eh, depends on the lan. My local lan is all cs majors. we pimp the game we just bought... calls like "dood, I just bought battlefeild 2 today, you gettin' it" are not uncommon... followed by calls like "I'll be on tonight"
we love owning our game it is ours and we are proud of it. Maybe some other lans are like that but most CS guys I know would feel guilty pirating a game they like.
Can game and program pirating die?
Moderator: Moderators
The lack of "spawn" installs or single CD multiplayer in today's games is awful and I have no idea what idiot thought that up. First all games were installed fully on the HD, then they started requiring the CD in the drive (for stuff like music back then), then around the time TA and Star Craft arrived they allowed playing multiplayer with less CDs than players and after a while they just decided that everyone should need a CD for MP, probably because some idiot thought that makes people buy more copies for a LAN.
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Forboding Angel
- Evolution RTS Developer
- Posts: 14673
- Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43
Actually I love steam and I'll tell you why.
I have no clue where my hl2 cds are, much less the access code. However, even though I haven't done it yet I can simply log in to steam and re-download my game. I find it to be a very worthwhile service. However, it helps if you have a decent internet connection.
Things are getting to the point that if you don't have a decent internet connection then you're shit out of luck. I will throw up a cheer when dsl dies and cable internet takes over. DSL is 100% fail.
I have no clue where my hl2 cds are, much less the access code. However, even though I haven't done it yet I can simply log in to steam and re-download my game. I find it to be a very worthwhile service. However, it helps if you have a decent internet connection.
Things are getting to the point that if you don't have a decent internet connection then you're shit out of luck. I will throw up a cheer when dsl dies and cable internet takes over. DSL is 100% fail.
Forb read this and think about the cigarrete discussion but now you are letting some company, not government controll a game you payed for.Forboding Angel wrote:Actually I love steam and I'll tell you why.
I have no clue where my hl2 cds are, much less the access code. However, even though I haven't done it yet I can simply log in to steam and re-download my game. I find it to be a very worthwhile service. However, it helps if you have a decent internet connection.
Things are getting to the point that if you don't have a decent internet connection then you're shit out of luck. I will throw up a cheer when dsl dies and cable internet takes over. DSL is 100% fail.
hahah whatRadja wrote:capitalism is made to support a inner market style economy, where everybody buys and sells, in a customer - seller system things go a little odd
how im i suppossed to develop economicaly if i just earn money to buy goods / services? i cannot enhance my shop since i have have none, and i wont use my money to enhance my workplace (its not mine anyway, its my boss' or my boss' boss' boss' ....)
buying a better house / car / whatever wont make me stronger economically, on the contrary, those goods lose value every second they age
money loses value by time and customers are the black hole who endures that loss
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1v0ry_k1ng
- Posts: 4656
- Joined: 10 Mar 2006, 10:24
If the western world wants to keep beeing the lead, some very strong alterations of mentality and society have to be done.
The main thing is to get to the knowledge-based society (I dont know if the translation is correct, in german the word "Wissensgesellschaft" is meant).
There must be access to knowledge from everywhere and from everyone, BUT for the citizens and not for the government!
So the data protection (same problem: Datenschutz) has to be kept at all cost, we're almost at the point of "1984", to use a very overstretched term.
In combination with the mentality that knowledge is a worthwhile aim in the complete society lay the chances to keep the technological lead.
If you want you can see computer piracy and especially open source software as forerunners of this still utopian society, while these two things shouldnt have anything to do with each other.
But the outlook seems to be good, while the first important guys of the industry are denouncing DRM as a great fault.
The mp3 exchangers are doing free marketing, so what?
The main thing is to get to the knowledge-based society (I dont know if the translation is correct, in german the word "Wissensgesellschaft" is meant).
There must be access to knowledge from everywhere and from everyone, BUT for the citizens and not for the government!
So the data protection (same problem: Datenschutz) has to be kept at all cost, we're almost at the point of "1984", to use a very overstretched term.
In combination with the mentality that knowledge is a worthwhile aim in the complete society lay the chances to keep the technological lead.
If you want you can see computer piracy and especially open source software as forerunners of this still utopian society, while these two things shouldnt have anything to do with each other.
But the outlook seems to be good, while the first important guys of the industry are denouncing DRM as a great fault.
