with me.
Imagine this scenario, person X has made an average living for themselves, they've got a car, a house, a big DVD collection, a TV, a toaster, a nice gaming PC with legit copies of Microsoft Office, Windows and a bunch of games.
Person X loses his job because of the recession, his wife falls ill, he needs money quick.
Please explain to me, why the only item from his list of stuff he owns that he can't sell on second hand are his DRM protected games? He can sell his music CD collection, his car, his toaster, his PC, even his copies of Windows and Office (assuming they weren't OEM) but he can't sell on his games because an artificial restriction has been created.
You mention that we shouldn't be treating things like physical items, but this guy could even sell on his legitimate MP3 collection bought from places like play.com, he couldn't however sell on his copy of Dawn of War II however even if he owned a physical copy of it, because he had to tie his activation key to Steam, and Valve wont even let you sell on Steam accounts.
Why is it acceptable the only thing in and even including his house he can't sell are his DRM protected games because of nothing more than an artificially imposed restriction?
Still a couple of points worth addressing:
"The extra thing has changed, but how does that inherently make a difference? Why does this thing cause a problem and not some other thing."
This "thing" explicitly controls what I can and can't do with the software. It's whole purpose is to control what I can do in contrast to the other items you mention. It is also non-essential, it doesn't provide anything that the game could work perfectly well with without in contrast to specific processor requirements, or API versions.
"You even seem to be implying you'd eventually offload a game - so why are you worried about when Steam goes away as a company?"
Why do you assume I'd offload every game I own and not just some? What if Steam goes away before I offload it?
"but in the real world why the hell woudl anybody except people wanting games for free think that is a good idea, or could possibly work in the real world?"
Probably because it always has. Here's a list of top selling PC games of all time, over 90% of that list is comprised of games that never had DRM or absolute worst case required you to enter a CD key:
I suppose someone may suggest the argument that because most of those games have been out longer, they're bound to have higher sales figures, but that doesn't stand up when you compare to lists for other platforms such as consoles where DRM doesn't cause the consumer any problems. For example, Gears of War 2, out only 5 months has shifted 4million units despite the PC gaming market being much bigger.
Either way though, one thing is for sure, as you can see, DRM certainly hasn't helped PC game sales and they have on average decreased drastically since it became prominent even if we can't say for sure that it's hindered it.
FWIW, I'm now primarily a console gamer because I got sick of dealing with DRM and the bugginess of PC games. I do not believe I'm alone (well, I know I'm not some friends are in the same boat). Let's just say you're right and that DRM does prevent some piracy at least - I wonder, does the amount it prevents really outweigh the amount of customers it pushes away? Judging by the decline in PC gaming it seems unlikely.
One final point, you ask about the craziness of allowing anyone to download a game - consider this, the music industry has finally agreed to drop DRM which affords the same result, in fact, more prominently because copying an MP3 or sending it via IM or something is trivial compared to downloading a whole game, and yet online music sales are still increasing.
Is it really such an insane idea in the context that it's historically worked better than it is now and in the context that it's working in other markets?
"I love that people who rail against having to pay some arbitrary price to the developers of a game immediately turn around and claim they have a right to resell their copy of the game."
That doesn't make much sense, those buying a specific game are the ones who'd be able to sell them on, so specifically aren't the ones who have a problem paying the specified price for the game.
And one other point because lots of people seem to have missed it:
"Despite Steam, you have the option to buy games in a box, and furthermore you have the option to buy them second hand."
A lot of boxed games now force you to install and activate Steam, so for those games the second hand market has been killed off whether you buy it online via Steam or in a store.
The problem is that any form of DRM should not in any way inconvenience the user or remove their rights. Steam is guilty of both of these and as yet Valve has not taken any real steps to rectify them (the changes in TFA don't seem to resolve a lot of the fundamental problems). Being able to transfer games to other accounts, even if Valve charged a small amount for the service would be a good first step so that people could in fact sell their games on.
"You also blithely ignore the fact that in some ways DRM can be positive. Restrictive DRM stops me from letting my friends install my copy of a game."
That's not a positive for the consumer but I understand what you're getting at. The problem is that it also stops you selling your game on second hand, which ultimately means people have more money to spend on new games as well. Certainly for most kids who don't have any real income this was the only way they could get new games legitimately, and will ultimately have to resort to piracy instead. Effectively what Valve and yourself are saying is that Valve's right to protect it's game is more important than the consumer's right to be able to sell on the game second hand.
I don't even disagree with you entirely though that DRM in any form is unacceptable and I understand fully what Valve is trying to achieve. My greivance is that they're acheiving it at the expense of the consumers rights and it is that that I find unacceptable. If they really were working for the consumer then the first thing they'd have enabled was allowing the transfer of a game to a different account but they have quite explicitly disabled that and only allow it if a game is bought specifically as a gift.
If DRM had no effect on legitimate use I could accept it, but in Valve's case it does. This is where the problem is and it's not simply because they haven't perfect it yet - as in the above point about not being able to transfer activated games even though the facility clearly exists because you can do it with inactivated games it's quite clear that Valve do not have a fair interest in balancing the consumer's needs against their own.
The only thing I do still take a lot of issue with in your post is that there are any positive aspects of DRM - for the consumer there absolutely are not. Everything that is offered could be offered without DRM as far as the consumer is concerned and hence without the negative aspects too. DRM benefits only the provider and as such it should be their responsibility to ensure it does not in any way inconvenience, cause problems for, or remove the rights of the consumer. Valve are currently not making enough effort towards this goal and this is the crux of my argument.
"Really, Valve does have some competition thanks to Microsoft's Live! (Xbox/PC games)"
Microsoft's Live isn't a distribution channel, it is however as you state a Framework for building games that are social. Effectively then, you've made my argument against yours for me- you've given a great example of how a common social API/Framework can exist without being attached to DRM and distribution. Just like DirectX or OpenGL can act as common graphics APIs, there is no reason that you can't have a standardised API for handling social networking in games.
"What you were comparing it to was a company actively trying to inhibit consumers from doing what they want and to use questionable ethics in dealings with competitors and OEMs in order to foist their product on everyone. Steam does not make any of the games there (parent company Valve does make some but not all) and they actively try to *enable* the consumer."
I'm not sure you know what you're on about, some points:
- Steam isn't a company under Valve, it's a product developed by Valve, so the assertion that Steam doesn't develop games but it's parent company does is non-sensical, Valve develop games, and Valve develop Steam.
- "What you were comparing it to was a company actively trying to inhibit consumers from doing what they want", er, you do know that's exactly what DRM does right? Steam prevents people selling games on second hand, limits when they can activate etc.
- Yes they do use questionable tactics to force their product onto consumers, they have a big enough share of the distribution market that they can't be ignored by developers and they use this position to force companies that want their game distributed on Steam to activate via Steam even if the game isn't sold entirely via Steam so that even those who avoid Steam and buy in retail channels end up having to install and deal with Steam.
You seem to make the assumption that I do actually buy Steam games anymore, I don't.
I still however have to use it to buy games I have bought, many of which when you buy online from online retailers don't advertise that the game is a Steam based game meaning you either have to deal with fucking around returning it, or can't avoid purchasing games that force you to use Steam to start with.
The other assumption you make is that it's not possible to have a service that doesn't have these restrictions, you assume it's acceptable because it's there. Being there doesn't make it acceptable, even those who find it acceptable enough to continue using would do well to voice their distaste rather than defend it because surely even you would prefer to have guarantees that you aren't going to get fucked by the DRM rather than keeping your fingers crossed and assuming that because it hasn't burnt you yet, it's never going to?
