Hurlshort

Ok, I've composed my thoughts a bit. I will preface by saying this, missing my first mortgage payments was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I have never been late on anything, I had a sterling credit score, and I always pay off my debts. I wanted to take responsibility for this loan, but after almost two years of taking a loss on the property as a rental, I felt like my back was up against the wall. I agree with Volourn that the homeowner has responsibility here. I signed the loan, and I knew what I was getting into. My big question is how much should I pay for that mistake? What is my penance? Here are the details: My loan was $350,000. It was a 30-year term, and if I paid it for 30 years I would end up paying about $600,000 total. The property has dropped in value to $100,000. I am currently trying to sell it at that price. I have an offer, I am waiting for the bank to approve a short sale. I made payments on time for 6 years. This is how much I currently have paid into the property - $15,000 down payment $10,000 in renovations $125,000 in interest only payments After 6 years, with the way the loan is set up, I have managed to pay almost nothing off the principal balance. I have paid a huge amount in interest, more than the property is actually valued at. Interest rates have dropped tremendously in reflection of the market bubble bursting, but we cannot refinance into a better loan because our value is nowhere near what we owe. None of this would really be a problem for me if this was my dream home. Sure, it would be a bad investment, but if I was able to keep living there for 30 years I would just keep making payments. It would cripple me financially, but who cares? I've got my house. But this is a small condo without room for my growing family. We can rent a huge house for much less than the mortgage payment. We tried renting it out, but we could barely cover half the mortgage with the rent we received. Our options seemed pretty limited here. Our best bet seemed to be to short sale the property, rent a house for a good long while, and then maybe buy again with a lot more caution and knowledge. I mean like 10 years down the road, I'm not in a hurry to get another mortgage. The thing about a short sale is the bank will only grant it when you fall behind on your mortgage. So we rented a nice house that is great for our family and stopped paying. It sucks, but I saw little choice in the end. So my question to Volourn is what would be a better solution to this situation? What should my penance be for getting into this loan? My situation is far from unique, it is almost standard for anyone who bought property during the high point of the bubble.

Yeah, I never actually grouped up with anyone with my bounty hunter character and I was able to enjoy the storyline with no issues. The fact you have an NPC companion really helps in the tough situations. I would definitely say it is worth it form a single player RG standpoint. If you like the Bioware storytelling machine (which I do), this game is very impressive, and has quite a bit of replay value with the different classes. The only issue is you might not be happy with the conclusion, as MMO's aren't really supposed to end. Although I don't know if class storylines eventually reach an endpoint, I didn't get far enough in. I don't know how you turn down a group invite from Manga Bosoms though.

Hmm, nevermind, decided to rethink my argument.

Is there a reason we are supposed to handle pirates with kid gloves?

Gotta agree with Volourn on this one. If I don't like DRM, as a consumer I don't have to buy the product. Easy peasy. If I don't like piracy, as a developer/publisher, what are my options?

Prosper is a young Renaissance man who has been sharing his gifts with us over the last few months. He seems keen to enter the game design industry, and I'm sure his talent mixed with some hard work will get him there.

You know what I thought was the best of these protests? The one where you took your money out of the large banks and went to credit unions and local banks. That made actual sense and might actually force changes to our current economy. And it supports local and small businesses.

It would have been pretty hard to predict that my condo would lose 75% of its value in two years. There was no precedent for that. Heck, if people could sell these properties anywhere near what they paid for them, we wouldn't be in this pickle.

Who ever said you would? As a matter of fact, games have barely increased in price over their history. What was once $49.99 is now what, $59.99? I've lost track of the amount of times I've seen publishers and developers make that claim. So you are saying that you have read that were it not for piracy, prices would have somehow decreased since the 90's / early 2000's? Weird. Yeah, many, many times over the years, I'm pretty surprised you haven't Can you maybe find some links for us? I'm with Gfted, I've never heard that claim. I've heard them complain about development costs rising due to piracy, but I've never heard that the price is being shifted to the consumers.

Ah, the good old entitlement argument, I knew you'd show up eventually. Orchomene, I skimmed your overly long post and all I got was you are nitpicky and you might be trying to justify piracy, but you don't want to commit fully.

Well, I sprinkle in some romano cheese in the soup, but that's probably a bit different. American is really only good on a burger. And even then there are better choices.

I heartily recommend Cauliflower Soup as well, jest blend it and season to taste. It has a great texture. Both my kids have nasty coughs. They started about two weeks ago. I took my daughter to the doctors office for the second time because she had a bit of a temperature, but the doctor said to just hydrate, drink tea, and keep using the humidifier. I hope the get past it soon.

