~Di

Dear ~Di, Lurk Moar. Speak less. Signed, Abraham Lincoln, one-term US representative, best president ever. I think I have a right to express an opinion without being singled out and told to basically shut up. That was uncalled for.

Obama is a media darling, both here and especially abroad. Hell, CNN carries his campaign speeches live, along with Obama-supporting analysts for color commentary. Hillary's speeches are clipped to make her seem shrill and mean-spirited, and the commentators tear her to ribbons... and are constantly commenting upon her appearance. Media can and does color its presentation of candidates, ignoring unpleasant background and rumors about their fave, while rehashing old, debunked scandals about their least fave. I have nothing against Obama, except that he doesn't have the experience to be president. A few years in a state legislature (not even as governor, mind you) and a year or so in the US senate does not a president make. But he is charismatic, makes nifty speches (which, quite frankly, don't tell us squat about the details of what these "changes" are that he offers), so the negatives are swept under the rug in the media, or at best mentioned in passing and immediately discounted by some "expert" commentator designed to do just that. Eh. If he gets the nomination I'll no doubt vote for him... I do not want another republican president choosing 2-3 more supreme court justices... but I'll be darned nervous about that vote. I don't believe he's up to the job; I only hope that if he gets it, he can surround himself with people who are.

In war time, the press kinda does have to conspire with the state to keep secrets. Allowing journalists to broadcast troop movements and positions, along with the announcement that a major offensive is planned for such-and-such date at such-and-such time simply cannot be permitted, for obvious reasons. The people's right to know ends where national security begins. It's always been that way, even with "free speech" countries in the west.

Point taken. I should have added my personal view that it's nice seeing someone who talks the talk actually walk the walk. Afghanistan is no picnic in the park, and from all accounts Harry is well-respected by his men and seen as a fine soldier by his superiors. His family, royal or not, and indeed his country have a right to be proud!

The numbers from from the article in the opening post, and article written by a developer for the soon-to-be-defunct ILE (Titan Quest). Since Sawyer immediately agreed with the post in its entirety, I'm guessing this 70-90% figure is standard knowledge inside the gaming industry, which probably spends a great deal of money tracking such things since their livelihoods depend upon it. Certainly they are in a better position to access and track legal versus illegal gaming than those of us who merely buy... or steal... their games for our own personal enjoyment. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it! And yes, I've already put in my "quit" notice to a certain poster in this thread. My head hurts enough.

Most of this post is irrelevant crap, presented only to be surly and argumentative, not to gain any understanding or to share information. So I'll ignore that part. so what's the difference between that person lending their copy to a friend, and allowing their friend to photocopy the book? you got your royalty from the book either way, so where's the harm? were you mugged if they make a photocopy but not if they borrowed a copy? Because photocopying the book is a violation of copyright. On the legal page in the front of every one of my books is, among other legalities, the following: "All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of... " . The harm is that it's against the law. The harm is that ignoring that law means that others can copy and plaguerize my work, use illegal copies as options for future fiction based upon my copyrighted material, and put it out on the internet where it can be globally stolen as used for anything from fully plaguerized work to uncompensated film options. BTW, The Authors' Guild has initiated many lawsuits against college bookstores and professors who have purchased single copies of textbooks, then photocopied them into work books for their students. And they have won. When a professor photocopies various chapters of several texts, then bundles them up and sells them to his students so they don't have to buy all those original texts (thus paying legitimate royalties to the authors), that is theft as well. Authors (and game developers) have created a product for public consumption, and have a right to be compensated for it. Period. Apparently you are one of those irrational people, if you think that developers should simply eat the cost of theft and eat the cost of trying to prevent theft, because passing that cost along will simply result in more theft. What your theory advocates is basically that developers should simply allow themselves to be driven out of business. The inevitable result of what you suggest is the eventual end of the PC gaming market. Period. The pharmaceutical/malaria idiocy is just that, idiocy. My last post to you on this topic, since you do not appear to be interested in learning anything about copyright infringement; you only want to argue for the sake of argument.