"Conversely, it allows me to do wonderful things that I would never have been able to do using another system."
Huh? Why do you have to have DRM to be able to download games? It's not going to stop piracy, DRM just means someone who wants it free will grab it off The Pirate Bay instead.
"But I doubt you'll ever outnumber the people like me who are more than happy with the system, and a grateful that at least one company seem to be doing DRM in a way that's fairly sensible."
The point is DRM doesn't need to be done at all, it doesn't stop piracy, only screws legitimate consumers and has no purpose other than to kill off the perfectly legal second hand market or to control what consumers can do with their software. Also, I'm glad you're confident that people who hate Valve's DRM are in a minority that can be ignored, but judging by this very article Valve do not feel the same and do at least listen to those of us who are raising concerns and boycotting the service. The changes they are making however, are still not enough.
The premise of most of your arguments is that DRM is essential, it's not. Wouldn't you prefer to have the same service minus the DRM? It's well known that DRM achieves nothing.
"You can hardly blame steam or valve for the economy, the GBP has gone down the toilet, so what do you expect?"
I'm not sure you understood what I was saying. Valve used to charge British people in US dollars so we used to get it for whatever the exchange rate was. Now they're charging us in British sterling and so the price is different. My complaint wasn't about a changing exchange rate because that is not the issue, my complaint is that we're being charged more because Valve have started charging people based on their home currency so that everyone in every country pays a different amount rather than everyone paying the same amount because everyone just payed the US dollar price. As a result we are paying more than the US, not because of the exchange rate, but simply because they have upped the price in moving Steam to a localised currency based system rather than a single currency system. People in other localities are getting it even cheaper again than the US. The exchange rate is irrelevant to what has happened, this was effectively an out and out price rise for many people in many countries.
"If the price is similar to shop-bought, you're trading the ability to sell second hand for the ability to install the game anywhere without actually bringing the box with you. Its up to you to decide if thats what you want. It hardly makes steam the source of all evil."
No, because even shop bought games force you to install and activate via Steam because it's a condition Valve are imposing on people if they want to be able to distribute their game via Steam as well as via stores. It doesn't matter where I buy these games, whether it's on Steam or in a shop, I can't sell them on second hand regardless.
"It certainly has issues, and some features I'm less than happy with - but compared to pretty much any other DRM I've tried, its really not that bad, and it even has the bonus of being able to install anywhere without the CD. Comparing it to the crap that came with spore, or the horrible cries of pain that the Crysis DRM produced from my dvd drive - I'll take steam any day."
You're falling into exactly the same trap I did. You're saying Steam is acceptable because compared to other DRM such as that in Spore and Crysis you've had no problems. I thought the same until I had issues with Steam (Dawn of War II activation). I actually had no issues with Spore or Crysis, and in fact I did not even realise Spore installed SecuROM or had evil DRM until I read about it here. I too would probably have assumed that because at that point in time I'd had no problems that Spore's DRM was fine. This is generally my point, most people don't realise how bad DRM (whether it's EA's, Valve's or anyone elses) actually is until it bites them on the arse.
It's foolish to defend it because you can never tell whether if you're going to end up getting burnt yourself. I believe, in time, everyone will get burnt by it eventually, the question is whether by that point it's too late because it's in every product you buy or not.
Military intervention absolutely is useful, the issue is that it's not being backed up by the improvements to peoples lives through engineering projects and so forth that must go with it.
Part the issue in Afghanistan, particularly in the South is that as soon troops clear an area and move on to clear the next the Taliban are moving back in and destroying any projects created to help the people or preventing any new projects being started.
More combat troops are required to keep ground held so that the other, longer term changes can be made to improve things like providing reliable road networks, power sources, fresh water and so on.
So we do need more combat troops for sure, it's just that that's not all we need - we need to back it up with real changes to make people's lives better. My comments regarding Germany's politicians using the excuse of the past to avoid combat operations is also not based on speculation but fact, as we have had on the news here in the UK German politicians stating this as the very reason they are not interested in combat so it does seem to be a very real feeling that they don't want to get involved because they're afraid of how people might see them rather than because they don't think it'll help.
If Germany didn't feel troops would help then there's little reason for them to be there at all. But also the idea that the Afghan people don't want us there seems false, documentary after documentary from countless impartial sources shows that most Afghans want peace above anything else, but as a secondary objective would love to have peace without the Taliban being the ones imposing it - they would much rather it comes from us. The people do want us there, they just want us to do the job properly and it's that that we're not doing. A lot of current schemes seem to be focussed on actually using the Afghan people who want us there to fight with us - I remember reading a very recent article on the BBC about Afghan militia that were fighting against the Taliban.
It's not like the soviet occupation or the 19th century British occupation where the majority of the people didn't want what we were imposing, your average Afghan is on our side this time round and that's the fundamental difference and why it's wrong to make a direct comparison to past invasions. In the 19th century the British were there to impose colonial rule, in the 80s, the Russians were there to bolster an unpopular communist government, neither had the support of the general population.
It's also worth pointing out that further evidence as to us being wanted there is the fact that Afghanistan is nowhere as messy as Iraq - the only people attacking us and the civilian population are the Taliban as opposed to the various tribes and religious sects fighting each other which would undoubtedly be the case (as it was in Iraq) if the Afghan people weren't aligned in what they want. A lot of people say we're failing in Afghanistan but really, the quality of life across large parts of the country has increased massively and the kind of death tolls we see in Afghanistan are absolutely minimal compared to Iraq. The real problem is that we're stalled and breaking away from that requires more troops, more investment, and more effort to work with the people (rather than accidently killing them all the damn time). The real danger is if we don't break away from that, because then we certainly will see decline.
A suggested increase of the Afghan army to 200,000 troops, another 17,000 troops from the US are going to be a good help, even if it only means we can stem the flow of Taliban from Pakistan by defending Afghanistans borders better.
I didn't realise German secret services were involved in that sort of thing.
That and this article certainly shines a whole new light on German politics for me. It seems hypocritical that they're not willing to perform combat operations in Afghanistan because of fears this will make people link it to it's Nazi past in being seen as an oppressive force yet meanwhile, back home, their security services are, well, acting as an oppressive force?
It sounds like Germany's political elite are suffering an identity crisis - do they accept they've moved on (which they have) and that they can stop worrying about how people will view them and actually do something useful in Afghanistan or do they keep living under that cloud of fear of what people think of them and their past, in which case, they need to stop doing shit like this because this sort of thing links them to their past much more strongly than actually doing their fair share in Afghanistan would.
They can't have it both ways, either do something useful in Afghanistan and stop caring what others think or stop doing this kind of shit to oppress your citizens back home.
Just don't use Maxtor drives if you actually want to be able to retrieve your data at any point.
Where I used to work we had 6 dead Maxtor drives in as many months. Luckily this was spread across 3 servers which had 4 backup drives each but it certainly taught a lesson that some hard drive manufacturers are less than reliable.
It's probably also worth pointing out we had some Seagate drives bought at a different time, stored along with all the Maxtor drives and used in the same way without a problem, so it didn't seem to be anything we were doing, but then this was also around the time that Maxtor were dropping their warranty to 1 year from 3 years whilst Seagate was upping theres to 5 years from 3 years which speaks volumes.
The moral of the story is though, always check your backup media regularly too, and don't rely on just one or two backup drives if your data really is that important.
"If you are willing to pay for a tangible thing or a real world service that you love, why not an internet based one?"
