What worries me more is that the bank would probably cancel my card before phoning to check even if it was me making the purchases. I then have to go through a very uncomfortable week (I rarely have much cash to hand, card is more convenient). My bank already do this (and have done this to me twice in the last year) when they see what they consider suspicious buying activity, such as when I went through a period of buying a few bits on eBay after a long period of not using it. In fact, on that occasion they did phone me and ask if it was me making the purchases, I said yes and they canceled my card anyway, because it had been flagged as potentially fraudulent! (And to make matters worse, this was two weeks before I was due to leave for Italy, where I'd planned to use my card instead of carrying lots of Euros, so I have a very fraught week until the replacement arrived). Knowing that I have to worry about whether buying two coffees in a 90 minute period might flag me as a fraudster is just going to have me carrying cash around instead.
There's no reason they can't use both methods. If only blind people were using the physical keypad it's going to be much more hit and miss for skimmers and a much smaller audience to educate on ways to obfuscate pin entry. The difficulty then is encouraging the users to switch to the more secure method, if you provide both people will inevitably stick with what they're used to, but at least those of us who recognise the benefits can take advantage. Of course, incredibly thin screen overlays that duplicate the ATM OS will be the next logical step (I saw a demonstration of an e-ink display embedded in a credit card last week), but at least it'd buy us a little time!
Same here, I shelled out for an Alienware gaming laptop after barely playing PC games in the last 5 or so years, primarily to play D3 (I went for a laptop so I can have some portability when I'm away from home). After hearing the directions they're going with the game, I've cancelled my pre-order. I don't care if they want to protect their in game economy so they can farm players for cash (although I don't particularly agree with that either, since I think it'll take a lot of the fun out of drops and replace them with greed), but I do care that I can't do a little solo dungeon crawling without being jacked into their servers.
It also runs counter to their promise to work with more open technologies, to buy everyone one of the more locked down devices. A more traditional OS tablet device would be a better option since it could also replace some of the functions of a traditional computer more easily, so at least they might get some benefit in reducing their desktop footprint.
The attitudes of the generation that tend to be in power, for one. They won't understand digital signing, many of them come from a legal background, they understand signatures on bits of dead tree, what they know about digital copies they've probably learned from Hollywood, so they think it's all being cracked and streamed directly to Wikileaks as they type. That's a tough mentality to break (hell, I work in a "trendy" digital agency and even here where everyone has tablets or smartphones stuff still gets printed out and scribbled on and passed around on paper).
Sooner or later someone will demand paper copies and then everyone will want paper copies. At that point all you've done is bought everyone an expensive paperweight. I also wonder if they've factored in the cost of replacing lost/stolen/broken equipment, buying peripherals (charge cables, keyboards, cases) and keeping all these things charged at all times (that's one benefit of a big stack of paper, once you've printed it it's no longer consuming power, the iPad does so not only every time you look at the document but even when you're not looking at it). Not to mention the lost man hours now everyone will have all the distractions of the internet with them whenever they go.
This is exactly what I thought. If anything it's going to eventually work against them. Once the novelty wears off, people will start seeing these for what they really are - extended trials with hidden payments if you want to fully participate. At that point people will use the trial to critique the game not as "something that's free" but as "something that's likely to cost at least $X over the next year". At that point the games had better stand up as solid experiences or people will just look for the next free thing (at least with the old fashion payment model you'd get an initial bulk of purchases in the first few weeks instead of gambling the business on a freemium model that may or may not attract enough customers).
The problem with that from their point of view is that it makes it far too easy for you to walk away. If you have a lot of money invested in a "F2P" model game, or you have a running subscription that means unless you're playing two or three nights a month you feel like you're not getting your money's worth, it's much harder to take a few weeks away from the game, and people who find it easy to take a few weeks away might also find that they like to do other things and end up leaving the game completely. That's why they'll never make it easy for you to dip in and out when time permits, they'll always want some hook to keep you coming back more often.
That's because the division is already not that clear and it's getting more fuzzy every day. What if I have a desktop setup with a touchscreen, which default should the OS choose? What if I'm using it on a smartphone with a bluetooth keyboard, or a tablet with a wireless mouse? The days of being able to say definitively "This is either a) a desktop or b) a tablet" are aguably already over. In ten years I might be running MS' latest OS on my TV or fridge (okay, I hope not, but you get the point) - it's far more important that I can easily make it do what I want than it is for it to try and second guess what I want.
