(and since he's made it clear he'll not go public with the company and they've made double revenue year after year? Not bloody likely)
Unlikely things happen all the time, especially in the video games industry.
...he will issue a patch that will disable calling home on Steam and all Valve games so it really won't matter WTF the other companies think as Steam will just be in offline mode forever.
Yes, the guy who wants to sell you something tells you what you want to hear. I want to see a contract.
You can be mad about games using DRM, but Valve isn't the one to be angry at.... PS: Valve's talked about issuing a patch to disable the DRM if they ever go out of business.
Heh. So don't be angry at Valve, but they do have the key to disable the DRM...
Okay I'm just teasing you. But I do think you're right about this:
Realistically that probably won't happen (too many licensing problems)...
Until I Valve presents one of their standard contracts with the companies that provide these games with explicit terms that say they can disable the DRM in the event of going out of business, I have no reason to believe *any* of my Steam games will work after Valve goes under. I do get your point about the varying forms of DRM on Steam games, but you are talking to somebody who had a very difficult time playing certain games on Steam during a period where internet access was incredibly flakey. Despite being in off-line mode, I *still* had to battle with activations on a weekly basis. I don't know which games on Steam do or don't have restrictive DRM, it's been a while since I've looked but I don't recall them being terribly up-front about it.
YOUR data??? Since when watching a movie on a rental service like Netflix makes the movie yours?
I think he's confusing Netflix for iTunes. If Apple goes bye bye the movie/TV purchases you made go kaputski. He's right about that.
What he's wrong about, and what you're right about, is that in Netflix's case DRM is perfectly acceptable since the key problem with DRM is it makes access to data temporary.
Thanks to Netflix, Amazon, and even iTunes, this whole discussion got a lot more complicated.
Because everyone who uses it is legitimizing it and sending the message that it's acceptable and the way forward.
For a rental service like Netflix it is perfectly fine. Aim your guns at Steam, they're the ones that charge you full purchase price for software that will fail when they go out of business. You lot got all upset at DRM back when it was used exclusively for 'permanent' purchases, you forgot to re-evaluate that for rentals.
That was back when phones had a two inch screen, and it was an entirely legitimate point.
It was back when PocketPC's were at the peak, and no it wasn't a legitimate point. This was happening at the same time cameras with cell phones were being poo-poo'd because apparently everybody on this site has a good deal more pocket space than the average person.
Personally I don't know whether to attribute this to typical Slashdot contrarianism or if the expense was high enough people were going to have to wait and that was how they kept their envy under control. Probably a mixture of both.
You're right about the KB, and it had a stylus as well. However, the Treo had to make compromises to display web pages due to the low resolution of the display. The same would have to happen here, and frankly you can always bring the watch closer to your face. Keep in mind Apple's Reader mode for its browser, it'd work well on the watch.
I used to browse the web on a Palm Treo with almost the same number of pixels as the Apple Watch has. Tapping on links would suck but it wouldnt be a big deal to spin crown on it to cycle through the clickable areas of the screen. Tie it into the bookmarks on the phone and, while not the most robust thing in the world, you could at least get some light reading in.
I remember people asking about why anybody would use an internet browser on their phone when they could just use their laptop.
It's not a win-win for customers unless the price goes down.
Bull. The customers maintain the price, not the other way around. If they raise their prices some customers will leave. How many depends on the value of what they offer. They can't just raise their prices if their overhead goes up and it is unwise for them to lower them if the customers are happy. Lower operating costs, however, do nothing but help their customers, even if it's something as simple as it means DB's services are around longer.
Slashdot Mirror
So the DRM will go away when Steam goes under because your worship of Gaben is more powerful than contracts and lawyers. Got it.
(and since he's made it clear he'll not go public with the company and they've made double revenue year after year? Not bloody likely)
Unlikely things happen all the time, especially in the video games industry.
...he will issue a patch that will disable calling home on Steam and all Valve games so it really won't matter WTF the other companies think as Steam will just be in offline mode forever.
Yes, the guy who wants to sell you something tells you what you want to hear. I want to see a contract.
You can be mad about games using DRM, but Valve isn't the one to be angry at.... PS: Valve's talked about issuing a patch to disable the DRM if they ever go out of business.
Heh. So don't be angry at Valve, but they do have the key to disable the DRM...
Okay I'm just teasing you. But I do think you're right about this:
Realistically that probably won't happen (too many licensing problems)...