Well non-internet radio is free, so that's one reason why I can see people wouldn't be willing to pay internet radio - they could after all just switch back to non-internet radio.
But I think the bigger reason the AC made this distinction is because online services already make their money - enough to cover costs and still make a profit - through advertising. If they are asking you to pay on top, it is simply because they want to make more money, and at that point it's easy to just see it as greed whether it really is or not. More importantly though, on the internet, the chances are the service almost certainly exists free elsewhere and if it doesn't, the fact that it has been run free succesfully will encourage new people to make a similar service that is free knowing full well people will flock to it over the now pay-for competitor.
That said, in the context of this article it's interesting that it'll remain free in certain regions so it may not be this clear cut. I assume this is because the regions it'll remain free in are the ones it feels it's getting enough ad revenue from but elsewhere is effectively just being subsidised by advertisers from the region it'll remain free in. If it has 7 users in Finland for example (just a random example, no truth in the figures) then no Finnish company is going to want to pay it to display ads, so effectively that territory would be getting subsidised by maybe the UK where advertisers are willing to pay thousands because there are 1million UK users for example (again just random numbers). I guess maybe they're just now asking users to pay their way because advertisers wont do it for them in other territories.
Well I suppose you could consider it the least limiting if you ignore all the limitations but that doesn't make a lot of sense now does it?
Valve DRM: - Limits when you can activate the game, if Valve ever goes bust and hence doesn't release a patch you'll never be able to activate your game again. Any problem with their activation servers will too prevent you from activating and hence playing a game you've purchased.
- Need to activate to play online, in the above scenario you could crack it to allow activation but will likely be unable to play online still
- Can't sell your games on second hand
- Prevents you playing games offline
- Forces you to have Steam on your system to be able to play a game that doesn't use Steam's features even if you bought it outside of Steam's distribution channel
- Forces you to accept updates to be able to play (What if you come home, want to play a game you've bought but find you have to download a 100mb+ update and you have to pay for your bandwidth because it's capped like many people in the UK do?)
Effectively whilst most classic DRM can be used to prevent people copying game disks, it does at very least allow continued ownership of the product, the ability to install it at will even after the company has gone bust and still allows you to sell the product on second hand, Steam removes the product from your control entirely even if you have purchased the actual physical media in a shop. Valve also can prevent activation of a product you didn't even buy from them as happened with me with DoW2, I purchased it from GAME but Valve initially prevented me from activating even though according to the box my only transaction with Valve should have been to register (not activate) with them.
Ignoring the limitations imposed by Steam's DRM does not mean that they are not there.
"If Steam sales suck, then game producers will use a different distribution channel. If Steam sales are good, then obviously the value they provide for the price they are charging is not a problem."
It's not that simple I'm afraid. Steam has gained a foothold in the marketplace too big for game developers to ignore, mostly through initially offering good service and fixed prices wherever you were in the world so that everyone paid the same.
Now they have that foothold, game developers need to publish through Steam or face poor sales, but to do so they have to include Steam activation as part of their product even if sold in boxes in the retail channel. This means that Steam gets forced onto your system even when you don't buy via Steam.
This is absolutely as bad as Microsoft using it's monopoly position to force IE on users, Valve are similarly abusing their strong position to force Steam and Steam activation on users. Developers can't go elsewhere because it's too big a market to ignore.
This is a new phenomenon and only effects a handful of games so far but the amount is increasing very rapidly, week on week new titles are affected.
It's probably also worth noting that Gamestop refused to sell Dawn of War 2 in the end for exactly the reason that it forced Steam, a competing distribution channel, on it's customers. Frankly, I think that's a pretty noble step but it's also of course in their interest long term because they recognise the threat, even if it meant short term loss of sales. If the problem is being noticed by the largest game retailers then I think it's naive if we don't take notice too and stop it now.
Do we really want a world where Valve control all game distribution? Where Valve's own titles mysteriously work better than 3rd party titles to make them appear better than the competition just like Microsoft leveraged their monopoly and used their closed libraries to make their products better than a competitor's?
That's because the negative points about Steam haven't affected you yet.
I to was a happy, naive steam user since it's release who would similarly have praised it up until a few weeks ago when they fucked me with their Dawn of War II DRM.
Now I realise how flawed Steam actually is and that at any time they could revoke my ability to re-install the game, the fact I have a boxed copy bought from a shop but because I have to activate by Steam I will never be able to sell on that boxed copy 2nd hand.
I wish I hadn't been so naive now, because it's naivety like yours (and formerly like mine) as to how bad Steam actually is that's allowing it to gain traction and become ever more evil and problematic.
I was buying games in US dollars on there not so long ago with a $2 US to the £ exchange rate and now I'm suddenly seeing games the same as UK shop RRPs like £39.99 so I'm being forced to pay much more than people abroad for the same product, the same as I'd pay for a boxed copy in the UK but without getting it boxed and can't sell it on second hand. The net is already tightening with Steam, they've already upped costs, they're already imposing control over games bought outside of Steam and not developed by Valve if companies wish to also have their game available on Steam as well.
Make no mistake, Valve are the new EA and whilst like you, millions would say "Well I've never had a problem with Spore", they will when they install it a 5th time and don't know where to find the patch to remove that limitation, unfortunately with Valve, there is no patch, well, not official ones anyway.
I liked Valve when they just developed the Half-Life series etc. but as a company that is now leveraging the prominence of their system to gain control over games sold outside their distribution channel such as retail shops, as a company that's artificially increasing prices, as a company that's destroying people's legal right to sell on games second hand and as a company that's imposing artificial restrictions on when people can and can't install their game? I'll pass thanks.
The countless flaws with Steam haven't effected you yet, but as the net tightens they will. Their practices are anti-competitive, controlling and hence harmful to the customer.
What makes the whole situation worse is that Valve have built themselves an army of fanboys more rabid than even Steve Jobs has managed that cry about how they hate DRM one minute but give all the support in the world to Valve who are the joint worst DRM offenders in the whole industry with EA right now. Why? Because Gabe Newell tells us he hates DRM so that people bow down whilst he's simultaneously enforcing some of the most limiting DRM in the software world on people?
"There are those who would say we are already slaves considering that while we own shotguns the Army owns F-16s. No militia of the people could possibly stand against the Federal government today."
It's probably also worth pointing out that unlike North Korea, the US armed forces aren't in the job simply so they can get access to enough food to survive whilst the rest of the population starves.
If any government truly did get to the point it needed to be overthrown you can be sure that the military would be on the side of the people, not the government, because the military is made up of the people and the people's sons, husbands, wifes, daughters.
Even in countries like Turkey and Lebanon the secular military has always sided with the people when governments have tried to overstep their mark so in a major western nation like the US the military are hardly likely to side with the government, simply because they don't live in fear of the government like they do in other nations where the governments are rather more evil.
I'm not even sure how people envisage the US getting itself into such a state in the first place, look at people like Nixon and Bush, they did some god awful stuff but weren't even close to somehow taking so much control of the citizenship that they had to start arming themselves and rebelling.
If people want to own guns that's fine, shooting is fun, but please, let's cut the myth that gun ownership is required to somehow keep the country from becoming an evil dictatorship. Even in the UK where with the likes of Jacqui Smith we're heading that way Labour are just going to get voted out next election and replaced by the Conservatives who will repeal many of Labour's stalinist laws and schemes. Much of the rest of the world does just fine without turning into an evil dictatorship without gun ownership and in fact, many nations that are evil dictatorships allow gun ownership anyway.
Gun ownership in the US is clung onto for sport and fun and little more.