Also, doing anything else would be ignoring the way the world is headed. Already it's becoming increasingly apparent that the average person of tomorrow is more likely to be using their smartphone for the vast majority of today's desktop apps. To tie the OS to the way things have worked for the last couple of decades when it's clear that the next couple of decades will work completely differently (and we're already seeing it change) would be silly. As someone who wants a bit more control, I don't mind one extra click/shortcut to access the more advanced tools I need. In fact I've said all along that I think Apple's simplified UI/walled garden approach would be fantastic if they still had all the tools the power user wants as an option. It sounds like this is that kind of thinking, and despite the fact that it's MS and they've promised more than they could deliver many, many times in the past, it's still going to be interesting to see how this turns out.
True, nothing in what they've done stops people uploading the real thing to TPB, they're just hoping that by not acting like douches about the whole thing, folk might be willing to throw some money their way. Even though it's clearly a clever bit of marketing, I can't feel badly towards them for it.
No, you've just been brainwashed into spouting that response. Let's face it, whether you agree with file sharing or not, there are far, far worse actual, real crimes happening out there in the real world. If you really think someone who downloads a piece of software without paying for it is worse than, or even comparable to a murderer, for instance then your moral compass is definitely broken. Remember, despite the cute marketing job the **AAs are doing, digital piracy doesn't actually equate to real life piracy - if it's wrong then let's discuss it for what it is, not try and turn it into something it's clearly not in order to drive home a point.
4) Plus, pirate hats actually make things better. So yet again the pirates get the best version:) Seriously though, they seem like they've got the right approach and there are some nice incentives to buy (you get "series 2" free apparently). I think it's a pretty clever way to get a demo of your game out there and talked about, I wish more developers took the playful approach rather than the "let's punish legitimate users with horrible DRM and still see pirate copies in circulation two days after launch" approach that seems to be the norm.
They played other types of game, or engaged with their peers in other related ways (sports, drinking, RPGs, music, etc). If all your peers are playing games then there is a strong imperative for you to play games - that can be broken but it's going against basic human programming.
Even then, who am I to judge them if it makes them happy? They could eat a steady diet of lettuce leaves for the next 80 years and die miserable, or they could eat what they like for 40 years and die happy. Is the end goal to live a happy life or a long life? I know it's not that black and white, there are all kinds of other considerations like poor health, strain on the public purse, etc. I guess my real point is maybe it's better to educate people about what's better rather than outright bash what they like (they're far more likely to listen if they think you're not looking down on their choices).
Abandon? Probably not, but at this point you have to ask yourself who needs whom more. As ElectricTurtle points out, there are ways Google can make compliance with any restriction easier for themselves at the expense of UK business that make money from local listings (whether that's relying on advertising, ecommerce or just having people find out about them via their name appearing on the first page of Google.co.uk). That's not going to go down too well with UK business leaders, which traditionally account for a lot of the Conservative party's supporters/financial backers. If Google want to play nasty the UK government is basically pretty toothless in what they can do (other than shut off access to Google completely, in which case multiply the aforementioned backlash by X).
Generally the point of advertising is to generate positive, rather than overwhelmingly negative, reaction to your product (although they do say there's no such thing as bad publicity, we've patently seen several high profile instances since the internet arrived where that's just not the case - publicity you have no control over certainly can be bad).
I'd like to see them at least test the water by releasing the originals as XBLA games. If they shift enough units that's all the justification they'd need to do a proper remake that does the series justice. Besides, Deus Ex is kind of already the FPS version of Syndicate (corporate global domination, augmented super soldiers, advanced tech, near future setting) albeit with some RPG overtones thrown in - this just strikes me as EA wanting to cash in on the success of DXHR.
The really little guy with the great idea might not be able to justify the time and expense of patenting his idea (he might not even be sure there's a market to justify the cost). Those ideas will now just disappear unless he's kind enough to put them in the public domain and let random megacorps steal them. Some guy inventing really cool stuff from his basement might not even understand the implications of the patent system or the new patent bill, he might be making a living selling his stuff online (which previously would have afforded him some prior art protection) and some company can just patent his idea and take his business away from him. I honestly can't see how this is a good deal for anyone other than corporations with the kind of money needed to just write off hundreds of patents as an ongoing business expense.
