I agree totally. A small company in this situation is going to end up doing one of three things:
a) Roll out to a truly miniscule coverage area, probably bankrupting themselves when they're overlooked in favour of one that isn't a hare-brained startup scheme
b) garnish themselves with parsley and those little chef-hats you always see on turkeys in cartoons, and hope that one of the big carriers will buy them out for a princely sum
c) Lie in wait like a patent troll, then threaten to sue someone for trespassing on their section of spectrum, probably in the hopes of an even bigger payoff.
There's another wrinkle to ignoring piracy-- the DRM development concerns might take offense at you rebuffing their concerned offers of support, not unlike the 'insurance' offered by neighborhood protection rackets. This is the same outfit that had a pirated torrent of their game posted on the Starforce forums, by a member of the Starforce forum moderation team no less. Officially no harm was meant, but unofficially... come on. Ignoring DRM in favour of adding value post-purchase is the last thing that the copy protection racketeers want.
Logically, they'd have a new version of iTunes set up to offer you the opportunity to sign up by using your credit card and iPod serial number. That way they don't have to screw around with the boxed product that's already in storage or on shelves, worry about confusing the consumer with roughly twice as many virtually identical devices (different only in sticker price and bundled 'free' downloads) and have the opportunity to snag owners of previous-model iPods.
On the other hand, there's the iPhone and its associated long-term subscription. It should also be noted that Apple considers iPods to be disposable. When they say that the 'subscription' is good for the life of the device, you have to ask if they mean 'until it breaks down' (unlikely) or 'until the warranty expires' or 'until we phase your particular iPod style out'. I suspect that they'd just raise the sticker price on new iPods and keep track of free-download eligibility by querying a device's serial number through iTunes.
Ah, but that's the beauty of it. Sooner or later, they'll correlate oyster card ownership with census data, and everyone who doesn't use one will be immediately added to a terrorist watch-list because they clearly have something to hide.
Regrettable shit is blaming something on your sister, or ordering a stack of pizzas to someone else's house, not tying the fucking SWAT team up on a spurious call.
The man is this generation's Brad McQuaid. Gameplay changes made merely to punish player ingenuity and enforce his 'vision', and pointless choices and grinds simply for their own sake. The number of quality-of-life changes that have been made to City Of... since NCSoft bought it (and hired most of its devs) is simply staggering.
Similarly staggering is his apparent inability to learn from his mistakes. Early in City of Heroes development and testing, it was discovered that tabletop-style 'choose your own powers' play simply wasn't going to work-- players gravitated toward game-raping character designs, and it was really easy to make something that was simply unworkable. According to the Cryptic website, he's gone back to that kind of design... and for reasons that are apparently borne of pure sentimentality, he's using the HERO System too. For those unfamiliar with HERO, it's a tabletop RPG ruleset with over two hundred pages devoted to character generation and filled with special cases. If he was miffed at players finding loopholes in the elegantly simple City Of... games, the sheer amount of rule rape that will occur once savvy players pop up will drive him into a straitjacket. That's assuming that anyone gets past statting a hero out.
...with the same password that you use to log in to gMail, Google Pages, your Google home page and virtually every other service they offer? Come on. It isn't like Google mandates passwords of any particular strength, or that accounts haven't been hijacked through one means or another.
Looks like he's continuing his tradition of making names by butchering real words. (in)Sidious? Corusca(nt|te)? This time it sounds like he's cramming 'Ah so' and 'So ka' together.
Nothing at all. Unfortunately, stupid tags like that and 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong' are just an expression of the same stupid Slashdot memes expressing themselves in a new venue.
Sony's apparatus looks like it's meant as nothing more than an idiot-proofed memory stick that you don't actually have to plug in anywhere, rather than a Bluetooth competitor. They're probably aiming it at the population that is intimidated by anything that smacks of networking.
My first thought was old fashioned tinfoil. Take the thermostat off the wall, wrap it up like a baked potato, and bask in the cool knowledge that you've stuck one to The Man.
You're right, DRMed to the gills CDs aren't Red Book. That's why they don't bear the Compact Disc Audio brand anywhere on the packaging. Most people didn't know about the various Books to begin with, and at this point the assumption (erroneous as it is) is that something packaged as an audio CD is an audio CD, regardless if whether it bears the CD Audio stamp or not.
Already published on the site: a 20 is a 20 is a critical hit.
A critical hit automatically does maximum dice-plus-bonuses damage, plus additional dice apparently based on weapon type and enchantments. No crit ranges, no thresholds, no checks.
Not to mention that this is going to go over about as well as the class action suits brought against MMO operators in the distant past. If there's a guarantee of uptime and usability in the Live contracts, even by omission, then I'm officially gobsmacked.
Smart roads, smart power grids, massively cross-indexed medical files... it may sound good on paper (and I would debate that in some cases), but who is going to rip up their extant traffic light systems, or rewire their house (let alone a city grid) for that kind of functionality?
