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SwissCM posted:Eventually the internet will become pervasive enough that not having access to the internet won't be a thing unless it's a personal choice or whatever. There's a difference between choosing not to have internet at all/not having access at all, and not having internet *at the moment* because you just moved in or your router died or you're switching providers or .... I mean, 20 years ago basically everyone had phone service, but I wouldn't have wanted a TV that didn't work unless I could call the company and log in. What if my phone was out just when I needed to?
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Jun 8, 2015 14:43
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 18:44 |
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Someone mentioned game piracy. Most of the civikised world missed the extreme fun that were russian game compilations. 10 games on one CD? No problem! Just there will be no cutscenes, music, and sometimes even textures will be compressed in effort to save some megabytes. But you were getting a custom launcher menu, made as a DOS batch file! And if you wanted more new games - call Sasza or one of his shady friends, and there you go - every two weeks you get a fresh compilation deliivered to your house! Oh, but all those games are in English and you don't understand a word of your Commandos or Might & Magic? No worries! Vladek got a friend who knows how to use hex editors, so you'll get your game translated soon! Of course, it will be a mix of Polish and Russian done by someone with school dictionary at hand, but hey, you get some extra laughs from that. And is your father a big fan of music? How about this compilation of Jarre albums? Just pop this into your Pentium MMX and it will automatically run Vladek's friend custom Winamp version, with full playlists and cover art slideshow! There should be also some concert footage, you can run those in QuickTime. Interested? Okay, just wait a moment, I need to print some cover art for those game compilations. Kurva, those ink cartridges are so expensive, you know...
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Jun 8, 2015 14:46
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Setting up delivery? Why bother, I can get the latest and greatest games from the sketchy old lady in the subway station. All three Civilization games for fifty rubles, what a bargain!
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Jun 8, 2015 14:51
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Our sketchy old ladies weren't sophisticated enough to sell games. But I'm pretty sure that at old Warsaw Stadium, the age and gender weren't important. And the home delivery was of course for the rich folks - pleb kids were happy to get Quake 1-3 in plastic foil envelope.
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Jun 8, 2015 15:02
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SubG posted:So if physical media is becoming obsolete, more's the pity for the media, because anyone looking at any of those mediums through a digital-only lens is going to miss out on a whole shitload of content. Are you referring to DVD extras? Because I thought NetFlix was moving towards offering those options via streaming? It'd make sense as it'd be pretty cheap to provide a directory commentary track alongside the regular audio. Or a couple of hours of low quality behind-the-scenes features.
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Jun 8, 2015 15:20
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I just went back and read the post about piracy. In my teens and 20's, I pirated pretty much everything. I was always super impressed by the compression and installer schemes that the scene came up with to shrink games down to something small enough to be downloaded (back in the 56K days). The install process would take upwards of an hour for some games as it transcoded MP3s and uncompressed textures using UHARC. For me, piracy in general is obsolete. When games started using more complex copy protections that require more and more screwing with to defeat, and with services like Steam that have aggressive sales and are very convenient. Valve figured out that in order to compete with free, you have to be cheap, easy to use, and provide more functionality and service. Granted, they didn't have all that right away. In fact, steam was disliked by a lot of users in the beginning. But they have pretty much become synonymous with PC gaming.
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Jun 8, 2015 15:26
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Lowen SoDium posted:For me, piracy in general is obsolete. When games started using more complex copy protections that require more and more screwing with to defeat, and with services like Steam that have aggressive sales and are very convenient. Valve figured out that in order to compete with free, you have to be cheap, easy to use, and provide more functionality and service. Granted, they didn't have all that right away. In fact, steam was disliked by a lot of users in the beginning. But they have pretty much become synonymous with PC gaming.
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Jun 8, 2015 15:38
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I think it took companies a long time to realize that what they saw as "theft" was often motivated by convenience, not money. I remember, back in the days of Napster, ranting that I'd happily PAY for music downloads as long as I could get music on demand, easily, from home. But no one was selling it back then, or not widely. Of course, sometimes it's about money, too - I'm not the only one in my workplace who has a pirated copy of AutoCAD at home to dink around with. My workplace pays thousands for me to use it there, I'm not going to spend that kind of money just so I can occasionally test something out from home.
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Jun 8, 2015 15:42
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If you know where to look, you can still find early 00's games, packed in 50 files, each 1,7MB, because you could format floppies in some magic way that gave them more space. I remember my school friend talking about how he got Red Alert on 40 floppies or so. And the piracy is still widespread, especially with not-yet-teen folks from rural areas. It's easier to download new release (esp. like Witcher 3, which notably has no DRM) than earn the money, go to city and buy the box. Also, your peers might scrutinize you for being a money-spending sucker.