I hope they don't pick a dad who has the same double standards as mine. He'll complain if you leave one light burning for ten minutes while you're not in the room, but he'll happily heat the whole house to T-Shirt weather all winter just so he doesn't have to bother wearing a sweater.
I'm not sure how much use testing where the participants know they are in a test is anyway. Most of the issues I see on my daily commute are caused by one or two idiots doing something wrong, shooting a red light and forcing drivers who have the right of way to brake, backing up traffic behind them, or someone trying to do a U-Turn on a road that doesn't permit it because they missed their turning and blocking another lane of traffic in the process, not to mention the guy talking on his phone who rear-ends another car and puts an entire lane out of action for half a day. Once you start observing people, and they know they're being observed, their driving will suddenly become better because they're paying attention to what they're doing for your benefit. The only way to test intelligent traffic systems usefully would be in the real world (beyond some basic failsafe testing which arguably doesn't need a ghost town).
I wouldn't be surprised at all if this was part of the logic behind it - keep builders in work on the tax payer's dollar then try to recoup the money by hiring out the town to big business for testing.
Exactly, in that case you've trusted yourself entirely to a technology that's proven to fall down at the human level in the past. What's that saying about a fool and his money? I mean, for that matter, what would have happened if the disk was destroyed in a fire in his home before he'd had chance to register it to his account? The insurance probably wouldn't cover it without some proof that the purchase actually took place. It's not fair that customers have to take such steps when the technology should be there to protect them, but that doesn't mean it's not prudent to do so.
And in the days when faxes were new there wasn't the faith in them that there was in telegrams, and in the days when telegrams were new there was more faith in the postal mail, and before that messages had to be hand delivered. People are resistant to change, nothing new there, that doesn't mean the change isn't ultimately good for them.
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What worries me more is that the bank would probably cancel my card before phoning to check even if it was me making the purchases. I then have to go through a very uncomfortable week (I rarely have much cash to hand, card is more convenient). My bank already do this (and have done this to me twice in the last year) when they see what they consider suspicious buying activity, such as when I went through a period of buying a few bits on eBay after a long period of not using it. In fact, on that occasion they did phone me and ask if it was me making the purchases, I said yes and they canceled my card anyway, because it had been flagged as potentially fraudulent! (And to make matters worse, this was two weeks before I was due to leave for Italy, where I'd planned to use my card instead of carrying lots of Euros, so I have a very fraught week until the replacement arrived). Knowing that I have to worry about whether buying two coffees in a 90 minute period might flag me as a fraudster is just going to have me carrying cash around instead.
There's no reason they can't use both methods. If only blind people were using the physical keypad it's going to be much more hit and miss for skimmers and a much smaller audience to educate on ways to obfuscate pin entry. The difficulty then is encouraging the users to switch to the more secure method, if you provide both people will inevitably stick with what they're used to, but at least those of us who recognise the benefits can take advantage. Of course, incredibly thin screen overlays that duplicate the ATM OS will be the next logical step (I saw a demonstration of an e-ink display embedded in a credit card last week), but at least it'd buy us a little time!
Same here, I shelled out for an Alienware gaming laptop after barely playing PC games in the last 5 or so years, primarily to play D3 (I went for a laptop so I can have some portability when I'm away from home). After hearing the directions they're going with the game, I've cancelled my pre-order. I don't care if they want to protect their in game economy so they can farm players for cash (although I don't particularly agree with that either, since I think it'll take a lot of the fun out of drops and replace them with greed), but I do care that I can't do a little solo dungeon crawling without being jacked into their servers.
It also runs counter to their promise to work with more open technologies, to buy everyone one of the more locked down devices. A more traditional OS tablet device would be a better option since it could also replace some of the functions of a traditional computer more easily, so at least they might get some benefit in reducing their desktop footprint.
