Heck, Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii originally shipped with MONO sound, because it was really pushing the Wii apparently for the CPU to handle Guitar Hero 3 with stereo sound.
Yeah, that's why it was released on the PS2.:P
The CPU problem was with the PC version, not the Wii version.
...but it wouldn't be much of a business model if everyone could just download everything to any computer and just leave it there for someone else to play.
In 20+ years of computing, this has always been the case, and it hasn't come close to destroying the business model. This is simply a perpetual 'slippery slope'.
So in this case, DRM actually makes a new distribution channel possible....
I suppose. I mean, really, all it's doing is comforting a bunch of people that think you are a thief.
Moderations often affect the tone of a message. A misplaced 'Insightful' mod can turn a joke into perceived ignorance. That can lead to negative moderations and a flood of comments trying to dispute it. It's not the most common thing in the world, but I've seen it happen several times.
That's not to say I'm against the idea of a funny comment being modded informative. I do, however, have a preference that people don't use Insightful mods solely to give funny comments karma. And yes, I've softened my stance a bit. Heh.
Funny can draw just as much rebuttal as insightful.
If it's meant to be funny, then any rebuttal is a waste of time.
If you don't agree, metamod.
Useless. Besides, I don't want to contribute to you losing your privledges just beacuse we have a slightly different idea of how to mod something. It is considerably more effective (and less harmful) for me to tell you what I think in a comment right here than it is to randomly vote on the moderation of a handful of posts.
Insightful is the standard replacement for the Funny mod. Funny doesn't give karma, but Insightful does, so Funny posts are often modded Insightful by generous mods.
Great. The guy gets useless karma, but his post invites unnecessary rebuttals.
Why do fields of study have to proceed at the same relative paces we're familiar with? What is it about building robots and giant spaceships that necessitates a cure for cancer?
It's a stupid nitpick. It'll only manage to get a little less stupid if we manage to cure cancer before we build big spaceships.
Sci-fi fans are notoriously bad about thinking they understand things like logic and physics. There are a lot of them that are blissfully unaware that their nitpick about the two ships getting stuck together in Nemesis is wrong. There are others that will battle to the death a nitpick about Episode III's portrayal of ships chased by stupid little buzzsaw droids. Heck, I one of these twerps. What kills me, though, is all this technical criticism... but somehow I must have been sheltered from the nitpick about Johnny 5's CPU magically being able to operate like a human brain. That's acceptable, but there's no cure for cancer in a society that can magically teleport their ships great distances? *shrug*
Other things that must ship in the billions: screws, nails, paper clips, thumbtacks, staples, sweets (candy), baked beans, soda, LEDs (actually almost any discrete electronic component), copier paper, post-it notes, coins, pens, pencils, bin liners...
Since when did effective communication preclude accuracy of information?
As if they're often mutually exclusive. In any event, you can be very literal and very confusing. You could screw up the terms and still be very clear. In this case, he used a commonly accepted term that even Mr. Data would have no problems discerning. Non-issue.
If an IT journalist can't communicate the difference between a genericised computer hardware arrangement and a specific companies operating system then they should seek alternative employ, IMO.
Ooookay. In this case, the journalist used a term that's universally accepted. What a bad journalist!
I guess I simply made the mistake of thinking ComputerWorld.com address issues in computing.
Yep, they sure muddied those waters. I didn't realize how confused I was until I read your post.
I suppose you think Ubuntu === Linux too?
What are you talking about?!?! Linux is the kernel! I hope you're not complaining about KDE!! I'm going to waste your time posting inane replies because I want you to be so specific that my massive brain has no trouble digesting it!!! You better spell everything correctly, too, because if you don't, I'll go into cardiac arrest and it'll be YOUR FAULT!!
"They chose six candidates: Camino (for Mac), Maxthon (PC), OmniWeb (for Mac), Opera (both Mac and PC versions) and Shiira (for Mac). Which is the best? It all depends on what you need from a browser."
That version is shorter and it doesn't call for the ban of a term that's been in use for 10 or so years.
I wish people would stop parroting this fallacy all the time. Market share has nothing to do with how easy it is to break into a system.