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Jun 8, 2015 15:43
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Lowen SoDium posted:For me, piracy in general is obsolete. When games started using more complex copy protections that require more and more screwing with to defeat, and with services like Steam that have aggressive sales and are very convenient. Valve figured out that in order to compete with free, you have to be cheap, easy to use, and provide more functionality and service. People are inherently lazy. It's the convenience that makes Steam, Spotify, Netflix and other media services successful, not necessarily the price point (although it helps).
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Jun 8, 2015 15:46
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pookel posted:I think it took companies a long time to realize that what they saw as "theft" was often motivated by convenience, not money. I remember, back in the days of Napster, ranting that I'd happily PAY for music downloads as long as I could get music on demand, easily, from home. But no one was selling it back then, or not widely. I agree with this. Until iTunes did their thing, there was no way to buy stuff digitally. And even then, iTunes was .aac content protected that only worked on Apple stuff. It's only been really recently that you can buy DRM-free stuff digitally, compared to how long there has been the demand for it. Not to excuse piracy, but you can't cry too hard when you don't give people the option to buy stuff they want legally and they take the free and easy option and get it through illegal methods
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Jun 8, 2015 15:48
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spog posted:Not to excuse piracy, but you can't cry too hard when you don't give people the option to buy stuff they want legally and they take the free and easy option and get it through illegal methods  A lot of companies still punish you for paying for their product, then wonder why people pirate it.
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Jun 8, 2015 15:52
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^^^^ The movie industry seems like it has been the slowest on the uptake.Cage posted:The newest GTA will let you play online and you get all the DLC unlocked. Piracy isn't dead. Oh, I know it's not dead. That's why I said for me it was obsolete. Its the same kind of thing with Music. 10-15 years ago, practically everyone pirated their music because it was free and easy. Now days, I know that there are still a lot of music pirates, but with streaming services and music store apps built in to everyone's phone that are cheap and easy to use, music piracy has decreased a lot. I can't be bothered to go look for a working download to some song if it's only going to cost me $0.99 to download it instantly. Or pay a flat $10 a month for all the music I want. Piracy will never die, but it's not the same as it was. Lowen SoDium has a new favorite as of 15:54 on Jun 8, 2015 |
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Jun 8, 2015 15:52
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pookel posted:I think it took companies a long time to realize that what they saw as "theft" was often motivated by convenience, not money. This is why I love GOG.com--whether by intent or not, they effectively eliminated the guesswork involved when pirating older games. Is this torrent real? Do I need a compatibility patch? Where can I find a no-CD hack? Did the pirating team miss some DRM that will make the late-game unplayable when it fails a check? Is this file from DAbestTORRENTZ.ru full of viruses/malware? Now, I can hop right over to GOG, pay a pittance, and instantly get a full, legal version of a game with no risk of viruses, compatibility issues, etc. They even include scans of the manuals and artbooks, soundtracks, and all that jazz for most titles. It's far more convenient for me to grab something from there than to bother with pirated files.
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Jun 8, 2015 16:09
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the early legal download sites were terrible. you got ONE download of a drm-ed file that would either only play on iTunes or Windows Media Player. if you lost the file, you couldn't log in and download it again. if your computer died and you forgot the password to allow your new computer to use media tied to your drm key, you were screwed. Amazon and then Apple realized that this was dumb and stopped selling drm-ed tracks. Steam let you download and install as many times as you wanted from the start.
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Jun 8, 2015 16:12
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:This is why I love GOG.com--whether by intent or not, they effectively eliminated the guesswork involved when pirating older games. Is this torrent real? Do I need a compatibility patch? Where can I find a no-CD hack? Did the pirating team miss some DRM that will make the late-game unplayable when it fails a check? Is this file from DAbestTORRENTZ.ru full of viruses/malware? This sums up my thoughts on the topic. Between Steam and GOG, a significant amount of games can be obtained legally, with zero hassle and very little worry beyond system requirements. I think it was Gaben that had said, a few years ago, that "Piracy is a service problem", and yes, piracy is still around, but digital distribution has really reduced it I think.
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Jun 8, 2015 16:19
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pookel posted:I think it took companies a long time to realize that what they saw as "theft" was often motivated by convenience, not money. I remember, back in the days of Napster, ranting that I'd happily PAY for music downloads as long as I could get music on demand, easily, from home. But no one was selling it back then, or not widely. Yeah I think the entertainment industry is still trying to wrap it's head around the concept of "people are lazy as gently caress." Apple was really the first company to realize this and it's why iTunes was so successful at launch--for the first time, it was actually easier to buy something than it was to pirate it. Before iTunes, "legal" digital music distribution failed horribly because it had a million restrictions, like you could only listen to a song a certain number of times a day or it was intentionally lower quality than on CD. Steam is another good example, insane sales aside it makes buying games on PC ridiculously easy so a lot of people opt for that rather than pirating it. Now that streaming is "the thing," I wouldn't be surprised if piracy numbers have gone down significantly for stuff that's available on those services. I can't remember the last time I downloaded an album since everything's on Spotify. The entertainment industry needs to acknowledge that piracy will always be a thing, no matter what they do to try and curb it, and the best way to fight it is to make legal alternatives that are more convenient than pirating. It's getting there, but there's still a long way to go. As it is, a lot of industries still treat their customers like criminals (PC gaming DRM is still awful) but some have finally started to embrace it (e.g. the music industry.)
