Hurlshort

Is it a potential buyer though? It's definitely a potential player, but would this person buy the game if they had no other way to get it? If some kid is pirating 20 games a month, it's very unlikely the kid would be buying all 20 games if he couldn't pirate. In other worlds not 20 lost sales, maybe not even 1 lost sale, if the kid has no money to begin with. To me, the concept of the lost sale is the crux of the pirating issue, since no property is being physically taken from someone else. I've been arguing strictly from a business perspective here. Logically there are a ton of variables when it comes to piracy, of course, but you can't really plug in all those variables in a business model. You can't account for Jimmy's allowance. All you can really look at is the fact that Jimmy is playing the game without paying, and so he is negatively affecting the business model. It doesn't have anything to do with physical copies either. The company is trying to make money off the product. When the product is used without making money, it is a negative.

There is an incentive on the companies behalf to look at their losses as due to piracy rather than because their product is of low quality. The just see the peer numbers in some torrent sharing site and they automatically assume that they are all lost buyers. Which is completely reasonable, as those are people using their product, despite not paying for it. Yeah, but is it a lost sale? It is more of a lost potential buyer, but from a business standpoint, that is the way they see it. When you have a product that is being used, but it hasn't been paid for, then of course it is considered a lost revenue source.

There is an incentive on the companies behalf to look at their losses as due to piracy rather than because their product is of low quality. The just see the peer numbers in some torrent sharing site and they automatically assume that they are all lost buyers. Which is completely reasonable, as those are people using their product, despite not paying for it.

Corporations are going to try and protect themselves from theft, no matter how small (sorry definition nazis, copyright infringement doesn't have the same ring to it.) I would say there is a good deal of over-reaction though, but I see it on both sides.

I'd say it comes down to age more than anything. Most of the folks I know who pirate (or who I suspect pirate) are young. As you get older, two things happen. One, you get a bit more cash in your pocket, and two, you realize that cash was hard to get and you feel less comfortable taking stuff for free. The other day I bought Ice Cream, and they gave me my daughter's scoop for free. So I turned around and stuffed a couple bucks in the tip jar. I also wasn't charged for a drink at a local deli, so I went to the counter and let them know. I'm not sure if I would have done that as a teenager.

Actually, a lot of universities, observatories, heck even churches were built as prestige projects by monarchs, trying to outdo each other. Not saying that none were ever built by a church, but the "all" is a wast exaggeration. Yeah, yet theology was quite often (I'm tempted to say generally) the first subject taught. (If it hadn't been, I wouldn't be a tenth generation university graduate) I'm definitely willing to recognize that nobles and monarchs had their hand in the local universities. I may have overstated the financial contribution of the church. I will say that the talent, as in the teachers and lecturers, did come out of religious and monastic orders more often than not. When Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor, the literacy rate in Europe was less than 1%, so there wasn't a very large talent pool available for quite some time. If you wanted to learn to read and write, you either needed to be a wealthy lord or a monk.

There are a lot of problems with what you just wrote. 1. If you bought AC2, then you aren't a pirate. 2. Waiting for a fix or returning it are the proper ways of handling the situation. I don't buy Ubisoft products because of their online always policy. 3. Non-technical consumers are not technical enough to turn to piracy. Applying cracks and using torrents requires a decent amount of know-how. Piracy isn't all that convenient. You are opening yourself up to all sorts of problems. Cracked software typically comes with plenty of problems on its own. People pirate because they are cheap or they are impatient.

Say wut? Of the universities I know, none were either founded nor funded by a church. My highchool was founded by a church in 1184 (AD) or so, but the universities? Not really. While there is some debate over the details, Medieval Universities were a continuation of Cathedral and Monastic schools of the early Middle Ages. You can look it up if you'd like, it's an interesting history. The Catholic Church owned a lot of land and had a lot of power in the Middle Ages. There wasn't much that went on that they didn't have a hand in. That's not true in Australia. That might have something to do with Europeans not settling in Australia until the 18th Century. Does everyone understand that we are talking about Europe from 500 CE to about 1500 CE? Nightshape brought up that he believes Judeo-Christianity set the world back about 500 years. I assume he was talking about European history during the medieval era.