I agree that Physics is probably the hardest of the Sciences (unless you class Math as a science rather than as it's own area of study). I also agree physicists are almost certainly intelligent enough to learn to be great programmers.
The problem is that a lot of physicists I've met don't want to be programmers or don't have time to learn to be good programmers on top of everything else. They want to use computers to help them solve problems but they don't want the hassle of dealing with memory allocation and all that.
Just as many great physicists have required the assistance of great mathematicians through the years, I think the dawn of computing does bring a place for computer scientists to work alongside physicists.
It's also worth pointing out it's not just about writing effective code, it's about writing zero/low defect code, efficient code, possibly even maintainable and reusable code. A physicist may be able to learn what's needed to solve his problem, but if his problem is one that with his solution may take weeks on the university computing cluster then it makes much more sense for him to work with a computer scientist who may be able to tweak/re-write his program to solve it in days or even hours instead.
Computer scientists are important to science not because they can necessarily contribute directly to science itself, but because they have invested the time, likely years and years into learning how to use computers in the best way possible, sure a physicist can learn to use and manipulate them, but there's no way on top of their own discipline they can learn the ins and outs a computer scientist does.
Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, Physicists, all have their place and all augment each other well, none are as effective alone as they could be with others. Even Steven Hawking, arguably our finest living physicist has always had (even before he became so severely disabled) to work with the great mathematicians are Cambridge and computer scientists.
Well it depends what you're trying to develop a formal spec for. Again, it's not something you'd use to make sure your clip art gallery works correctly, but certainly for important sections (again, the Mathematical functions of a spreadsheet) it's fairly trivial to produce a bug free formal spec for and prove correct.
You've also got to keep in mind that for something like the LHC a lot of the algorithms required are formally specified anyway as a side effect of that being part of the scientific and mathematical process used in discovering/designing the algorithms required to start with.
CS training teaches you how to produce software that has much lower defect rates, potentially even zero defect rates.
You can prove correctness of a block of code using mathematical induction and this is something anyone with a CS degree should be taught.
This is not feasible for every piece of code ever, but it's fair to ask, if the LHC scientists wish to prove anything from their experiments how they intend to do so if the underlying software (and hardware!) hasn't been proven to be correct. My guess is there are two reasons it isn't:
1) Budget/Time constraints
2) The defects that may exist including those that have been discovered don't matter to their results
I assume by your comment you mean you know people who haven't had formal CS training who are better developers. But even if these people have trained themselves the techniques they'e still been trained. If my assumption is wrong and you simply mean CS is worthless for this scenario then it simply demonstrates that you have no idea about the contents of a CS education that are relevant here.
Whilst CS graduates often took the wrong degree (many wanted software engineering without realising the difference) and whilst CS might not be better than a software engineering education for writing run of the mill business apps in C#/Java and nothing more it is not better for what the parent you were responding to states - writing low/zero defect code for scientific application. This is one of the areas where CS really does shine.
"Arrogance like that is a reason why there are bugs in programs..."
No, ignorance of the tools, methodologies and concepts available is why there are bugs in programs. No one would expect Office to be written such that every function and block of code it's comprised of has a formal proof done for it (Who cares if the code for clippy isn't 100% defect free for example) but it would be a good idea if say, the mathematical functions in Excel were proven correct, perhaps then we wouldn't have the countless bugs through the years in Excel's math functions that many companies (perhaps foolishly) depend on.
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I went to the Darwin exhibition in the natural history museum in London the other week. There was a small section with a timeline on the history of the acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution and the only country past the 50s that really seemed to have much trouble with it is the US where it has been repeatedly fought over for the last 30 years or so.
How can arguably the world's number 1 science and technology leader simultaneously be so utterly backwards when it comes to teaching science compared to much of the rest of the world? It makes me wonder how much further ahead the US might be in science and technology if you didn't have these idiots holding your education system back.
I've always found the US quite a paradox in this respect, full of so many of the worlds most intelligent people producing some of the most groundbreaking science and technology research, yet someone as dumb as Sarah Palin can make it all the way to VP nomination and GWB all the way to the whitehouse. What the hell is up with that? I mean here in the UK we had the likes of princess Jade Goody as everyone's little angel but at least there was no hope of her ever running the country.
Why is it the more advanced Western countries seem to get, the more idiocy seems to be celebrated and rewarded?
"Only when they only admit freedom-based societies as voting members will it be a body that can work for actual good. Fear-based societies, who mistreat their own people, have no business telling other countries how to treat their people."
That's not what the UN is about though. The UN is about getting majority international consensus. If you start banning countries from the UN you're not getting democratic international consensus, you're getting a dictatorship where those who control the morals which the UN would admit entry based on dictate how the world should be run. You have to realise that in places like Iran, China and Russia despite their severe oppression of free speech the people of those countries still support their governments. You're effectively saying their voice isn't relevant because they don't want their country to be run the same way as you think it should be run.
Other groups like the Commonwealth have expelled countries when they've been guilty of abusing human rights and that sort of thing before and if those groups want to do it then that's fine because it's designed to only involve a small number of countries but the UN is a world organisation, it has to represent the world, not just a small subset of countries.
Just be glad the majority of countries in the world do support the idea of freedom and that the majority aren't oppressive states, else you might have had somewhere here posting the exact opposite of what you're asking.
It's hypocritical to suggest we should block the viewpoint of entire nations from the world stage because they don't have the same point of view as you because then you're really no better than they are. Even most "free" countries don't allow absolutely free speech anyway - you can't offer a viewpoint that's sympathetic to the nazis in many European nations for example, whereas in Iran you're more than welcome to, but also in Iran if you criticise Islam you'll find yourself in trouble too so I think you'd probably struggle to find any nation on Earth that allows absolute free speech at least, you'd have to do it on partial freedom, but good luck figuring out where the line between partial freedom and real oppression of freedom lies.
What you're asking for is a group that uses it's strength to bully other nations into adhering to its member nation's ways. What the UN does is allows everyone a say and uses democracy to figure out the consensus path. It's much better to show these nations the power of free speech and democracy so that they can figure it out for themselves than it is to try and force them to change in which case they'll probably just get more pissed off and more defiant towards you.
Besides, all organisations that have existed in the manner you mention where they aim to be global but where they also control membership by forcing requirements on nations have ultimately been abused. You only have to look at the likes of the WTO where the US wants everyone in if they adhere to its rules, but where it doesn't adhere to the rules itself and outright ignores rulings against it.
The UN contains pretty much every country in the world apart from Vatican City (by choice) and Taiwan (because it's not officially recognised as an independent nation) as well as one or two other territories because of similar technicalities (i.e. they're not independent countries anyway). It's not just a select group.
lol? so you think scientists can continue to do much of the science they do without any public funding?
What a joke. Do you really believe projects like the LHC absolutely can be funded out of scientists own back pockets? it's not something that any commercial outfit would be willing to fully sponsor.
Who exactly do you think would pay for massive super computers to help produce climate change models to predict the impact when no commercial company would sponsor it (particularly because global warming related climate change results are ultimately bad news for most companies) and if the politicians were refusing to allow public money to spend it too?
You really believe scientists should be magically creating billions of pounds from somewhere to fund all this alone? Seriously where the hell do you expect the money to come from when it's not going to come from corporates and if it's not going to come from the public through lack of political will?
So please tell me, as you seem to suggest that you're a scientist (by your use of the word "We") how you might go about actually finding out these risks in the first place if you have no money to do so? Research equipment doesn't come free you know.
You seem very confused.