I wish people would understand the true nature of a complaint before wishing it'd go away. I mean, it sure sounds good and gives people with mod points something to do, but it defies logic. You can't even run Unix without following certain policies (like continually updating the system). Heck, nobody's even been able to write software protection that hasn't been cracked shortly after release.
I wish people would stop parroting the fallacy that security in *nix is a matter of if and not when. Your OS is insecure. Sorry.
Please don't use the term "PC" when you mean to say "Windows." It's bad enough that Apple continues to push this belief that PCs inherently run Windows in their marketing (as well as being inherently different from a hardware standpoint, something that was one true but stopped being so after 2006), but on Slashdot?
It is a commonly accepted term and frankly it's way too late to change it now. Basically all you're going to do is confuse people for the benefit of... wee... being literal to the acronymn.
At my work, I'm forced to use a SLOT-A Athlon running XP with 32mb RAM. K-Meleon allows the machine to function. All other graphical browsers bring it down to its knees.
How does that work? I couldn't even get Win2K to boot within the same day with 64 megs.
Do you think any developer bothers reading past the abuse you type?
Considering that the closest thing to 'abuse' I got to was 3/4ths of the way through my post, by your own admission you have quite a bit to chew on. You think you appear to be taking the high-road, but it's clear others are not seeing it that way.
Ordinarily I wouldn't draw attention to how posts are moderated when engaged in a debate with somebody. This case, though, is different. You are using Slashdot to gain visibility for your business. Not only do you actively engage in discussions with an advert in your sig to the games you sell, but you also have submitted a story which earned you quite a bit of attention. It should matter to you how comments are moderated. My post was at +5 when you responded, you earned a Troll mod. I hope you take a moment to ponder that and grow a thicker skin. I have made points and you are publically brushing them off.
Hint: All the emails I got from pirates that were abusive got deleted. I didn't bother reading past the insults and the sarcastic crap.
Just for clarification, are you implying that I am a pirate?
I like to think that DRM is the cause of and not the solution to Piracy:)
I remember back in the DOS days there was actually a card you could purchase that'd bypass some of the tricks companies would pull from letting you make copies of your floppies. I don't know the nature of this card(if anybody'd like to chime in and point me in the right direction I'd LOVE to read more about it....) but it strikes me that it's a natural reaction of people to want this sort of thing when they spend so much on software. It's not like massively replicated media is known for its extraordinarily long shelf life.
I don't really think publishers are "The Bad Guys" either. When publishers read stories of un-DRM'ed titles like World of Goo having a 90% piracy rate, I imagine they feel justified.
So they think increasing demand for the cracked copy will solve the problem? They'll sell more copies if their product does less?
So your method of protest is to steal the game? Yeah, that will make them take you seriously. That would be like me protesting Wal-Mart's labor practices by walking in and stealing DVDs because I don't want to give my money to a company that is overworking and underpaying their employees. Your logic is epic fail.
I'd like to respond using your own words...
That would be like me protesting Wal-Mart's labor practices by walking in and stealing DVDs... Your logic is epic fail.
If you really wanted t protest DRM, you would NOT play the game at all, whilst emailing them to say so. When you pirate the game, you just get chalked up by the publisher as another pirate, not as some sort of anti-drm protest vote....
The people who pirated my games achieved fuck all in terms of removing DRM.
Really? Your blog post 'Talking to Pirates' implies something different happened. You asked the question "Why do people pirate my games?", received some answers, then removed DRM from your games. Don't get me wrong, you did the right thing by asking your potential customers what's going on, but you cannot deny that piracy had an affect on your decision to withdraw the DRM.
"I want this game, and I took it for free. If you can find a more secure drm, you will make more money from me"
Yep, that's how it's interpreted, and that's why you and other game companies are facing problems with your potential customers. That is a failure on your part, not on the part of your potential customers. You end up paying more attention to the people aiming to get it for free that you end up screwing the guy that's putting a roof over your head. The game industry has been told for years that it's obnoxious that a disc is required in the system to play. That's not a new thing. It is incredibly difficult to imagine there are many game devs out there that don't know what "NOCD" means. The funny thing is, they see these cracks flying around, then they use this wonderfully broken logic: "If we make it harder to copy the game, we'll reduce piracy!" Cute. Let's reduce piracy by increasing the value of cracked software. Derr.
