Humodour

I take issue with any DRM that requires remote activation (excepting Steam which is very well planned and seamlessly integrated). It's not like this is an outrageous stance to take. No dude, I'm trying hard to argue against big corporations fondling the government for legal immunity to abuse civil rights. It's not plain and simple at all. What is copyright? Why does it exist? Where do things like patents, trademarks, intellectual property, etc originate and why? What purpose do they serve now and what purpose did they originally serve? Is current copyright law perfect? No, it certainly isn't; you'll find much debate on that issue. While ever there is such debate how can you call the issue "plain and simple"? Sure, you can go 100% by the law, but the law is shaped by the evolution of society (and includes lots of things based on precedent and de facto standard). And when that law is being shaped by big corporations spending lots of money to lobby for their own interests how legitimate is it? Is the law in China as legitimate as the law in Australia? Citizens have every right to discuss this issue and question the law where appropriate, so, as I said, the stereotypical RIAA argument of "it's stealing! stealing is wrong!" falls on deaf ears on my end, I'm afraid, since copyright law has barely ever had time for the paint to dry. (The Betamax case, anybody?) You need to understand these issues before you can go around blindly claiming it's 'theft'. And to call copyright a moral issue is very murky water. Anyway, I'm not encouraging or advocating piracy. I'm pointing out that piracy is little more than a scapegoat for the music publishers to try and milk more money out of people while claiming to be the victim. It happens every time disruptive tech comes along - radio, video, cassette, CD, DVD, MP3 players... Piracy is as prominent as it ever has been (and DRM is as useless as ever), which is part of why the whole charade is so dubious. Anyway I'm mostly angry with the music industry. As far as games go, I think they've actually been pretty decent about it all. I hate overly restrictive DRM like in Spore, but on average besides some hyperbole here and there about "woe is us - piracy will be our doom, let's move to consoles", the PC gaming industry is quite well grounded. I don't think DRM is a fundamentally bad concept as long as it is moderated. Disk checks? They're fine. They balance ease of protecting copyright with the ethical worth of doing so. But when you stop trusting your own customers with where they install their software, however, you've ruined that balance (EA).

That's why Pandora was so great. It introduced me to all sorts of new bands of similar style and genre. I actually started buying new albums again when I listened to Pandora. And then the music industry went and sued them out of existence. Honestly the entertainment industry is its own worst enemy. As much as people like Hurlshot try to paint them as the victim, I just don't feel it. On that note, I suggest people use of this before purchasing music in future: http://www.riaaradar.com/ You'd be surprised how many artists don't fall under the thumb of the RIAA.

What's that Amazon? You sell all your mp3's online without any DRM? My my, isn't that something.

Oh yeah, I definitely get that. Google pretty much bought YouTube just to prevent the music industry from suing it out of existence; it doesn't make them a profit (the bandwidth it uses is pretty phenomenal apparently). Of course, it does significantly increase their brand power and user base, so it's not like it was an unsound move to acquire it.

Well I guess I'm as idealistic as the guy who runs Apple and iTunes, then. I mean, nevermind that 90% of music is sold without DRM via CDs or anything...

That would be an awesome combo. Makes sense, too. Google is about one of the only companies (with lots of power) I trust to defend and market digital distribution methods like YouTube or Steam. We'll see where the truth takes us, but based on Google's past history of products and companies it has bought, it really doesn't surprise me. The only factor here is does Valve want to merge? I wouldn't have expected so (since it is doing fine on its own with Steam), but then, companies always like to merge and make more money.

I hardly see how this is relevant. Are you trying to say that because many songs on iTunes carry some paranoid industry standard, that's evidence that iTunes would fail without it? Similar for Steam. I wonder what Steve Jobs has to say about DRM and iTunes? Summary: DRM has never and will never be perfect. Hackers will always find a method to break DRM. DRM restrictions only hurt people using music legally. Illegal users aren't affected by DRM. The restrictions of DRM encourage users to obtain unrestricted music which is usually only possible via illegal methods. The vast majority of music is sold without DRM via CDs which has proven successful.

I believe it was your face. Let down by my face again. *sigh* Hey man, I think it's a pretty good face. Only because you like vegemite. It's because I'm black, isn't it?