I didn't say I disagreed that we should have plans in place for this sort of thing. My post was in response to the parent post to mine. He seemed to be suggesting that we should all consider living a survivalist lifestyle in the unlikely scenario that we may be hit by this kind of event. I was responding to that, because clearly I do not think throwing everything you know and own away and changing your entire life and living a survivalist lifestyle just in case something may or may not happen is the brightest of ideas.
Slashdot uses a threaded posting layout, try following the full thread rather than just picking out individual posts and assuming they're a direct response to TFA before responding in such an arrogant manner next time.
If anything I agree with you totally, this issue should be taken seriously, but the solution shouldn't involve changing your entire lifestyle and living by yourself in the wilderness off of the wilderness like the parent I was responding to seemed to be suggesting.
The point is, scientists rely on officials for funding, and certainly here in the UK at least the politicians would rather spend money on things like DNA databases and supression of it's citizens than anything that they see as such an inconvenience as science.
To put it into context with some figures, the British government is working on an ID card scheme which has been predicted to cost as much as £18bn despite no opposition parties being for the scheme and despite the citizens and many other top figures such as the ex-security services chief being against it. The government also cut £80 million of funding for science a year or so ago meaning we had to cut some important research projects, see here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4138240.ece
Of course, Britain is only one of many countries but it's still a good example of how well politicians and science go together. If Britain's Labour government can spend £18bn on a scheme no one wants and which is essentially unworkable whilst telling scientists they have to cut £80m of projects, it shows how important science is to politicians.
Make no mistake, "officials" most definitely are at fault. There are plenty of scientists willing to do the science but they can't do it alone, without funding, in their garage.
So let me get this straight.
You're suggesting that because a freak event may or may not happen in someone's lifetime that they should consider living a life that they personally found miserable, so that they could point and say "Hah! I told you so!" for a few days before everyone gets power back and start playing on their XBox's in their nice warm heated houses again?
I'm not convinced it's worth drastically altering your life away from what you know and enjoy for something that may or may not ever actually happen and when it does would realistically just inconvenience you for a short period of time before getting back to normal (it wouldn't be as bad as the summary/article suggests anymore than we'd be getting blown up by terrorists daily if we listened to the Bush/British governments).
The article cites Quebec in 1989 as an example, yet today Quebec doesn't seem to be the desolate Fallout style wasteland where everyone is fending for themselves and millions die that the article infers might happen.
"Ah, but this isn't true. We buy lots of things that we have no expectation of being able to resell it. If our hypothetical person X buys a cup of coffee, walks into his office and is fired - can he sell the cup of coffee? It would be rare circumstance in which he could.
Anything personalized falls into this category; I don't want to buy your business cards off you, your nameplate, any of that. I might spend a lot of money on a portrait of my family, but there isn't going to be much chance anyone is going to buy that from me. One can buy cell phone service plans, house insurance, food, gourmet food, rose bulbs, club memberships, magazines - never with the thought that these things will be able to be traded in for something else if your circumstance changes."
Erm, your argument has fallen flat on it's face because you can in fact sell all of these things. People may not want to buy them, but you can sell them, and that's the key difference. Valve is actively preventing you selling a Steam game because there is no way to transfer it to a new owner whereas there is nothing stopping you transferring the cup of coffee, the nameplate, the business cards and so on. To use your analogy, it would be akin to trying to sell the nameplate to someone willing to buy it, them giving you the cash, then the guy who made the nameplate originally coming along and physically preventing you from handing it over to the guy, that's effectively what this type of DRM is doing.
You're confusing "not being able to sell" with "no one wanting to buy", of course, these are two completely different things.
"That is an assumption on your part. Networking back-ends can be complicated"
Ah, another straw man. Whatever Steam's SDK adds does not need to be attached to the DRM components it adds, anything it adds over and above DRM could be implemented without also implementing DRM.
Both points you've raised are fundamentally flawed in ways so easy to spot I can only guess you're playing devils advocate for the sake of it, even when you have no valid point to back that stance up with. Particularly in the case of the initial point, I'm amazed if anyone would intentionally make such a flawed comparison.
Yes, you're wrong.
I'm going to approach this from another point of view. That of someone who doesn't sell on games, I understand the idea of that upsets some people, but stick with me.
Imagine this scenario, person X has made an average living for themselves, they've got a car, a house, a big DVD collection, a TV, a toaster, a nice gaming PC with legit copies of Microsoft Office, Windows and a bunch of games.
Person X loses his job because of the recession, his wife falls ill, he needs money quick.
Please explain to me, why the only item from his list of stuff he owns that he can't sell on second hand are his DRM protected games? He can sell his music CD collection, his car, his toaster, his PC, even his copies of Windows and Office (assuming they weren't OEM) but he can't sell on his games because an artificial restriction has been created.
You mention that we shouldn't be treating things like physical items, but this guy could even sell on his legitimate MP3 collection bought from places like play.com, he couldn't however sell on his copy of Dawn of War II however even if he owned a physical copy of it, because he had to tie his activation key to Steam, and Valve wont even let you sell on Steam accounts.
Why is it acceptable the only thing in and even including his house he can't sell are his DRM protected games because of nothing more than an artificially imposed restriction?
Still a couple of points worth addressing:
"The extra thing has changed, but how does that inherently make a difference? Why does this thing cause a problem and not some other thing."
This "thing" explicitly controls what I can and can't do with the software. It's whole purpose is to control what I can do in contrast to the other items you mention. It is also non-essential, it doesn't provide anything that the game could work perfectly well with without in contrast to specific processor requirements, or API versions.
"You even seem to be implying you'd eventually offload a game - so why are you worried about when Steam goes away as a company?"
Why do you assume I'd offload every game I own and not just some? What if Steam goes away before I offload it?
"but in the real world why the hell woudl anybody except people wanting games for free think that is a good idea, or could possibly work in the real world?"
Probably because it always has. Here's a list of top selling PC games of all time, over 90% of that list is comprised of games that never had DRM or absolute worst case required you to enter a CD key:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_games
I suppose someone may suggest the argument that because most of those games have been out longer, they're bound to have higher sales figures, but that doesn't stand up when you compare to lists for other platforms such as consoles where DRM doesn't cause the consumer any problems. For example, Gears of War 2, out only 5 months has shifted 4million units despite the PC gaming market being much bigger.
Either way though, one thing is for sure, as you can see, DRM certainly hasn't helped PC game sales and they have on average decreased drastically since it became prominent even if we can't say for sure that it's hindered it.
FWIW, I'm now primarily a console gamer because I got sick of dealing with DRM and the bugginess of PC games. I do not believe I'm alone (well, I know I'm not some friends are in the same boat). Let's just say you're right and that DRM does prevent some piracy at least - I wonder, does the amount it prevents really outweigh the amount of customers it pushes away? Judging by the decline in PC gaming it seems unlikely.
One final point, you ask about the craziness of allowing anyone to download a game - consider this, the music industry has finally agreed to drop DRM which affords the same result, in fact, more prominently because copying an MP3 or sending it via IM or something is trivial compared to downloading a whole game, and yet online music sales are still increasing.
Is it really such an insane idea in the context that it's historically worked better than it is now and in the context that it's working in other markets?
"I love that people who rail against having to pay some arbitrary price to the developers of a game immediately turn around and claim they have a right to resell their copy of the game."
That doesn't make much sense, those buying a specific game are the ones who'd be able to sell them on, so specifically aren't the ones who have a problem paying the specified price for the game.
And one other point because lots of people seem to have missed it:
"Despite Steam, you have the option to buy games in a box, and furthermore you have the option to buy them second hand."