The attitudes of the generation that tend to be in power, for one. They won't understand digital signing, many of them come from a legal background, they understand signatures on bits of dead tree, what they know about digital copies they've probably learned from Hollywood, so they think it's all being cracked and streamed directly to Wikileaks as they type. That's a tough mentality to break (hell, I work in a "trendy" digital agency and even here where everyone has tablets or smartphones stuff still gets printed out and scribbled on and passed around on paper).
Sooner or later someone will demand paper copies and then everyone will want paper copies. At that point all you've done is bought everyone an expensive paperweight. I also wonder if they've factored in the cost of replacing lost/stolen/broken equipment, buying peripherals (charge cables, keyboards, cases) and keeping all these things charged at all times (that's one benefit of a big stack of paper, once you've printed it it's no longer consuming power, the iPad does so not only every time you look at the document but even when you're not looking at it). Not to mention the lost man hours now everyone will have all the distractions of the internet with them whenever they go.
This is exactly what I thought. If anything it's going to eventually work against them. Once the novelty wears off, people will start seeing these for what they really are - extended trials with hidden payments if you want to fully participate. At that point people will use the trial to critique the game not as "something that's free" but as "something that's likely to cost at least $X over the next year". At that point the games had better stand up as solid experiences or people will just look for the next free thing (at least with the old fashion payment model you'd get an initial bulk of purchases in the first few weeks instead of gambling the business on a freemium model that may or may not attract enough customers).
The problem with that from their point of view is that it makes it far too easy for you to walk away. If you have a lot of money invested in a "F2P" model game, or you have a running subscription that means unless you're playing two or three nights a month you feel like you're not getting your money's worth, it's much harder to take a few weeks away from the game, and people who find it easy to take a few weeks away might also find that they like to do other things and end up leaving the game completely. That's why they'll never make it easy for you to dip in and out when time permits, they'll always want some hook to keep you coming back more often.
You missed Win2k, which throws out the whole second half of your flow chart.
That's because the division is already not that clear and it's getting more fuzzy every day. What if I have a desktop setup with a touchscreen, which default should the OS choose? What if I'm using it on a smartphone with a bluetooth keyboard, or a tablet with a wireless mouse? The days of being able to say definitively "This is either a) a desktop or b) a tablet" are aguably already over. In ten years I might be running MS' latest OS on my TV or fridge (okay, I hope not, but you get the point) - it's far more important that I can easily make it do what I want than it is for it to try and second guess what I want.
Also, doing anything else would be ignoring the way the world is headed. Already it's becoming increasingly apparent that the average person of tomorrow is more likely to be using their smartphone for the vast majority of today's desktop apps. To tie the OS to the way things have worked for the last couple of decades when it's clear that the next couple of decades will work completely differently (and we're already seeing it change) would be silly. As someone who wants a bit more control, I don't mind one extra click/shortcut to access the more advanced tools I need. In fact I've said all along that I think Apple's simplified UI/walled garden approach would be fantastic if they still had all the tools the power user wants as an option. It sounds like this is that kind of thinking, and despite the fact that it's MS and they've promised more than they could deliver many, many times in the past, it's still going to be interesting to see how this turns out.
True, nothing in what they've done stops people uploading the real thing to TPB, they're just hoping that by not acting like douches about the whole thing, folk might be willing to throw some money their way. Even though it's clearly a clever bit of marketing, I can't feel badly towards them for it.
No, you've just been brainwashed into spouting that response. Let's face it, whether you agree with file sharing or not, there are far, far worse actual, real crimes happening out there in the real world. If you really think someone who downloads a piece of software without paying for it is worse than, or even comparable to a murderer, for instance then your moral compass is definitely broken. Remember, despite the cute marketing job the **AAs are doing, digital piracy doesn't actually equate to real life piracy - if it's wrong then let's discuss it for what it is, not try and turn it into something it's clearly not in order to drive home a point.
4) Plus, pirate hats actually make things better. So yet again the pirates get the best version :) Seriously though, they seem like they've got the right approach and there are some nice incentives to buy (you get "series 2" free apparently). I think it's a pretty clever way to get a demo of your game out there and talked about, I wish more developers took the playful approach rather than the "let's punish legitimate users with horrible DRM and still see pirate copies in circulation two days after launch" approach that seems to be the norm.