And it has also been a damn good excuse for people to help each other. I don't know of many soup kitchens and homeless shelters that aren't involved with a church in some way.

Say wut? Of the universities I know, none were either founded nor funded by a church. My highchool was founded by a church in 1184 (AD) or so, but the universities? Not really. While there is some debate over the details, Medieval Universities were a continuation of Cathedral and Monastic schools of the early Middle Ages. You can look it up if you'd like, it's an interesting history. The Catholic Church owned a lot of land and had a lot of power in the Middle Ages. There wasn't much that went on that they didn't have a hand in.

I'm positive that the people that use drm to justify their piracy would just find another justification if drm didn't exist. It is a video game, if you don't like the drm, you don't need to still play it.

I'm referring strictly to the way I feel about the money I put down on the product. I understand that a large percentage of my money goes to the publisher. I'm probably not explaining it well, but what I'm really saying is $50-$60 is what I consider a fair price for the hours of work a development team puts in on a game, no matter how I receive the product.

Most people don't mind paying the same because they understand that the real cost of a game or a movie is in the production, not in the distribution. When I buy a game I don't look at the box and go 'gee, I'm really happy with the construction of this plastic case and the roundness of the DVD'.

Nightshape asked about culture and heritage, which science is only one aspect of. Look, we can cherry pick evidence for and against the church all day, like the fact that all Universities were built and funded primarily by the church. But there really isn't a point to it. Christianity is a major part of human history. It is folly to write it off as some absolute evil, it isn't any more evil than human nature itself.

If you want to look at what set us back 500 years (and by us, it is really just Europe, and it really was closer to 1000 years) then you have to look at the collapse of the Roman Empire. Europe lost a ton of knowledge when the Western Roman Empire collapsed, and the region was unstable for centuries afterwards. The Church played a large role in stabilizing Europe. In fact religion became the one connected strand among all the different ethnic groups and countries that settled in Europe after the collapse. I'm not trying to place the Catholic Church on a pedestal here, there is plenty of corruption and abuse of power in their history. But I consider dismissing the church altogether to be as great a folly as saying the church is infallible.

While the Black Death clearly helped in the decline of feudalism, and the Church was a major impediment to the Scientific Revolution, there are a lot of factors to take into account when looking at the Renaissance as a whole. As for the question of whether a Renaissance was needed, it was a rebirth of classical literature, art, and philosophy. The Church didn't cause the Dark Ages, if that is what you are getting at. Most of the written records we have from the Dark Ages comes from the Church, so it played a key part in preventing a total loss of history.

Like? Two separate developers, two separate publishers, two separate franchises. I don't see how this game failing could affect Risen 2 at all. For some reason I thought the developers were tied together.

I really hope this being a bomb won't affect Risen 2.

The Sistine Chapel, the preservation of Latin, Hagia Sophia, the Jesuit Order, Rome... I could really go on and on. Christianity is an intrinsic part of European History. For better or worse, the Church was involved in everything that happened in Europe after the Fall of the Roman Empire. Here is an interesting question: If the Crusades never happen, does Europe still have a Renaissance?

Apparently it is a work of genius.

If they get even close, I'll be happy. Having a new protagonist will be trickier though.

Cop Out - Pretty bad. I watched it, and then I noticed Kevin Smith directed it. I didn't see his signature on it at all. It was really not funny. Tracey Morgan and Bruce Willis have zero chemistry.

No, real men play City of heroes. I think real men play Vanguard. That's a hardcore MMO.

If it makes you two feel better, I played it for a couple years and really enjoyed it. But real men play LotRO.

I haven't got much sleep in the last week, so I took the day off and hid in my RV and slept for quite a few hours. I feel energized.