Who's going to provide this functionality, for that matter? Will we end up with a dozen mutually incompatible systems, and what happens when we want to upgrade what's already been half installed?
Slashdot Mirror
...and wondering if he can plug the Rez vibrator into it...
It's only gay if the buckyballs touch.
That's easy. They'll sue Novell for defamation!
a) Roll out to a truly miniscule coverage area, probably bankrupting themselves when they're overlooked in favour of one that isn't a hare-brained startup scheme
b) garnish themselves with parsley and those little chef-hats you always see on turkeys in cartoons, and hope that one of the big carriers will buy them out for a princely sum
c) Lie in wait like a patent troll, then threaten to sue someone for trespassing on their section of spectrum, probably in the hopes of an even bigger payoff.
There's another wrinkle to ignoring piracy-- the DRM development concerns might take offense at you rebuffing their concerned offers of support, not unlike the 'insurance' offered by neighborhood protection rackets. This is the same outfit that had a pirated torrent of their game posted on the Starforce forums, by a member of the Starforce forum moderation team no less. Officially no harm was meant, but unofficially... come on. Ignoring DRM in favour of adding value post-purchase is the last thing that the copy protection racketeers want.
On the other hand, there's the iPhone and its associated long-term subscription. It should also be noted that Apple considers iPods to be disposable. When they say that the 'subscription' is good for the life of the device, you have to ask if they mean 'until it breaks down' (unlikely) or 'until the warranty expires' or 'until we phase your particular iPod style out'. I suspect that they'd just raise the sticker price on new iPods and keep track of free-download eligibility by querying a device's serial number through iTunes.
Ah, but that's the beauty of it. Sooner or later, they'll correlate oyster card ownership with census data, and everyone who doesn't use one will be immediately added to a terrorist watch-list because they clearly have something to hide.
They probably keep a close eye on the FBI themselves, if their infiltration of the RCMP years ago is any indication.
Exactly. This is 100% about getting broadband customers to subsidize their fucking war chest.
"He came in peace."
Regrettable shit is blaming something on your sister, or ordering a stack of pizzas to someone else's house, not tying the fucking SWAT team up on a spurious call.
Similarly staggering is his apparent inability to learn from his mistakes. Early in City of Heroes development and testing, it was discovered that tabletop-style 'choose your own powers' play simply wasn't going to work-- players gravitated toward game-raping character designs, and it was really easy to make something that was simply unworkable. According to the Cryptic website, he's gone back to that kind of design... and for reasons that are apparently borne of pure sentimentality, he's using the HERO System too. For those unfamiliar with HERO, it's a tabletop RPG ruleset with over two hundred pages devoted to character generation and filled with special cases. If he was miffed at players finding loopholes in the elegantly simple City Of... games, the sheer amount of rule rape that will occur once savvy players pop up will drive him into a straitjacket. That's assuming that anyone gets past statting a hero out.
...with the same password that you use to log in to gMail, Google Pages, your Google home page and virtually every other service they offer? Come on. It isn't like Google mandates passwords of any particular strength, or that accounts haven't been hijacked through one means or another.
Looks like he's continuing his tradition of making names by butchering real words. (in)Sidious? Corusca(nt|te)? This time it sounds like he's cramming 'Ah so' and 'So ka' together.
Nothing at all. Unfortunately, stupid tags like that and 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong' are just an expression of the same stupid Slashdot memes expressing themselves in a new venue.
No. It was much more impressive the first time, when it was System Shock 2.
Sony's apparatus looks like it's meant as nothing more than an idiot-proofed memory stick that you don't actually have to plug in anywhere, rather than a Bluetooth competitor. They're probably aiming it at the population that is intimidated by anything that smacks of networking.
My first thought was old fashioned tinfoil. Take the thermostat off the wall, wrap it up like a baked potato, and bask in the cool knowledge that you've stuck one to The Man.
You're a picky bastard, Sam I Am.
You're right, DRMed to the gills CDs aren't Red Book. That's why they don't bear the Compact Disc Audio brand anywhere on the packaging. Most people didn't know about the various Books to begin with, and at this point the assumption (erroneous as it is) is that something packaged as an audio CD is an audio CD, regardless if whether it bears the CD Audio stamp or not.
A critical hit automatically does maximum dice-plus-bonuses damage, plus additional dice apparently based on weapon type and enchantments. No crit ranges, no thresholds, no checks.
Not to mention that this is going to go over about as well as the class action suits brought against MMO operators in the distant past. If there's a guarantee of uptime and usability in the Live contracts, even by omission, then I'm officially gobsmacked.
I was wondering the same thing, given that Ginko has been on the radar for quite some time now.
Who's going to provide this functionality, for that matter? Will we end up with a dozen mutually incompatible systems, and what happens when we want to upgrade what's already been half installed?
In particles, somewhere beyond Saturn?