I've answered these same lame questions about two dozen times over the years, so please don't think yourself terribly clever. But because you asked so nicely I'll answer them again. Just for you. Nope. Because I got royalties on that book, which is what I was entitled to. Nope, because I got royalties on the original book, which is what I was entitled to. BTW, game developers don't get royalties from Amazon or EBay when they sell used games either. My publishing contracts all specified a number of books that would be donated free to libraries and various other media. Nope, only when my intellectual property rights were violated, my books put online without my permission, and the royalties to which I was entitled were stolen. Tell that to game developers. They quite stridently disagree. Piracy is condoned because it's an easy way to steal property without paying for it, and morally-challenged individuals like to steal stuff. If you worked at a company, or spent a year writing a book, or years developing a game, only to have a bunch of self-serving hooligans say, in effect, "Cool! Thanks for spending all those hours creating this... now watch me take it for free, mwahahaha", I think you'd feel a little less charitable toward the thieves. "Since piracy is inevitable" we, the gaming public, are saddled with horrific anti-theft software on our legally purchased games, which probably cost nearly double what they would cost if piracy wasn't inevitable because a larger percentage of the globe's population weren't self-justifying theives. I suppose you support shoplifting too, because "shoplifting is inevitable", and so is the hefty 30-40% retail increase placed on items we honest people buy to cover the loss of merchandise that dishonest people steal. Even you must be able to realize that when huge percentages of revenue is lost through theft, the price of the items on the shelf must be increased to cover the loss. Which they are forced to do because people like you insist that "piracy is inevitable." Then go out and pirate to prove it. Right. Developers have no idea what those percentages are, on account of they are attempting to make a living out of the legitimate sale of games, so have absolutely no way of following figures which affect their entire livelihood. You, of course, have much better and more accurate information than they do, on account of you need to gather those figures through means they have no access to in order to justify the theft of those games from those same developers. Gotcha. That is the saddest, I daresay sickest, statement of all. Do me a favor. Write to good old Michael, or even to J.E. Sawyer... hell go straight to Fergus... and you tell them that you are stealing their products so that they have to struggle even harder to stay in business, lest they end up like Black Isle, IL, Strategy First, Eon Storm, etc., is "for the greater good"... the "greater good" meaning, of course, your ability to continue to steal their stuff with impugnity. I'm sure they'll send you a letter of profound thanks, which you may then share with the rest of us.

Not really. All The Drudge Report does is cherrypick already published articles from other publications, and put links to them in his websight. Apparently he linked to an Australian magazine, that broke the news blackout, which was then picked up by a German newspaper. The Drudge Report merely linked to their story.

Not to the person who is being victimized by theft. I used to be a novelist, so I basically sold books for a living. Books which could be scanned onto a computer by the unscrupulous then downloaded either for free or for a price that went into the unscrupulous scanner's pocket instead of mine. So, am I less of a victim of theft that someone who is mugged in the street? This is simply more of the same, lame justification for taking goods/services without payment... which is the legal definition of theft. Good God, when the developers themselves are telling you that 70-90% of their potential revenues are being siphoned off by piracy, how the hell can you possibly continue to justify it?

hmm, except if we're gonna be strict with our analogies here, he's not actually stealing the car is he? he's making an identical copy of the car and driving off. the owner of the car still has it. is that morally the same as stealing it? is it even legally the same as stealing it. no, not by a long shot. piracy ain't like stealing cars. when you steal a car, you take it away from the owner. when you steal software, the owner still has it. what piracy takes away is the opportunity of developers/publishers to sell their game and thereby make a profit. but theft of an individual copy is at best the loss of a single customer, and not even one who might have paid for the game otherwise. so berating the guy who steals the occassional game as a car thief is pretty silly. i get that piracy hurts developers and, in the long run, ultimately consumers as well. but this whole hysterical 'piracy is theft/'piracy funds osama bin laden'/'piracy gives your puppy cancer' schtick is doomed to fail because people aren't idiots. they know the difference between things which can be copied infinitely and things which can't. Except that Grommy wasn't comparing the theft of a car to piracy. Grommy was comparing Gorgon's implication that since he had spent ten thousand dollars on games he was therefore entitled to help himself to a few extra games for free with a clear conscience. And I still see the self-same stubborn "piracy is not that big a deal" attitude in the rest of your post. Which is sad.

I'm so sad for the poor guy. Let it not be said, however, that a lot of us did not see this coming. For the past decade, back to ye olde Interplay forums, mighty-mouth (yours truly) has been screeching about piracy being evil and piracy being theft in thread after thread after thread. Those percentages quoted in the article pretty much correspond to the percentages of people ademantly in favor of piracy for all the stupid reasons Michael already mentioned versus those who agreed that piracy was indeed pure, unadultrated thievery. The fears I've expressed for years, that consoles would eventually drive PC gaming out of the market, do not seem so far-fetched nowadays either. Again, for all the reasons expressed in the article. Dang, I've never played Titan Quest. Truthfully, I never heard enough about it to pique my interest. I may go buy a copy, just because. I hate it when game developers go under. It makes baby Jesus cry.