Why? What's wrong?

But piracy is not subjective at all. You are taking property without permission. The people who have worked to create what you are taking are unhappy about that. There isn't any moral 'grey area' here.

Didn't we establish video game piracy is costing people their daily bread?Also, says the guy who finds it "repugnant". Hey, I downgraded that to morally unripened! But I take piracy a lot more serious than I do DRM. DRM can be a pain, it can even on rare occasions cause a serious computer problem, but it still isn't a crime. Piracy is.

Did you just try and connect rape to DRM? Seriously, Maria is correct, these are video games. Lighten up and stop trying to compare them to serious things.

"Occupy activists descend on Brooklyn on first day of campaign to move homeless people into buildings foreclosed by US banks" Just a few corrections for you there Gfted1: 'they' are moving homeless people (not themselves) into empty foreclosed homes. Whether you agree with it or not, you're clearly trying to spin it negatively. Yes, because its their property to seize and give away. Whether they give it to homeless or retarded nuns, its their movement performing illegal actions. Everyone involved should have been pepper sprayed and hauled to jail. And I'm performing an illegal action when I smoke a joint with my mates. Boo hoo. Good on them. Your country has become ****ing backwards and it's good to see people finally deciding to shake things up. Especially when the response from people like you is "pepper spray them and haul them off to jail". The problem here is these foreclosed homes are going to go to auction, and then they are going to be sold 'as is' to some family looking to try and capture the American dream, and they are going to get stuck cleaning homeless feces off the walls of their new home. The fact is this does nothing to help the economy. We are in this mess because property values plummeted, how does it help anyone to drive them further in the ground by putting a bunch of transients in them? Do you think these homeless people are going to do a little maintenance and garden work? Maybe spruce the place up? I actually have a condo in foreclosure right now. I am trying to short sale it and the bank is working with me. It is slow and painful, but if some bum moved in because the place is vacant right now, it would only create problems for me, not the bank.

I've been arguing for trade schools in the US forever, but instead we keep cutting the electives that actually teach useful skills. It's not like electricians, plumbers, mechanics, and carpenters don't make good money. They make great money, but schools in the US do almost nothing to help students get into those career fields.

I don't really want to think about how many games I've bought since 2000. And that's just PC, if you add Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, X360 and PS3.... Damn. I try an limit myself to one game a month. Which still puts me way over 50.

Steam allows me to buy quite a few titles I have passing interests in, and some of them I don't get around to playing. But for a few bucks, I don't consider it a real problem. It's nice to have them there if I get an itch.

I agree with Maria that the second hand sales discussion is irrelevant to the piracy discussion, and I believe the WMD one is insane.

I think you mean "tchotchkes." Nah, he probably meant Chachi

I'd expect you to be able to make the connection as an intelligent person, Walsh. "Oh, the 2nd hand sellers are the real criminals, so I'm actually doing a good thing by downloading the game myself". The art of good business is being a good middleman. Money doesn't go from consumer to game publisher before other actors get in on the action and in doing so contribute to overall economic activity. On a related matter, one would have to show that these middlemen, such as used game sellers, negatively affect the quality and budget of games before comming out against them. Assumptions aren't useful here. I believe I read something about how trade-ins actually increase the amount of new game sales, which makes sense to me. I know personally the only way I can buy new games regularly is by trading in my older games to offset some of the cost. We know how important those first few weeks are for the sales numbers, and so if trade-ins are actually driving those numbers up, it seems like a good situation for everyone.

that's my point though. what's so bad about it, when you take second hand sales into consideration. I mean "pitting" the two. imho, torrents are way better and more sensible I have no idea where you are going with this. A used game is sold to one person. That is much less than the thousands that can make use of a torrent. The original buyer of the now used game also no longer has access to the game. The person who set up the torrent has no such problem. What is not clear here? Second-hand sales are not illegal because you are taking a product you own and giving it completely to another person. This may be negative for the industry, but it is not illegal. However, buying one product and then allowing it to be spawned endlessly is very clearly illegal.

I don't see how buying a second hand game is different from downloading it. only in the first case you actually pay money to the guy. I don't think it's possible to convince me second-hand sales are more "legal" than torrents Ebay has a large amount of stores that sell new games, actually. But second-hand games is a pretty different argument. It's legal, as Gamestop's entire business model is built around it, but I can definitely see the argument that it is bad for the game industry. Comparing it to a torrent, where hundreds if not thousands of people make use of one copy of a game is pretty laughable though.