Um, what? Pay per download schemes work just fine without DRM. Where the hell did you come up with that? Plenty of artists have sold their content over iTunes without DRM. Radiohead and Trent Reznor come to mind. What, do you think people will pirate it if there's no DRM? Funny, because they pirate it easily enough when there is. The people buying online aren't doing it because it's hard to get illegally, they're doing it because it's easy and cheap through iTunes/whatever. DRM has got nothing to do with the success of online stores. Anyway, it's not just impulse buy - for many people it's just easier to grab something digitally rather than walking to the store, silly as that sounds. The fatal flaw in the anti file sharing arguments is the assumption that people pirate because they are greedy. More often than not, it's because the price is too high to impulse buy, and file sharing provides a more readily available format (both in terms of being available from home, and already in digital format). The other fatal flaw is the assumption that if you stop piracy, your sales will go up. No, the majority of those people still won't buy your stuff, and you've now also neutered a free and important source of grassroots advertisement and publicity (word of mouth). Pirating software: Just use open source. The days when proprietary software was superior are coming to an end. I'm on Ubuntu write now typing up an essay in Open Office as I browse in Firefox and talk to mates on MSN through Pidgin. It's funny how this software was all created for free distribution. Is piracy killing software development? Pirating music: While I'm loathe to pay most publishers a cent these days, it's worth it to support the bands that put in the hard work. I encourage the use of online stores such as iTunes. They are a successful, sustainable and easy to use business model that doesn't rely on lawsuits and intimidation. Lots of stuff on there is DRM-free these days, too. Pirating games: It's a null issue. At the very least, Steam is a very successful business strategy. If the gaming industry really is hurting maybe they should use a better publishing method like Steam instead of blaming piracy and choking their stuff with DRM. Again, Steam's success is a matter of impulse buying and easy access. Worst case scenario? Things migrate to consoles. That's happening a bit, but on the other hand Steam shows that PC gaming is as healthy as it ever has been. This really is a case of letting the market sort it out. Governments and courts shouldn't decide which businesses succeed and which fail. Of course RIAA isn't going to like it - electronic distribution cuts out the middle-man (them). Does that mean we should change the law to protect their potentially failing business model?

I believe it was your face. Let down by my face again. *sigh* Hey man, I think it's a pretty good face.

I believe it was your face.

That's usually spacious logic. Generally the people who pirate the game would not have bought it anyway. On the otherhand, the free marketing it generates is never considered into the equation. Also, it assumes that game developers are struggling. Really? Sales have only ever increased over time. Anyway, the money mostly goes to publishers, not game studios. Selling games isn't broken. Piracy isn't killing it (it never was). Excessive DRM however, is damaging its reputation. Sounds like you've fallen for the typical "piracy is evil" line my friend. Me? I support disruptive tech. I think open source software, iTunes, and Steam are beautiful examples of why the old model is flawed and doesn't need protecting. The law doesn't exist to prop up failing business models, so the RIAA and cohorts really can go eff themselves. I do buy good games. Whether I buy them before or after I play them is irrelevant. With companies like Obsidian it is easy to buy without playing first because I know they are good quality. But things like Oblivion or Fallout 3 - no way will I buy those without playing a copy first to figure out whether or not they are trash; I do not want to support bad developers, and I don't believe I should be expected to for their income, sorry. The RIAA recently shut down Pandora. It's funny, because Pandora actually introduced me to new bands which I subsequently went out and bought. No longer. "Electronic copyright infringement is something that can only become an 'economic epidemic' under certain conditions. Any one of the following: 1) The products they want... are hard to find, and thus valuable. 2) The products they want are high-priced, so there's a fair amount of money to be saved by stealing them. 3) The legal products come with so many added-on nuisances that the illegal version is better to begin with. Those are the three conditions that will create widespread electronic copyright infringement, especially in combination. Why? Because they're the same three general conditions that create all large-scale smuggling enterprises. And... Guess what? It's precisely those three conditions that DRM creates in the first place. So far from being an impediment to so-called 'online piracy,' it's DRM itself that keeps fueling it and driving it forward." There will always be piracy. You can accept this, try to minimise it a bit, and focus on providing a quality experience for your legitimate customers to justify them paying for it... or you can see that 20% that pirates (and will always exist) and think through logical fallacy "that's 25% less money I'm getting!" and treat your average customer like a criminal. I think I know which one is going to make you more money. Don't agree with me? Read a game developer's thoughts on it: http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html

Um, I actually consider solipsism to be more coherent, consistent and logically sound than belief in god. They both actually suffer similar problems in terms of proof/disproof, but solipsism has the benefit of being built from the ground up more like a scientific theory (but not quite), than some arbitrary religious dogma that so often contradicts itself. To clarify: God is as plausible as solipsism. But solipsism is far more plausible than any specific religion (e.g. Christianity, Islam). You can see counterarguments to your points on wikipedia's article for solipsism if you're interested. Actually, **** this, G

Solipsism was cool when I was 14. Still, you've gotta give Nine Inch Nails credit for 'Right Where It Belongs'.