Uh... I see zero evidence that Hillary had anything to do with anything. Love the "automatically blame the opposition, evidence not required" crowd.

actually its the other way around, now more than ever since Bioware was bought by EA Umm........ok. Today Obsidian has more in common with Black ISle than Bioware, while Bioware managed to get a better profile on their new name, Obsidian is better in a lot of things by now, however this will only manifest in the minds of the people in the coming 5 years let me rephrase myself: "The isle was made of black obsidian" Thankfully! I can't tell you how much I miss my Black Isle fixes... only new releases by Obsidian seem to quell the withdrawals!

Nader is a self-important narcissist. And an arrogant idiot. *sigh* What a putz.

Hmm, that sounds like rather sloppy policework. If the authorities saw the evidence and neglected to confiscate the computer... indeed, handed the computer back to the suspect, thus allowing the suspect to "hide" or tamper with that evidence... then they are stuck with having made a pretty danged lousy decision. I don't know about Canadian law, but in the USA I think that the testimony of a police officer having witnessed evidence of a crime is sufficient probable cause to have a judge issue a warrant. The warrant would require the suspect to turn over the files. Now if the suspect refused to, he can be jailed for contempt... but cannot be charged with the crime itself. 'Tis a conundrum, but the bright side is that a guy with child porn will sit in jail one way or the other. As I understand the issue, it isn't that there isn't evidence to warrant them searching his computer right now, it's that the guy can't be made to incriminate himself by giving up the password. They can't get a warrant to make him give up a password. They can get a warrant to search a computer, but there is no way for themt o get the password to actually search the computer. Since that was my original understanding, I revert to my original post on the matter: "My humble view: If there is no legal way to access the evidence, then there is no evidence... same as any other criminal investigation. Sucks when bad guys get off, but there are reasons we have laws."

The problem is that in most instances people who are being treated for mental problems are not in the background-check system, because of the patient/physician privilege. IIRC, only those who have been diagnosed and committed under certain legal conditions lose that privilege and privacy. Those are the ones who will show up on the background check, I think.

Hmm, that sounds like rather sloppy policework. If the authorities saw the evidence and neglected to confiscate the computer... indeed, handed the computer back to the suspect, thus allowing the suspect to "hide" or tamper with that evidence... then they are stuck with having made a pretty danged lousy decision. I don't know about Canadian law, but in the USA I think that the testimony of a police officer having witnessed evidence of a crime is sufficient probable cause to have a judge issue a warrant. The warrant would require the suspect to turn over the files. Now if the suspect refused to, he can be jailed for contempt... but cannot be charged with the crime itself. 'Tis a conundrum, but the bright side is that a guy with child porn will sit in jail one way or the other.

My humble view: If there is no legal way to access the evidence, then there is no evidence... same as any other criminal investigation. Sucks when bad guys get off, but there are reasons we have laws.

Im not following you Wals. IMO, mental conditions should be taken into consideration when doing a background check on people to determine their eligibility to buy a gun. Are you saying it shouldnt? Indeed, Gfted1. It seems that this young man (like the Virginia Tech shooter) has some kind of condition, which hasn't been disclosed in detail, for which he had been taking medication for some time. He went off his meds a few weeks ago, and acquaintances say he had been acting "irractically" ever since. There has to be a way for mental condition to be assessed before gun sales are approved. The question is how to do it constitutionally.

I am elated! *does Snoopy dance* Lordy, I hope my machine can run it.

This is basically reassuring news, but what I understood from reading the link is that DA will be released in BioWare's fiscal 2009, which means sometime between April 1, 2009 and March 30, 2010. That's a long time from now. If I double up on my multi-vitamins, I might make it.

Nice to know that the economic collapse of our country would give you a giggle. Amazing how your celebratory hat turned into a when you learned that countries in your corner of the planet were also being adversely affected. Enjoying the misfortune of others is not a particularly nice trait. Enjoying it out loud on an international forum is not a particularly smart trait. Toyota and Honda are huge sellers in the USA. Toyota and Honda also make several lines of trucks and SUV's. As has been explained before, there are considerable differences living in a vast country which is more rural than urban which makes vehicles capable of ferrying more than four people at a time in wildly different weather extremes more of a necessity than a luxury.

It does. Thank you!

That makes no sense at all. What on earth are you trying to say here? I guess it was sarcasm. It doesn't translate very well through the internet. I was picking up on the fact that both of you were talking about what games reinvented/revitalised CRPGs, yet you both neglected to mention Fallout 1 and 2. No biggie. :S Duh. I'm sorry. I feel silly now. For some reason, I saw an apple and thought, "What is that orange doing here?" Next time I'll try to engage my brain before my fingers ask stupid questions.