The mp3 exchangers are doing free marketing, so what?
That's a very philosophical (read: worthless) point of view. Today's knowledge is simply too complicated for most people to really understand. Understanding is what people need to use that knowledge productively. We have loads of people but only a few of them can actually understand the stuff we need people to know.
Anyway, if knowledge was ubiquitous and flowing freely it would lose all its value and any advantage it could give our society over others. The inowledge we can get can flow to chinese sweatshop workers, too, except they don't ask for as much money as we do because they can't affored the stuff they make, anyway.
Also I don't think that warezing videogames and pop music constitutes acquiring knowledge. What we need is useful knowledge, not mental junk food.
Anyway, if knowledge was ubiquitous and flowing freely it would lose all its value and any advantage it could give our society over others. The inowledge we can get can flow to chinese sweatshop workers, too, except they don't ask for as much money as we do because they can't affored the stuff they make, anyway.
Also I don't think that warezing videogames and pop music constitutes acquiring knowledge. What we need is useful knowledge, not mental junk food.
I just think that you must make people want to learn, if you want specialists, which can compete to the chinese masses.
And the chinese arent dumb farmers and "sweat shop workers" all the way, atm they have 4.61 students per 1000 citizens, what happens if it raises to western levels? (Germany 21.84)
The only exclusive important things the west has had in the past were ideas and inventions.
So if you can motivate more young people to learn things just for fun (as we do here) and dont get lost in the streets gangsta style, you could find more people which are talented.
The second thing i want to mention is:
Too complicated? Specialists?
You are playing the proof often enough ( I hope
), OpenSource works, why?
Because everybody has the access to it and when the opensource community gets even more professional, it will be able to REALLY compete with closed source software.
BTW:
The belief in "experts" and "specialists" is the greatest german plague ever!!
Why did a revolution never happen in Germany?
Joseph Stalin once said: "In Germany there will never be a revolution, because you would need to tread the lawn" (freely translated from the german translation"
And KDR please, if i do not agree with you, I dont call you tellin bullshit as well.
And the chinese arent dumb farmers and "sweat shop workers" all the way, atm they have 4.61 students per 1000 citizens, what happens if it raises to western levels? (Germany 21.84)
The only exclusive important things the west has had in the past were ideas and inventions.
So if you can motivate more young people to learn things just for fun (as we do here) and dont get lost in the streets gangsta style, you could find more people which are talented.
The second thing i want to mention is:
Too complicated? Specialists?
You are playing the proof often enough ( I hope
), OpenSource works, why?Because everybody has the access to it and when the opensource community gets even more professional, it will be able to REALLY compete with closed source software.
BTW:
The belief in "experts" and "specialists" is the greatest german plague ever!!
Why did a revolution never happen in Germany?
Joseph Stalin once said: "In Germany there will never be a revolution, because you would need to tread the lawn" (freely translated from the german translation"
And KDR please, if i do not agree with you, I dont call you tellin bullshit as well.
open source creates / feeds non oficial profesionals, people who know but have no "warranty certificate" from any institution, is this good? is this bad?
here in spain we are having quite some troubles with kids hating knowledge in any form. and i think the reason is simple.
studying is the over sacrificial and loooong way to get money to buy all the stuff big companies bombard us with
most people watch tv... who appears in tv? Mr good for nothing who is proud of knowning nothing, because he is some other "famous being" relative. Mr rap/pop/whatever star who says school is sh*t and being druged and surrounded by h**kers is the summun of existence, and Mr football player who i've never heard using subordinate sentences
like i said before, we are not citizens anymore, we are customers, and custemers only need to know how to pay. govs have big companies for their r+d needs, and big companies need only a few technicians, the bigger the companies the less they need
its not that i want to blame it all on the market, people likes things easy, and struggling to advance as a civilization is not easy in any way
maybe its me, but i've never heard of anyone wanting to study science to aid his nation/culture/civilization advance. well, its normal, why advance to live in prosperity if we (think) we already do? sugarcoating ftw...
here in spain we are having quite some troubles with kids hating knowledge in any form. and i think the reason is simple.