^ Eh. Firefox has a strong alternative community of 'free thinkers' (comparatively). Many of them do not want to be tied down to yet another corporation (however benign) like they were with IE and Microsoft. Not to mention that Firefox offers much in the way of plugins and addons which Chrome, Opera and IE cannot compete with simply because they don't have such a vibrant developer community. Not only that, but Chrome isn't targetted at Firefox - it's targetted at IE. If it can't directly compete with IE, than invariably it'll spur innovation in Firefox and thus place pressure on IE by proxy (i.e. while one would gather that uptake of Chrome would be the most desirable outcome, you can bet Google isn't relying on it).

This reminds me, I need to buy a pipe because I hate rolling joints.

That's the beauty of evolution - it's not science, it's maths (optimisation). That means that it's a theory in the "this works 100% and has been proven" sort of way, not the "it's the best we got and it hasn't been proven wrong" kind of way of, say, physics (although that is increasingly drifting towards the realm of mathematics, too). I farthing love optimisation. Genetic algorithms have to be some of the most fun data structures to code, but I'm not sure that's actually what Spore uses (kudos if it is!).

Yeah, so you just want a Democrat president alongside a Democrat-dominated Congress... because you like the way you believe they think better. In other words, you don't care about reasons, and might as well flip a coin and vote based on that, for all the reasons behind your carefully woven discourse. I mean, even impossible logic isn't good enough anymore! The joy of democracy. Doom doom doom!

I don't really see a problem. Few people take it very seriously (most of the media I've read is actually reporting it humorously). On the other hand, the science fiction it spawns will be well worth it. It'll stimulate the minds of budding scientists for decades to come. I mean, let's be realistic here - what's not cool the universe suddenly blowing up because a mad physicist created a super death ray and nobody could stop him? Oh am I'm drawing on my kid empathy here (which by its very nature is only approximate), but by my reckoning that's pretty ****in' sweet to a 10 year old kid who's fence sitting about science. Done dilly. The media never was much good at impact calculus so why expect it to start now? Did you hear bad oral flora cause cardiovascular disease? An apple a day truly does keep the doctor at bay! Quercetin - it's mmmyum. I downloaded the blueprints for the entire LHC. It's about 200mb, but not long now before I'm firing top, down and strange quarks at those damn dirty Americans. It's all in the numbers! STRANGELET ARE EAT YOU! DOOM DOOM DOOM! DOOM DOOM DOOOOOOOOOM!

Even once it starts colliding, there's still no guarantee it'd ruin the world straight away. It could just as easily run seamlessly for 8 years and then suddenly decide it'd like to do some universal remodelling, stimulating vacuum metastability bubble nucleation. It's all probabilistic. But hey, cosmic rays, right?

She's an ex-model. He's an elite commando. They're going to solve global warming - by stopping the aliens who are causing it!

Eh, Sarah Palin seems like a bit of a dumb bint to me.

That was a really interesting read, thank you. I appreciate that this is local politics and she has her own axe to grind, so to speak, but a good, critical, local view nonetheless. I don't think there's anything there that makes her worse than most politicians or particularly unfit to govern, so it's been interesting to read some of the knee-jerk reactions from pro-Republicans on the internet, basically dismissing everything she has to say outright because they know more about Sarah Palin from one speech than this woman ever could. According to one of the soldiers who was tortured in 'Nam with him, it doesn't. He claims McCain is very unpredictable, has a horrible temper and is unsuited to running a country. The guy's running an ad campaign on TV about it, to boot. Sounds a bit like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth again, doesn't it? Perhaps. But this POW raises valid concerns - being a POW doesn't make you fit to lead (so why harp on about it), and McCain is horribly stubborn, and does have a horrible temper. You want somebody like that in charge of your foreign policy? From what I hear, that anti-Kerry ad was not grounded in truth so much as bashing his credentials merely because he was a Democrat.

According to one of the soldiers who was tortured in 'Nam with him, it doesn't. He claims McCain is very unpredictable, has a horrible temper and is unsuited to running a country. The guy's running an ad campaign on TV about it, to boot.