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Jun 8, 2015 16:27
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axolotl farmer posted:the early legal download sites were terrible. you got ONE download of a drm-ed file that would either only play on iTunes or Windows Media Player. if you lost the file, you couldn't log in and download it again. if your computer died and you forgot the password to allow your new computer to use media tied to your drm key, you were screwed. Wasn't there some fairly major game a few years back that did something like this? From what I remember you could only install once, and unless you uninstalled, you could never use that CD key again. Edit: it's been ages since I bought a game in a box, are CD keys still a thing?
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Jun 8, 2015 16:30
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robodex posted:Apple was really the first company to realize this and it's why iTunes was so successful at launch--for the first time, it was actually easier to buy something than it was to pirate it. Before iTunes, "legal" digital music distribution failed horribly because it had a million restrictions, like you could only listen to a song a certain number of times a day or it was intentionally lower quality than on CD.
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Jun 8, 2015 16:32
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Jabor posted:Speaking of obsolete, "Unregistered HyperCam 2" has to be up there somewhere. Showstealer pro trial version  Elliotw2 posted:Nope, that's just a Redbook Audio game disk. A lot of early CD PC and console games worked by encoding the data as track 1, and this is why many of them warn you to not play it on a normal CD player. I know the B.Net version of Warcraft 2 (but not the original, I think) would play the soundtrack if you just popped it into a normal CD player, which was really cool. Somehow they worked it out so there weren't even any 'track 1' problems. I know a few other CD-ROM games of the time did it too, as the cool new thing to show off their high quality audio. minato posted:Anyone remember shaped CDs? These were novelty CDs that were non-circular. Half the time the drive wouldn't recognize them, or they'd be badly made and shatter in the drive because some of them had a center of gravity that wasn't in the middle of the hole. I never had any shaped ones, but I remember small mini-discs that had a smaller radius but still fit in a normal CD-ROM drive, as well as weird truncated mini-discs (like you took a mini disc and then sliced off the sides of it, so it was kinda rectangular?) They were kinda pointless since plastic is cheap and you still needed a normal cd-rom, so they died off super fast. Lowen SoDium posted:I just went back and read the post about piracy. The worst thing about game piracy was during the 90s and 2000s if you bought games legitimately they came with such awful DRM I'd end up "pirating" the game I owned just so I could boot up the drat exe and play it without all this bullshit holding me down and rootkit-ing my OS. I mean gently caress that, that's a massive incentive NOT to buy games. Game publishers were really pants-on-head stupid for a few years there. Now its the other way around, Steam and GOG are more convenient than anything else. Unless you're broke, there's no reason to pirate at all. Zaphod42 has a new favorite as of 16:43 on Jun 8, 2015 |
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Jun 8, 2015 16:36
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minato posted:Anyone remember shaped CDs? These were novelty CDs that were non-circular. Half the time the drive wouldn't recognize them, or they'd be badly made and shatter in the drive because some of them had a center of gravity that wasn't in the middle of the hole. I think this is the only weirdly shaped record I ever bought, but it's a doozy. 
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Jun 8, 2015 17:13
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Zaphod42 posted:I know the B.Net version of Warcraft 2 (but not the original, I think) would play the soundtrack if you just popped it into a normal CD player, which was really cool. Somehow they worked it out so there weren't even any 'track 1' problems. I know a few other CD-ROM games of the time did it too, as the cool new thing to show off their high quality audio.
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Jun 8, 2015 17:24
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:This is why I love GOG.com--whether by intent or not, they effectively eliminated the guesswork involved when pirating older games. Is this torrent real? Do I need a compatibility patch? Where can I find a no-CD hack? Did the pirating team miss some DRM that will make the late-game unplayable when it fails a check? Is this file from DAbestTORRENTZ.ru full of viruses/malware? GOG is a CD Projekt design, and CD Projekt started and got big dealing in conditions like these: laserghost posted:Someone mentioned game piracy. Most of the civikised world missed the extreme fun that were russian game compilations. 10 games on one CD? No problem! Just there will be no cutscenes, music, and sometimes even textures will be compressed in effort to save some megabytes. But you were getting a custom launcher menu, made as a DOS batch file! And if you wanted more new games - call Sasza or one of his shady friends, and there you go - every two weeks you get a fresh compilation deliivered to your house!