A lot of boxed games now force you to install and activate Steam, so for those games the second hand market has been killed off whether you buy it online via Steam or in a store.
The problem is that any form of DRM should not in any way inconvenience the user or remove their rights. Steam is guilty of both of these and as yet Valve has not taken any real steps to rectify them (the changes in TFA don't seem to resolve a lot of the fundamental problems). Being able to transfer games to other accounts, even if Valve charged a small amount for the service would be a good first step so that people could in fact sell their games on.
"You also blithely ignore the fact that in some ways DRM can be positive. Restrictive DRM stops me from letting my friends install my copy of a game."
That's not a positive for the consumer but I understand what you're getting at. The problem is that it also stops you selling your game on second hand, which ultimately means people have more money to spend on new games as well. Certainly for most kids who don't have any real income this was the only way they could get new games legitimately, and will ultimately have to resort to piracy instead. Effectively what Valve and yourself are saying is that Valve's right to protect it's game is more important than the consumer's right to be able to sell on the game second hand.
I don't even disagree with you entirely though that DRM in any form is unacceptable and I understand fully what Valve is trying to achieve. My greivance is that they're acheiving it at the expense of the consumers rights and it is that that I find unacceptable. If they really were working for the consumer then the first thing they'd have enabled was allowing the transfer of a game to a different account but they have quite explicitly disabled that and only allow it if a game is bought specifically as a gift.
If DRM had no effect on legitimate use I could accept it, but in Valve's case it does. This is where the problem is and it's not simply because they haven't perfect it yet - as in the above point about not being able to transfer activated games even though the facility clearly exists because you can do it with inactivated games it's quite clear that Valve do not have a fair interest in balancing the consumer's needs against their own.
The only thing I do still take a lot of issue with in your post is that there are any positive aspects of DRM - for the consumer there absolutely are not. Everything that is offered could be offered without DRM as far as the consumer is concerned and hence without the negative aspects too. DRM benefits only the provider and as such it should be their responsibility to ensure it does not in any way inconvenience, cause problems for, or remove the rights of the consumer. Valve are currently not making enough effort towards this goal and this is the crux of my argument.
"Really, Valve does have some competition thanks to Microsoft's Live! (Xbox/PC games)"
Microsoft's Live isn't a distribution channel, it is however as you state a Framework for building games that are social. Effectively then, you've made my argument against yours for me- you've given a great example of how a common social API/Framework can exist without being attached to DRM and distribution. Just like DirectX or OpenGL can act as common graphics APIs, there is no reason that you can't have a standardised API for handling social networking in games.
"What you were comparing it to was a company actively trying to inhibit consumers from doing what they want and to use questionable ethics in dealings with competitors and OEMs in order to foist their product on everyone. Steam does not make any of the games there (parent company Valve does make some but not all) and they actively try to *enable* the consumer."
I'm not sure you know what you're on about, some points:
- Steam isn't a company under Valve, it's a product developed by Valve, so the assertion that Steam doesn't develop games but it's parent company does is non-sensical, Valve develop games, and Valve develop Steam.
- "What you were comparing it to was a company actively trying to inhibit consumers from doing what they want", er, you do know that's exactly what DRM does right? Steam prevents people selling games on second hand, limits when they can activate etc.
- Yes they do use questionable tactics to force their product onto consumers, they have a big enough share of the distribution market that they can't be ignored by developers and they use this position to force companies that want their game distributed on Steam to activate via Steam even if the game isn't sold entirely via Steam so that even those who avoid Steam and buy in retail channels end up having to install and deal with Steam.
You seem to make the assumption that I do actually buy Steam games anymore, I don't.
I still however have to use it to buy games I have bought, many of which when you buy online from online retailers don't advertise that the game is a Steam based game meaning you either have to deal with fucking around returning it, or can't avoid purchasing games that force you to use Steam to start with.
The other assumption you make is that it's not possible to have a service that doesn't have these restrictions, you assume it's acceptable because it's there. Being there doesn't make it acceptable, even those who find it acceptable enough to continue using would do well to voice their distaste rather than defend it because surely even you would prefer to have guarantees that you aren't going to get fucked by the DRM rather than keeping your fingers crossed and assuming that because it hasn't burnt you yet, it's never going to?
"Conversely, it allows me to do wonderful things that I would never have been able to do using another system."
Huh? Why do you have to have DRM to be able to download games? It's not going to stop piracy, DRM just means someone who wants it free will grab it off The Pirate Bay instead.
"But I doubt you'll ever outnumber the people like me who are more than happy with the system, and a grateful that at least one company seem to be doing DRM in a way that's fairly sensible."
The point is DRM doesn't need to be done at all, it doesn't stop piracy, only screws legitimate consumers and has no purpose other than to kill off the perfectly legal second hand market or to control what consumers can do with their software. Also, I'm glad you're confident that people who hate Valve's DRM are in a minority that can be ignored, but judging by this very article Valve do not feel the same and do at least listen to those of us who are raising concerns and boycotting the service. The changes they are making however, are still not enough.
The premise of most of your arguments is that DRM is essential, it's not. Wouldn't you prefer to have the same service minus the DRM? It's well known that DRM achieves nothing.
"You can hardly blame steam or valve for the economy, the GBP has gone down the toilet, so what do you expect?"
I'm not sure you understood what I was saying. Valve used to charge British people in US dollars so we used to get it for whatever the exchange rate was. Now they're charging us in British sterling and so the price is different. My complaint wasn't about a changing exchange rate because that is not the issue, my complaint is that we're being charged more because Valve have started charging people based on their home currency so that everyone in every country pays a different amount rather than everyone paying the same amount because everyone just payed the US dollar price. As a result we are paying more than the US, not because of the exchange rate, but simply because they have upped the price in moving Steam to a localised currency based system rather than a single currency system. People in other localities are getting it even cheaper again than the US. The exchange rate is irrelevant to what has happened, this was effectively an out and out price rise for many people in many countries.
"If the price is similar to shop-bought, you're trading the ability to sell second hand for the ability to install the game anywhere without actually bringing the box with you. Its up to you to decide if thats what you want. It hardly makes steam the source of all evil."
No, because even shop bought games force you to install and activate via Steam because it's a condition Valve are imposing on people if they want to be able to distribute their game via Steam as well as via stores. It doesn't matter where I buy these games, whether it's on Steam or in a shop, I can't sell them on second hand regardless.
"It certainly has issues, and some features I'm less than happy with - but compared to pretty much any other DRM I've tried, its really not that bad, and it even has the bonus of being able to install anywhere without the CD. Comparing it to the crap that came with spore, or the horrible cries of pain that the Crysis DRM produced from my dvd drive - I'll take steam any day."
You're falling into exactly the same trap I did. You're saying Steam is acceptable because compared to other DRM such as that in Spore and Crysis you've had no problems. I thought the same until I had issues with Steam (Dawn of War II activation). I actually had no issues with Spore or Crysis, and in fact I did not even realise Spore installed SecuROM or had evil DRM until I read about it here. I too would probably have assumed that because at that point in time I'd had no problems that Spore's DRM was fine. This is generally my point, most people don't realise how bad DRM (whether it's EA's, Valve's or anyone elses) actually is until it bites them on the arse.
It's foolish to defend it because you can never tell whether if you're going to end up getting burnt yourself. I believe, in time, everyone will get burnt by it eventually, the question is whether by that point it's too late because it's in every product you buy or not.