Until I Valve presents one of their standard contracts with the companies that provide these games with explicit terms that say they can disable the DRM in the event of going out of business, I have no reason to believe *any* of my Steam games will work after Valve goes under. I do get your point about the varying forms of DRM on Steam games, but you are talking to somebody who had a very difficult time playing certain games on Steam during a period where internet access was incredibly flakey. Despite being in off-line mode, I *still* had to battle with activations on a weekly basis. I don't know which games on Steam do or don't have restrictive DRM, it's been a while since I've looked but I don't recall them being terribly up-front about it.
YOUR data??? Since when watching a movie on a rental service like Netflix makes the movie yours?
I think he's confusing Netflix for iTunes. If Apple goes bye bye the movie/TV purchases you made go kaputski. He's right about that.
What he's wrong about, and what you're right about, is that in Netflix's case DRM is perfectly acceptable since the key problem with DRM is it makes access to data temporary.
Thanks to Netflix, Amazon, and even iTunes, this whole discussion got a lot more complicated.
Because everyone who uses it is legitimizing it and sending the message that it's acceptable and the way forward.
For a rental service like Netflix it is perfectly fine. Aim your guns at Steam, they're the ones that charge you full purchase price for software that will fail when they go out of business. You lot got all upset at DRM back when it was used exclusively for 'permanent' purchases, you forgot to re-evaluate that for rentals.
That was back when phones had a two inch screen, and it was an entirely legitimate point.
It was back when PocketPC's were at the peak, and no it wasn't a legitimate point. This was happening at the same time cameras with cell phones were being poo-poo'd because apparently everybody on this site has a good deal more pocket space than the average person.
Personally I don't know whether to attribute this to typical Slashdot contrarianism or if the expense was high enough people were going to have to wait and that was how they kept their envy under control. Probably a mixture of both.
So the summary's opening line of "A little over 300 years ago, a supernova ... exploded" is incorrect.
I'm glad this was modded up so that all those people who didn't see that episode with the Picard Maneuver could be brought up to speed.
This is great news. I'm really excited about trying out systemd. Everybody's talking about it!!
I think reality is going to, again, surprise us.
I read plenty of stuff off my Pebble.
You're right about the KB, and it had a stylus as well. However, the Treo had to make compromises to display web pages due to the low resolution of the display. The same would have to happen here, and frankly you can always bring the watch closer to your face. Keep in mind Apple's Reader mode for its browser, it'd work well on the watch.
I used to browse the web on a Palm Treo with almost the same number of pixels as the Apple Watch has. Tapping on links would suck but it wouldnt be a big deal to spin crown on it to cycle through the clickable areas of the screen. Tie it into the bookmarks on the phone and, while not the most robust thing in the world, you could at least get some light reading in.
I remember people asking about why anybody would use an internet browser on their phone when they could just use their laptop.
I'd like an RSS reader for my Pebble, I can only imagine it being better on an Apple Watch.
You're not Facebook's customer, you're a Facebook user. The customers are the ad and marketing guys.
So basically the reason you don't know what you're talking about in this thread is your recursion depth is set to 1.
I've never been hired or paid by a customer, dipshit. And neither have you.
You remind me of a protester I saw once that had a sign that read: "Who needs oil, I take the bus!"
Customers are the job creators.
When you're driving from Kansas to Colorado you eagerly await the 'purple mountains' so you can finally break up the monotony.
It's worth pointng out that DropBox does have competition. They probably are investing in keeping their customer base.
Native Kansan here so I don't get to say this often... you wrong.
You're thinking of Missouri.
Soon to be released as a movie: Attack of the Killer Eyeballs.
Not to nitpick, but it's actually "Attack of the The Killer Eyeballs".
It's not a win-win for customers unless the price goes down.
Bull. The customers maintain the price, not the other way around. If they raise their prices some customers will leave. How many depends on the value of what they offer. They can't just raise their prices if their overhead goes up and it is unwise for them to lower them if the customers are happy. Lower operating costs, however, do nothing but help their customers, even if it's something as simple as it means DB's services are around longer.
But it's the "damned kids these days!" because "back in my day!" etc.
The one I heard a lot growing up was: "Kids these days need to learn the value of a dollar!"
Well, duh, they exist in the first place to make money. The real question is why this isn't a win-win for their customers anyway?
Did you get lost on the way to Youtube or something?