The truth is, you won't listen until you can attach numbers to it. You've known all along that restricting the software makes it less valuable to your paying customers. You didn't listen until you started noticing 'pirated' software of yours out there. Sad thing is, that's the case everywhere. You twits think everybody's out to save a buck (completely ignoring the success of places like Starbucks...) and that you're precariously on the verge of getting 2 million playing customers and zero sales. In 25+ years of home gaming, this hasn't happened. What did happen? The customers revolted. Spore announces restrictions, Amazon gets pelted with bad reviews. Oops. EA changes things a bit, then gets Amazon to remove the reviews. It's a small win, but again, no reaction until actual numbers start changing. That is the problem you and every other game developer big and small have. You claim you'll listen to customer feedback, but you don't actually react until people communicate through your wallet.
I saw you posting on Slashdot. You had plenty of time before 'piracy' got a response out of you.
Your link is to your own blog, where you have a post containing nothing but the same unsubstantiated claim you made in this post...
On top of that, the claim is refutable. The iPod looks narrower because of the curved shape. The guy is using a 2D measurement to disprove a 3D claim. It'd be like if I took a photo of the Empire State Building and claimed it was 50 feet tall because I took a mailbox in the same picture and copied/pasted it a few times until they were equal heights.
It's easy to disprove, really. Just make a 3d model and do a perspective vs. orthographic render. The ortho (2D) version's fatter.
Slashdot Mirror
Heck, Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii originally shipped with MONO sound, because it was really pushing the Wii apparently for the CPU to handle Guitar Hero 3 with stereo sound.
Yeah, that's why it was released on the PS2. :P
The CPU problem was with the PC version, not the Wii version.
Firefox had this years ago, seriously is this accurate, Opera just got these?
Now you know how Opera users feel every single time there's a FireFox upgrade story.
...but it wouldn't be much of a business model if everyone could just download everything to any computer and just leave it there for someone else to play.
In 20+ years of computing, this has always been the case, and it hasn't come close to destroying the business model. This is simply a perpetual 'slippery slope'.
So in this case, DRM actually makes a new distribution channel possible....
I suppose. I mean, really, all it's doing is comforting a bunch of people that think you are a thief.
Hmm, what sort of consequences?
Moderations often affect the tone of a message. A misplaced 'Insightful' mod can turn a joke into perceived ignorance. That can lead to negative moderations and a flood of comments trying to dispute it. It's not the most common thing in the world, but I've seen it happen several times.
That's not to say I'm against the idea of a funny comment being modded informative. I do, however, have a preference that people don't use Insightful mods solely to give funny comments karma. And yes, I've softened my stance a bit. Heh.
Funny can draw just as much rebuttal as insightful.
If it's meant to be funny, then any rebuttal is a waste of time.
If you don't agree, metamod.
Useless. Besides, I don't want to contribute to you losing your privledges just beacuse we have a slightly different idea of how to mod something. It is considerably more effective (and less harmful) for me to tell you what I think in a comment right here than it is to randomly vote on the moderation of a handful of posts.
Talk to CmdrTaco. Of course, it's been this way for about 8 years, so don't expect anything to change.
I'm not complaining and don't want anything changed. I just think the users' insistence on rewarding funny's with karma has unwanted consequences.
Insightful is the standard replacement for the Funny mod. Funny doesn't give karma, but Insightful does, so Funny posts are often modded Insightful by generous mods.
Great. The guy gets useless karma, but his post invites unnecessary rebuttals.
Why do fields of study have to proceed at the same relative paces we're familiar with? What is it about building robots and giant spaceships that necessitates a cure for cancer?
It's a stupid nitpick. It'll only manage to get a little less stupid if we manage to cure cancer before we build big spaceships.
Sci-fi fans are notoriously bad about thinking they understand things like logic and physics. There are a lot of them that are blissfully unaware that their nitpick about the two ships getting stuck together in Nemesis is wrong. There are others that will battle to the death a nitpick about Episode III's portrayal of ships chased by stupid little buzzsaw droids. Heck, I one of these twerps. What kills me, though, is all this technical criticism... but somehow I must have been sheltered from the nitpick about Johnny 5's CPU magically being able to operate like a human brain. That's acceptable, but there's no cure for cancer in a society that can magically teleport their ships great distances? *shrug*
I wish we could all just settle down.
