metadigital

FESTINA LENTE

Slanderous information could hurt them...but it might also benefit. Post information a company put an illegal sex game in a game and has to remove it by law and $ (of sold games) and free marketing... Theft is financially hurting a company. No way to deny that. No, it DOES matter. According to you and other people here "stealing" is perfectly fine, if the creator didn't create his loss himself... but another created the copy of the creation that causes the loss (and now I totally lost myself too...) Stealing has, and is for as I know, taking stuff, be it physical or digital that you should not have for free for free... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> As we seem to be indulging ourselves in the "single examples to prove sweeping statements" generalisation inductive logical fallacy, let me add one for you to ponder: A person (let's say she's a student) plays a game on a friend's PC, that that particular friend has not purchased in one of the legitimate ways accepted by all of us under unanimous consent (for whatever personal and irrelevant reasons). The person likes the game, and then decides to buy her own copy. So there exists a case where, just like your strawman, above, something positive and legal and beneficial and generates revenue from an illegal action. Now if we add that the "pirate" doesn't like the game and only downloaded it to see what the fuss was all about (maybe the pirate was a student also, and he didn't really like the whole "Sims" thing; after all, it's a girl's game " ), then the "crime" has a zero negative effect and has positive consequences. See how easy it is to use logical fallacies to prove (in)valid arguments? Right. Let's keep it real, shall we?

Blah blah blah All "black and white" fundamentalist viewpoints are wrong.

No, the point of a console is to standardise the hardware to eliminate (or at least minimise towards a probability of zero). This indicates that some part of the QA is faulty. Either the hardware wasn't QA'd properly, or the game wasn't. If it's the hardware, then there will need to be a patch to all further games to fix it (like the Intel 486 co-processor debacle, or the Hubble telescope's initial myopia), or a recall (depending on the seriousness). If it's software, then the publisher/developer/M$ are to blame for either poor work or poor standards checking. An Xbox should work like a tv or DVD player, not a PC: it should (under normal working conditions) not crash. That said, I wouldn't be at all surprised if some wag had put some sort of thermal enhancer on the GPU/CPU chips, to induce a crash, and cause some bad press ...

Guys, a primer: the format is loose enough to give poetic licence to say things about someone that you really want to, but haven't had the need / ammunition / inclination / whatever to in another thread. No need to be a "rules lawyer" (sic). Just have fun. I mean, anyone who thinks Eldar is as nice as I said is plain daft, or a complete n00bz0rz0RZ111!111

That is a frighteningly accurate onomatopoeic rendition of the Cookie Monster's mad scoffing of many cookies ...!

Yes, Big Brother is here to protect you.

They wouldn't live long enough to learn the ways of the Force. And that singing is enough to stun an opponent.

Gaming Theory is obviously lost on you, then. You are too interested in the pretty colours to understand the logic system that underpins it: much as the monk called Mendel determined the laws of heredity, so too the laws of gaming can be used for multiple applications (like warfare and free market trading). Using the pretty characters is just a handy mneumonic for the character traits, short-cutting the learning and recognition process.

I will never play a Jedi Ewok, Darth!

Isn't that more Freeware or Public Domain? The Shareware model that I'm familiar with is usually either trial based, or with limited functionality. Doom for instance, only had the first episode available as Shareware. If you wanted to play the other levels, you had to buy the game. It wasn't "please contribute if you like it." It was "please contribute if you want to play more." Alternative styles are the 30 day trial periods that offer full functionality (well, usually), but disable themselves after the trial period is over. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Shareware = Try it for free, if you use it, then buy it to get rid of the ubiquitous nag screen (and possibly the appliction is nerfed, as well). GNU GPL = Use it for personal requirements for free, but any revenue generation needs to be reconciled with the original author. Freeware / Public Domain = All yours, baby, but please consider the developer and contribute what you think is fair. Doom was Shareware. ZoneAlarm Personal Ed is freeware. I forgot a big one, too: Duke Nukem.

Unless it's a Jedi Wookiee. And definitely no Ewoks, except as hors d'

As a funny aside, I remember when many people were reporting bizarre problems about the Half-Life expansion Opposing Forces. They were all up in a rage, and many were contacting tech support and whatnot. It turns out though, that the problem only existed in the pirated version. I heard there were many bannings on the gearbox forums <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I remember a story about AutoCAD (y'know, the Computer Aided Design package that invented and defined the market, and came with a hardware copy-protection device, connected via the serial port, called a dongle?): apparently the 3D wire models were degrading after a certain (predictable) amount of time. So, after a couple of weeks, the model would slowly lose it's vertical integrity and look like it was melting. Turns out that this was due to the pirated versions not completely duplicating the functionality of the dongle: there was some dimensional constant that used a value from the device as a reference, and when it was absent the Y axis would deteriorate asymptotically. Very fiendish copy protection, worthy of admiration! The closest I ever heard of for the black hats was a virus that installed itself as an encrypting hash algorithm between a database engine and its data; after a number of weeks (a couple of months, IIRC, enough to affect all normal archives in the backup cycle) it would then delete itself and leave the engine with an encrypted database. That's one pee'ed off ex-employee! (Not sure if the perpetrator was caught.)

I would add a corollary to Kaftan's First Law of Puzzles: the puzzle should include good feedback, especially for incorrect responses, that indicate how wrong the response was, as well as how many more responses like that will fail. This also adds meaning to the Second, Third, Fifth Rules of Puzzles, and even a little to the Fourth Rule.

Where are you playing this curious game?

Lots of countries have (had) hyperinflation, like interregnum Germany, which suffered 3.25 million percent per month (prices double every 49 hours), after the European nations uncoupled their currencies from the Gold Standard. Of course the Germans got it right when they occupied Greece: 8.55 billion percent per month (prices double every 28 hours). Current world record holders are Hungary, though who, after the end of World War II at 41.9 quadrillion percent (4.19

It is now. All we need is a good back beat.

He flamed me once. Bastard. I hate him.

English loves her words Swallow whole, ingest, digest, But never excrete.

That's probably more a wisdom thing, rather than intelligence: I'm sure I could still read Elvish, for example, but deciding which way was up when under the influence of The Bends (a similar experience) is definitely difficult.

Or, you could use a browser like Opera, or one of the many extensions to Firefox, to change the basic stylesheet of the site to your own design.

Is the little cat the Espeon? Kewl!

I leik puzzles.

They have that in common with Kiwis.

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion. George Bernard Shaw You could always use them for firewood or as a nifty food supply ...