Military intervention absolutely is useful, the issue is that it's not being backed up by the improvements to peoples lives through engineering projects and so forth that must go with it.
Part the issue in Afghanistan, particularly in the South is that as soon troops clear an area and move on to clear the next the Taliban are moving back in and destroying any projects created to help the people or preventing any new projects being started.
More combat troops are required to keep ground held so that the other, longer term changes can be made to improve things like providing reliable road networks, power sources, fresh water and so on.
So we do need more combat troops for sure, it's just that that's not all we need - we need to back it up with real changes to make people's lives better. My comments regarding Germany's politicians using the excuse of the past to avoid combat operations is also not based on speculation but fact, as we have had on the news here in the UK German politicians stating this as the very reason they are not interested in combat so it does seem to be a very real feeling that they don't want to get involved because they're afraid of how people might see them rather than because they don't think it'll help.
If Germany didn't feel troops would help then there's little reason for them to be there at all. But also the idea that the Afghan people don't want us there seems false, documentary after documentary from countless impartial sources shows that most Afghans want peace above anything else, but as a secondary objective would love to have peace without the Taliban being the ones imposing it - they would much rather it comes from us. The people do want us there, they just want us to do the job properly and it's that that we're not doing. A lot of current schemes seem to be focussed on actually using the Afghan people who want us there to fight with us - I remember reading a very recent article on the BBC about Afghan militia that were fighting against the Taliban.
It's not like the soviet occupation or the 19th century British occupation where the majority of the people didn't want what we were imposing, your average Afghan is on our side this time round and that's the fundamental difference and why it's wrong to make a direct comparison to past invasions. In the 19th century the British were there to impose colonial rule, in the 80s, the Russians were there to bolster an unpopular communist government, neither had the support of the general population.
It's also worth pointing out that further evidence as to us being wanted there is the fact that Afghanistan is nowhere as messy as Iraq - the only people attacking us and the civilian population are the Taliban as opposed to the various tribes and religious sects fighting each other which would undoubtedly be the case (as it was in Iraq) if the Afghan people weren't aligned in what they want. A lot of people say we're failing in Afghanistan but really, the quality of life across large parts of the country has increased massively and the kind of death tolls we see in Afghanistan are absolutely minimal compared to Iraq. The real problem is that we're stalled and breaking away from that requires more troops, more investment, and more effort to work with the people (rather than accidently killing them all the damn time). The real danger is if we don't break away from that, because then we certainly will see decline.
A suggested increase of the Afghan army to 200,000 troops, another 17,000 troops from the US are going to be a good help, even if it only means we can stem the flow of Taliban from Pakistan by defending Afghanistans borders better.
I didn't realise German secret services were involved in that sort of thing.
That and this article certainly shines a whole new light on German politics for me. It seems hypocritical that they're not willing to perform combat operations in Afghanistan because of fears this will make people link it to it's Nazi past in being seen as an oppressive force yet meanwhile, back home, their security services are, well, acting as an oppressive force?
It sounds like Germany's political elite are suffering an identity crisis - do they accept they've moved on (which they have) and that they can stop worrying about how people will view them and actually do something useful in Afghanistan or do they keep living under that cloud of fear of what people think of them and their past, in which case, they need to stop doing shit like this because this sort of thing links them to their past much more strongly than actually doing their fair share in Afghanistan would.
They can't have it both ways, either do something useful in Afghanistan and stop caring what others think or stop doing this kind of shit to oppress your citizens back home.
Just don't use Maxtor drives if you actually want to be able to retrieve your data at any point.
Where I used to work we had 6 dead Maxtor drives in as many months. Luckily this was spread across 3 servers which had 4 backup drives each but it certainly taught a lesson that some hard drive manufacturers are less than reliable.
It's probably also worth pointing out we had some Seagate drives bought at a different time, stored along with all the Maxtor drives and used in the same way without a problem, so it didn't seem to be anything we were doing, but then this was also around the time that Maxtor were dropping their warranty to 1 year from 3 years whilst Seagate was upping theres to 5 years from 3 years which speaks volumes.
The moral of the story is though, always check your backup media regularly too, and don't rely on just one or two backup drives if your data really is that important.
"If you are willing to pay for a tangible thing or a real world service that you love, why not an internet based one?"
Well non-internet radio is free, so that's one reason why I can see people wouldn't be willing to pay internet radio - they could after all just switch back to non-internet radio.
But I think the bigger reason the AC made this distinction is because online services already make their money - enough to cover costs and still make a profit - through advertising. If they are asking you to pay on top, it is simply because they want to make more money, and at that point it's easy to just see it as greed whether it really is or not. More importantly though, on the internet, the chances are the service almost certainly exists free elsewhere and if it doesn't, the fact that it has been run free succesfully will encourage new people to make a similar service that is free knowing full well people will flock to it over the now pay-for competitor.
That said, in the context of this article it's interesting that it'll remain free in certain regions so it may not be this clear cut. I assume this is because the regions it'll remain free in are the ones it feels it's getting enough ad revenue from but elsewhere is effectively just being subsidised by advertisers from the region it'll remain free in. If it has 7 users in Finland for example (just a random example, no truth in the figures) then no Finnish company is going to want to pay it to display ads, so effectively that territory would be getting subsidised by maybe the UK where advertisers are willing to pay thousands because there are 1million UK users for example (again just random numbers). I guess maybe they're just now asking users to pay their way because advertisers wont do it for them in other territories.
Well I suppose you could consider it the least limiting if you ignore all the limitations but that doesn't make a lot of sense now does it?
Valve DRM:
- Limits when you can activate the game, if Valve ever goes bust and hence doesn't release a patch you'll never be able to activate your game again. Any problem with their activation servers will too prevent you from activating and hence playing a game you've purchased.
- Need to activate to play online, in the above scenario you could crack it to allow activation but will likely be unable to play online still
- Can't sell your games on second hand
- Prevents you playing games offline
- Forces you to have Steam on your system to be able to play a game that doesn't use Steam's features even if you bought it outside of Steam's distribution channel
- Forces you to accept updates to be able to play (What if you come home, want to play a game you've bought but find you have to download a 100mb+ update and you have to pay for your bandwidth because it's capped like many people in the UK do?)
Effectively whilst most classic DRM can be used to prevent people copying game disks, it does at very least allow continued ownership of the product, the ability to install it at will even after the company has gone bust and still allows you to sell the product on second hand, Steam removes the product from your control entirely even if you have purchased the actual physical media in a shop. Valve also can prevent activation of a product you didn't even buy from them as happened with me with DoW2, I purchased it from GAME but Valve initially prevented me from activating even though according to the box my only transaction with Valve should have been to register (not activate) with them.
Ignoring the limitations imposed by Steam's DRM does not mean that they are not there.
"If Steam sales suck, then game producers will use a different distribution channel. If Steam sales are good, then obviously the value they provide for the price they are charging is not a problem."
It's not that simple I'm afraid. Steam has gained a foothold in the marketplace too big for game developers to ignore, mostly through initially offering good service and fixed prices wherever you were in the world so that everyone paid the same.
Now they have that foothold, game developers need to publish through Steam or face poor sales, but to do so they have to include Steam activation as part of their product even if sold in boxes in the retail channel. This means that Steam gets forced onto your system even when you don't buy via Steam.
This is absolutely as bad as Microsoft using it's monopoly position to force IE on users, Valve are similarly abusing their strong position to force Steam and Steam activation on users. Developers can't go elsewhere because it's too big a market to ignore.
This is a new phenomenon and only effects a handful of games so far but the amount is increasing very rapidly, week on week new titles are affected.