Other things that must ship in the billions: screws, nails, paper clips, thumbtacks, staples, sweets (candy), baked beans, soda, LEDs (actually almost any discrete electronic component), copier paper, post-it notes, coins, pens, pencils, bin liners ...
... posts nitpicking that quote...
Since when did effective communication preclude accuracy of information?
As if they're often mutually exclusive. In any event, you can be very literal and very confusing. You could screw up the terms and still be very clear. In this case, he used a commonly accepted term that even Mr. Data would have no problems discerning. Non-issue.
If an IT journalist can't communicate the difference between a genericised computer hardware arrangement and a specific companies operating system then they should seek alternative employ, IMO.
Ooookay. In this case, the journalist used a term that's universally accepted. What a bad journalist!
I guess I simply made the mistake of thinking ComputerWorld.com address issues in computing.
Yep, they sure muddied those waters. I didn't realize how confused I was until I read your post.
I suppose you think Ubuntu === Linux too?
What are you talking about?!?! Linux is the kernel! I hope you're not complaining about KDE!! I'm going to waste your time posting inane replies because I want you to be so specific that my massive brain has no trouble digesting it!!! You better spell everything correctly, too, because if you don't, I'll go into cardiac arrest and it'll be YOUR FAULT!!
I'm not asking anyone to stop using the term PC (Personal Computer) but I would expect an IT journalist to use it correctly.
Right, you don't want anybody to stop using the term PC except IT journalists.
Those extra few bits must really have been burning up the bandwidth.
Effective communication is important, especially for journalists. Your pedantry, not so important.
"They chose six candidates: Camino (for Mac), Maxthon (PC), OmniWeb (for Mac), Opera (both Mac and PC versions) and Shiira (for Mac). Which is the best? It all depends on what you need from a browser."
That version is shorter and it doesn't call for the ban of a term that's been in use for 10 or so years.
I wish people would stop parroting this fallacy all the time. Market share has nothing to do with how easy it is to break into a system.
I wish people would understand the true nature of a complaint before wishing it'd go away. I mean, it sure sounds good and gives people with mod points something to do, but it defies logic. You can't even run Unix without following certain policies (like continually updating the system). Heck, nobody's even been able to write software protection that hasn't been cracked shortly after release.
I wish people would stop parroting the fallacy that security in *nix is a matter of if and not when. Your OS is insecure. Sorry.
Please don't use the term "PC" when you mean to say "Windows." It's bad enough that Apple continues to push this belief that PCs inherently run Windows in their marketing (as well as being inherently different from a hardware standpoint, something that was one true but stopped being so after 2006), but on Slashdot?
It is a commonly accepted term and frankly it's way too late to change it now. Basically all you're going to do is confuse people for the benefit of... wee... being literal to the acronymn.
At my work, I'm forced to use a SLOT-A Athlon running XP with 32mb RAM. K-Meleon allows the machine to function. All other graphical browsers bring it down to its knees.
How does that work? I couldn't even get Win2K to boot within the same day with 64 megs.
Because they were the same product from the same company for more or less the same kind of end-user.
As if that was even considered before people started chiming in as opposed to being rationalized after the fact.
I vote for Chilly Willy
A stinkin cartoon? Why don't you guys grow up and use a more serious mascot?
But don't take my choices away from me just because you want to have all of yours made for you.
Amusingly a lot of fun was had at Microsoft's expense for having multiple versions of Vista.
Do you think any developer bothers reading past the abuse you type?
Considering that the closest thing to 'abuse' I got to was 3/4ths of the way through my post, by your own admission you have quite a bit to chew on. You think you appear to be taking the high-road, but it's clear others are not seeing it that way.
Ordinarily I wouldn't draw attention to how posts are moderated when engaged in a debate with somebody. This case, though, is different. You are using Slashdot to gain visibility for your business. Not only do you actively engage in discussions with an advert in your sig to the games you sell, but you also have submitted a story which earned you quite a bit of attention. It should matter to you how comments are moderated. My post was at +5 when you responded, you earned a Troll mod. I hope you take a moment to ponder that and grow a thicker skin. I have made points and you are publically brushing them off.