They played other types of game, or engaged with their peers in other related ways (sports, drinking, RPGs, music, etc). If all your peers are playing games then there is a strong imperative for you to play games - that can be broken but it's going against basic human programming.
Even then, who am I to judge them if it makes them happy? They could eat a steady diet of lettuce leaves for the next 80 years and die miserable, or they could eat what they like for 40 years and die happy. Is the end goal to live a happy life or a long life? I know it's not that black and white, there are all kinds of other considerations like poor health, strain on the public purse, etc. I guess my real point is maybe it's better to educate people about what's better rather than outright bash what they like (they're far more likely to listen if they think you're not looking down on their choices).
Abandon? Probably not, but at this point you have to ask yourself who needs whom more. As ElectricTurtle points out, there are ways Google can make compliance with any restriction easier for themselves at the expense of UK business that make money from local listings (whether that's relying on advertising, ecommerce or just having people find out about them via their name appearing on the first page of Google.co.uk). That's not going to go down too well with UK business leaders, which traditionally account for a lot of the Conservative party's supporters/financial backers. If Google want to play nasty the UK government is basically pretty toothless in what they can do (other than shut off access to Google completely, in which case multiply the aforementioned backlash by X).
Well, this is Jeremy Cu... I mean Hunt we're talking about.
Generally the point of advertising is to generate positive, rather than overwhelmingly negative, reaction to your product (although they do say there's no such thing as bad publicity, we've patently seen several high profile instances since the internet arrived where that's just not the case - publicity you have no control over certainly can be bad).
I'd like to see them at least test the water by releasing the originals as XBLA games. If they shift enough units that's all the justification they'd need to do a proper remake that does the series justice. Besides, Deus Ex is kind of already the FPS version of Syndicate (corporate global domination, augmented super soldiers, advanced tech, near future setting) albeit with some RPG overtones thrown in - this just strikes me as EA wanting to cash in on the success of DXHR.
The really little guy with the great idea might not be able to justify the time and expense of patenting his idea (he might not even be sure there's a market to justify the cost). Those ideas will now just disappear unless he's kind enough to put them in the public domain and let random megacorps steal them. Some guy inventing really cool stuff from his basement might not even understand the implications of the patent system or the new patent bill, he might be making a living selling his stuff online (which previously would have afforded him some prior art protection) and some company can just patent his idea and take his business away from him. I honestly can't see how this is a good deal for anyone other than corporations with the kind of money needed to just write off hundreds of patents as an ongoing business expense.
I hope they don't pick a dad who has the same double standards as mine. He'll complain if you leave one light burning for ten minutes while you're not in the room, but he'll happily heat the whole house to T-Shirt weather all winter just so he doesn't have to bother wearing a sweater.
I'm not sure how much use testing where the participants know they are in a test is anyway. Most of the issues I see on my daily commute are caused by one or two idiots doing something wrong, shooting a red light and forcing drivers who have the right of way to brake, backing up traffic behind them, or someone trying to do a U-Turn on a road that doesn't permit it because they missed their turning and blocking another lane of traffic in the process, not to mention the guy talking on his phone who rear-ends another car and puts an entire lane out of action for half a day. Once you start observing people, and they know they're being observed, their driving will suddenly become better because they're paying attention to what they're doing for your benefit. The only way to test intelligent traffic systems usefully would be in the real world (beyond some basic failsafe testing which arguably doesn't need a ghost town).
I wouldn't be surprised at all if this was part of the logic behind it - keep builders in work on the tax payer's dollar then try to recoup the money by hiring out the town to big business for testing.
Exactly, in that case you've trusted yourself entirely to a technology that's proven to fall down at the human level in the past. What's that saying about a fool and his money? I mean, for that matter, what would have happened if the disk was destroyed in a fire in his home before he'd had chance to register it to his account? The insurance probably wouldn't cover it without some proof that the purchase actually took place. It's not fair that customers have to take such steps when the technology should be there to protect them, but that doesn't mean it's not prudent to do so.
And in the days when faxes were new there wasn't the faith in them that there was in telegrams, and in the days when telegrams were new there was more faith in the postal mail, and before that messages had to be hand delivered. People are resistant to change, nothing new there, that doesn't mean the change isn't ultimately good for them.