studying is the over sacrificial and loooong way to get money to buy all the stuff big companies bombard us with
most people watch tv... who appears in tv? Mr good for nothing who is proud of knowning nothing, because he is some other "famous being" relative. Mr rap/pop/whatever star who says school is sh*t and being druged and surrounded by h**kers is the summun of existence, and Mr football player who i've never heard using subordinate sentences
like i said before, we are not citizens anymore, we are customers, and custemers only need to know how to pay. govs have big companies for their r+d needs, and big companies need only a few technicians, the bigger the companies the less they need
its not that i want to blame it all on the market, people likes things easy, and struggling to advance as a civilization is not easy in any way
maybe its me, but i've never heard of anyone wanting to study science to aid his nation/culture/civilization advance. well, its normal, why advance to live in prosperity if we (think) we already do? sugarcoating ftw...
Car~1: The problem is that information is a short-lived advantage since China could make up on that but we can't make up on their manufacturing advantage. Twenty years from now we could have a super-intelligent populace, thirty years from now China has one too but can work it for cheaper while also mass producing those inventions rather than shipping that job off to another country. Actually I'd expect China to overtake us in terms of intelligent people at latest 15 years into the future, if there's no nuclear war in the meantime.
China has plenty of problems of its own. Their economy grew 10% last year. At that rate, that means that their economic output doubles about every 7 years. Since their population is not really increasing in size that much any more, that means that the citizens double in productivity every 7 years. To double in productivity, they need education and automation. Automation is a capital expense, as is education. But educated workers demand more money. And health benefits. And a clean workplace. And clean air. And clean water. And bigger houses. And nicer cars / cars at all. All those things are expensive, driving labor costs up. Pretty soon China has a huge economy, but no real competitive advantage, like the USA or Europe.
And that is assuming they can grow that fast without suffering growing pains like revolutions or labor shortages or women shortages (under the one family, one child policy, lots of parents abort female fetuses, creating millions of men for whom there will never be women) or any other sorts of problems.
Then there is the problem that robotics is poised to undergo a revolution, which I predict will result in tons of insourcing (if that is a word). As mobile computing becomes cheaper and cheaper, robots become smarter and cheaper, leading to manufacturing coming back home (avoiding shipping, time zone problems, language barriers, the inability to prevent the hiring of total dumbasses, etc.). That's great for us, but not so good for India and China. Incidentally, if you have self manufacturing robots, you CAN open source things like food and houses. Open source is dependent upon a very low marginal cost of production. As robotics matures, the marginal cost of producing things will fall, and open source beer will be more of a possibility.
And that is assuming they can grow that fast without suffering growing pains like revolutions or labor shortages or women shortages (under the one family, one child policy, lots of parents abort female fetuses, creating millions of men for whom there will never be women) or any other sorts of problems.
Then there is the problem that robotics is poised to undergo a revolution, which I predict will result in tons of insourcing (if that is a word). As mobile computing becomes cheaper and cheaper, robots become smarter and cheaper, leading to manufacturing coming back home (avoiding shipping, time zone problems, language barriers, the inability to prevent the hiring of total dumbasses, etc.). That's great for us, but not so good for India and China. Incidentally, if you have self manufacturing robots, you CAN open source things like food and houses. Open source is dependent upon a very low marginal cost of production. As robotics matures, the marginal cost of producing things will fall, and open source beer will be more of a possibility.
10053r, I fully agree.
And I want to add, that a economy growth of 10% can be dangerous, because of the reasons you partly mentioned. Such high growth can easily capsize to a serious inflation.
@KDR:
If you agree with me, that our only advantage is knowledge, why dont you agree with utilizing it as good as possible?
If they get the knowledge with some delay, let them.
PS:
If you cannot remember my name, read Lord of the Rings
And I want to add, that a economy growth of 10% can be dangerous, because of the reasons you partly mentioned. Such high growth can easily capsize to a serious inflation.
@KDR:
If you agree with me, that our only advantage is knowledge, why dont you agree with utilizing it as good as possible?
If they get the knowledge with some delay, let them.
PS:
If you cannot remember my name, read Lord of the Rings
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Guessmyname
- Posts: 3301
- Joined: 28 Apr 2005, 21:07
Just a jab at Homophobic Americans
Thus encouraging homosexuality, which will be one of America's key (public) points for going to war with China in next century!10053r wrote:(under the one family, one child policy, lots of parents abort female fetuses, creating millions of men for whom there will never be women)