Hint: All the emails I got from pirates that were abusive got deleted. I didn't bother reading past the insults and the sarcastic crap.
Just for clarification, are you implying that I am a pirate?
great argument you make there. Just reposting my post, then stealing from my post.
I know. It must be a terrible burden for you never to be able to use those words again. ;)
I like to think that DRM is the cause of and not the solution to Piracy :)
I remember back in the DOS days there was actually a card you could purchase that'd bypass some of the tricks companies would pull from letting you make copies of your floppies. I don't know the nature of this card(if anybody'd like to chime in and point me in the right direction I'd LOVE to read more about it....) but it strikes me that it's a natural reaction of people to want this sort of thing when they spend so much on software. It's not like massively replicated media is known for its extraordinarily long shelf life.
I don't really think publishers are "The Bad Guys" either. When publishers read stories of un-DRM'ed titles like World of Goo having a 90% piracy rate, I imagine they feel justified.
So they think increasing demand for the cracked copy will solve the problem? They'll sell more copies if their product does less?
So your method of protest is to steal the game? Yeah, that will make them take you seriously. That would be like me protesting Wal-Mart's labor practices by walking in and stealing DVDs because I don't want to give my money to a company that is overworking and underpaying their employees. Your logic is epic fail.
I'd like to respond using your own words...
That would be like me protesting Wal-Mart's labor practices by walking in and stealing DVDs... Your logic is epic fail.
If you really wanted t protest DRM, you would NOT play the game at all, whilst emailing them to say so. ...
When you pirate the game, you just get chalked up by the publisher as another pirate, not as some sort of anti-drm protest vote.
The people who pirated my games achieved fuck all in terms of removing DRM.
Really? Your blog post 'Talking to Pirates' implies something different happened. You asked the question "Why do people pirate my games?", received some answers, then removed DRM from your games. Don't get me wrong, you did the right thing by asking your potential customers what's going on, but you cannot deny that piracy had an affect on your decision to withdraw the DRM.
"I want this game, and I took it for free. If you can find a more secure drm, you will make more money from me"
Yep, that's how it's interpreted, and that's why you and other game companies are facing problems with your potential customers. That is a failure on your part, not on the part of your potential customers. You end up paying more attention to the people aiming to get it for free that you end up screwing the guy that's putting a roof over your head. The game industry has been told for years that it's obnoxious that a disc is required in the system to play. That's not a new thing. It is incredibly difficult to imagine there are many game devs out there that don't know what "NOCD" means. The funny thing is, they see these cracks flying around, then they use this wonderfully broken logic: "If we make it harder to copy the game, we'll reduce piracy!" Cute. Let's reduce piracy by increasing the value of cracked software. Derr.
The truth is, you won't listen until you can attach numbers to it. You've known all along that restricting the software makes it less valuable to your paying customers. You didn't listen until you started noticing 'pirated' software of yours out there. Sad thing is, that's the case everywhere. You twits think everybody's out to save a buck (completely ignoring the success of places like Starbucks...) and that you're precariously on the verge of getting 2 million playing customers and zero sales. In 25+ years of home gaming, this hasn't happened. What did happen? The customers revolted. Spore announces restrictions, Amazon gets pelted with bad reviews. Oops. EA changes things a bit, then gets Amazon to remove the reviews. It's a small win, but again, no reaction until actual numbers start changing. That is the problem you and every other game developer big and small have. You claim you'll listen to customer feedback, but you don't actually react until people communicate through your wallet.
I saw you posting on Slashdot. You had plenty of time before 'piracy' got a response out of you.
Your link is to your own blog, where you have a post containing nothing but the same unsubstantiated claim you made in this post...
On top of that, the claim is refutable. The iPod looks narrower because of the curved shape. The guy is using a 2D measurement to disprove a 3D claim. It'd be like if I took a photo of the Empire State Building and claimed it was 50 feet tall because I took a mailbox in the same picture and copied/pasted it a few times until they were equal heights.
It's easy to disprove, really. Just make a 3d model and do a perspective vs. orthographic render. The ortho (2D) version's fatter.