It's probably also worth noting that Gamestop refused to sell Dawn of War 2 in the end for exactly the reason that it forced Steam, a competing distribution channel, on it's customers. Frankly, I think that's a pretty noble step but it's also of course in their interest long term because they recognise the threat, even if it meant short term loss of sales. If the problem is being noticed by the largest game retailers then I think it's naive if we don't take notice too and stop it now.
Do we really want a world where Valve control all game distribution? Where Valve's own titles mysteriously work better than 3rd party titles to make them appear better than the competition just like Microsoft leveraged their monopoly and used their closed libraries to make their products better than a competitor's?
That's because the negative points about Steam haven't affected you yet.
I to was a happy, naive steam user since it's release who would similarly have praised it up until a few weeks ago when they fucked me with their Dawn of War II DRM.
Now I realise how flawed Steam actually is and that at any time they could revoke my ability to re-install the game, the fact I have a boxed copy bought from a shop but because I have to activate by Steam I will never be able to sell on that boxed copy 2nd hand.
I wish I hadn't been so naive now, because it's naivety like yours (and formerly like mine) as to how bad Steam actually is that's allowing it to gain traction and become ever more evil and problematic.
I was buying games in US dollars on there not so long ago with a $2 US to the £ exchange rate and now I'm suddenly seeing games the same as UK shop RRPs like £39.99 so I'm being forced to pay much more than people abroad for the same product, the same as I'd pay for a boxed copy in the UK but without getting it boxed and can't sell it on second hand. The net is already tightening with Steam, they've already upped costs, they're already imposing control over games bought outside of Steam and not developed by Valve if companies wish to also have their game available on Steam as well.
Make no mistake, Valve are the new EA and whilst like you, millions would say "Well I've never had a problem with Spore", they will when they install it a 5th time and don't know where to find the patch to remove that limitation, unfortunately with Valve, there is no patch, well, not official ones anyway.
I liked Valve when they just developed the Half-Life series etc. but as a company that is now leveraging the prominence of their system to gain control over games sold outside their distribution channel such as retail shops, as a company that's artificially increasing prices, as a company that's destroying people's legal right to sell on games second hand and as a company that's imposing artificial restrictions on when people can and can't install their game? I'll pass thanks.
The countless flaws with Steam haven't effected you yet, but as the net tightens they will. Their practices are anti-competitive, controlling and hence harmful to the customer.
What makes the whole situation worse is that Valve have built themselves an army of fanboys more rabid than even Steve Jobs has managed that cry about how they hate DRM one minute but give all the support in the world to Valve who are the joint worst DRM offenders in the whole industry with EA right now. Why? Because Gabe Newell tells us he hates DRM so that people bow down whilst he's simultaneously enforcing some of the most limiting DRM in the software world on people?
"There are those who would say we are already slaves considering that while we own shotguns the Army owns F-16s. No militia of the people could possibly stand against the Federal government today."
It's probably also worth pointing out that unlike North Korea, the US armed forces aren't in the job simply so they can get access to enough food to survive whilst the rest of the population starves.
If any government truly did get to the point it needed to be overthrown you can be sure that the military would be on the side of the people, not the government, because the military is made up of the people and the people's sons, husbands, wifes, daughters.
Even in countries like Turkey and Lebanon the secular military has always sided with the people when governments have tried to overstep their mark so in a major western nation like the US the military are hardly likely to side with the government, simply because they don't live in fear of the government like they do in other nations where the governments are rather more evil.
I'm not even sure how people envisage the US getting itself into such a state in the first place, look at people like Nixon and Bush, they did some god awful stuff but weren't even close to somehow taking so much control of the citizenship that they had to start arming themselves and rebelling.
If people want to own guns that's fine, shooting is fun, but please, let's cut the myth that gun ownership is required to somehow keep the country from becoming an evil dictatorship. Even in the UK where with the likes of Jacqui Smith we're heading that way Labour are just going to get voted out next election and replaced by the Conservatives who will repeal many of Labour's stalinist laws and schemes. Much of the rest of the world does just fine without turning into an evil dictatorship without gun ownership and in fact, many nations that are evil dictatorships allow gun ownership anyway.
Gun ownership in the US is clung onto for sport and fun and little more.
I agree that Physics is probably the hardest of the Sciences (unless you class Math as a science rather than as it's own area of study). I also agree physicists are almost certainly intelligent enough to learn to be great programmers.
The problem is that a lot of physicists I've met don't want to be programmers or don't have time to learn to be good programmers on top of everything else. They want to use computers to help them solve problems but they don't want the hassle of dealing with memory allocation and all that.
Just as many great physicists have required the assistance of great mathematicians through the years, I think the dawn of computing does bring a place for computer scientists to work alongside physicists.
It's also worth pointing out it's not just about writing effective code, it's about writing zero/low defect code, efficient code, possibly even maintainable and reusable code. A physicist may be able to learn what's needed to solve his problem, but if his problem is one that with his solution may take weeks on the university computing cluster then it makes much more sense for him to work with a computer scientist who may be able to tweak/re-write his program to solve it in days or even hours instead.
Computer scientists are important to science not because they can necessarily contribute directly to science itself, but because they have invested the time, likely years and years into learning how to use computers in the best way possible, sure a physicist can learn to use and manipulate them, but there's no way on top of their own discipline they can learn the ins and outs a computer scientist does.
Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, Physicists, all have their place and all augment each other well, none are as effective alone as they could be with others. Even Steven Hawking, arguably our finest living physicist has always had (even before he became so severely disabled) to work with the great mathematicians are Cambridge and computer scientists.
Well it depends what you're trying to develop a formal spec for. Again, it's not something you'd use to make sure your clip art gallery works correctly, but certainly for important sections (again, the Mathematical functions of a spreadsheet) it's fairly trivial to produce a bug free formal spec for and prove correct.
You've also got to keep in mind that for something like the LHC a lot of the algorithms required are formally specified anyway as a side effect of that being part of the scientific and mathematical process used in discovering/designing the algorithms required to start with.
CS training teaches you how to produce software that has much lower defect rates, potentially even zero defect rates.
You can prove correctness of a block of code using mathematical induction and this is something anyone with a CS degree should be taught.
This is not feasible for every piece of code ever, but it's fair to ask, if the LHC scientists wish to prove anything from their experiments how they intend to do so if the underlying software (and hardware!) hasn't been proven to be correct. My guess is there are two reasons it isn't:
1) Budget/Time constraints
2) The defects that may exist including those that have been discovered don't matter to their results
I assume by your comment you mean you know people who haven't had formal CS training who are better developers. But even if these people have trained themselves the techniques they'e still been trained. If my assumption is wrong and you simply mean CS is worthless for this scenario then it simply demonstrates that you have no idea about the contents of a CS education that are relevant here.
Whilst CS graduates often took the wrong degree (many wanted software engineering without realising the difference) and whilst CS might not be better than a software engineering education for writing run of the mill business apps in C#/Java and nothing more it is not better for what the parent you were responding to states - writing low/zero defect code for scientific application. This is one of the areas where CS really does shine.
"Arrogance like that is a reason why there are bugs in programs..."
No, ignorance of the tools, methodologies and concepts available is why there are bugs in programs. No one would expect Office to be written such that every function and block of code it's comprised of has a formal proof done for it (Who cares if the code for clippy isn't 100% defect free for example) but it would be a good idea if say, the mathematical functions in Excel were proven correct, perhaps then we wouldn't have the countless bugs through the years in Excel's math functions that many companies (perhaps foolishly) depend on.