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Jun 8, 2015 17:48
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pookel posted:Of course, sometimes it's about money, too - I'm not the only one in my workplace who has a pirated copy of AutoCAD at home to dink around with. My workplace pays thousands for me to use it there, I'm not going to spend that kind of money just so I can occasionally test something out from home. I think the companies that make those products don't actively encourage people (especially students) from outright pirating their software, but they also don't much care because they get it that the enterprise side of their business is really all that matters.
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Jun 8, 2015 17:52
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AutoCAD actually gives out free student licenses, which I think is pretty neat.
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Jun 8, 2015 17:54
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pookel posted:AutoCAD actually gives out free student licenses, which I think is pretty neat. Eh, its just smart business sense. Like MS giving schools access to Word or Excel or Powerpoint, it guarantees that when those kids grow up and go to businesses and they have a meeting "what software should we buy to make presentations with?" everybody says "well, I only know powerpoint..." and MS gets paid. Same with Visual Studio Express. Antifreeze Head posted:I think the companies that make those products don't actively encourage people (especially students) from outright pirating their software, but they also don't much care because they get it that the enterprise side of their business is really all that matters. Yeah. Photoshop is the big example of that, its pirated like crazy (because its absurdly expensive) and they kinda don't care as long as they get their commercial licences. They'd be smarter to put out a free student version though, like Maya and others do. (They probably do by now and I just don't know about it.... at least I hope they do)
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Jun 8, 2015 17:59
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But AutoCAD is nowhere near as pirated as Photoshop. Adobe's answer to piracy has made it a complete pain in the rear end.
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Jun 8, 2015 18:00
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Photoshop is much easier to use and is a much different market than AutoCAD.
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Jun 8, 2015 18:09
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Serperoth posted:This sums up my thoughts on the topic. Now that Steam has a 2 week, <2hours of gameplay no questions asked refund policy, I bet it drops even more. I've pirated games in the past because I wasn't sure if it would run okay on my computer, and didn't want to be out the $50 if it didn't work, despite my computer being above the specs.
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Jun 8, 2015 18:11
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Armacham posted:Now that Steam has a 2 week, <2hours of gameplay no questions asked refund policy, I bet it drops even more. I've pirated games in the past because I wasn't sure if it would run okay on my computer, and didn't want to be out the $50 if it didn't work, despite my computer being above the specs. But... piracy is ruining the industry! You mean it was the industry's toxic business models all along? Why I never... YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A CAR (gently caress that, poor people would download cars all day if they could)
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Jun 8, 2015 18:35
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Zaphod42 posted:But... piracy is ruining the industry! I'm not even poor but I'd download a car, because hell yes another car, why not? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up863eQKGUI
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Jun 8, 2015 18:40
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Piracy is also funny because at some levels, the pirates don't even care about the content. They want the ~Torrent upload stats~ and they love hoarding. There are some private trackers/communities that are setup in a way that is almost impossible to stay "positive", you have to go out and actively re-upload crap that is trending, not stuff you actually care about getting or sharing.
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Jun 8, 2015 18:42
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Tevery Best posted:GOG is a CD Projekt design, and CD Projekt started and got big dealing in conditions like these: Marcin Iwinski (pre-CD-Projekt) was a swapper and coder (under nickname S.S. Captain^Eses) for amiga cracking group Katharsis,: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x_Q4L99ZrY When CDP started punishing people with pirated copies of The Witcher 2, a lot of sceners who remember swapping stuff with him had a good laugh. Also on a minor note, but I think nowadays GOG is more of a French thing, with some common ground with CDP.
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Jun 8, 2015 18:51
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laserghost posted:Marcin Iwinski (pre-CD-Projekt) was a swapper and coder (under nickname S.S. Captain^Eses) for amiga cracking group Katharsis,: CD Projekt is an interesting group. They started out all scene, then they went mainstream and produced some games (Witcher) Then they were getting lots of praise in game journalist media for being less dickish about piracy and DRM than other studios (they had no DRM) But... all the while instead of using DRM, they actually hired a team of lawyers to go around strongarming people into paying up for "pirating" (Some didn't even do it). If you didn't pay the fee they'd sue you, and even if you were innocent you'd probably end up spending just as much money on a legal defense. hosed up shakedown intimidation tactics. They finally got called out on it and stopped, and now as far as I know they're pretty chill. But they were oddly backwards for awhile there, claiming they were DRM free and not like those other companies, while actually being way worse. quote:"However," CD Projekt added, "that shouldn't be confused with us giving a green light to piracy. We will never approve of it, since it doesn't only affect us but has a negative impact on the whole game industry. 100 percent sure. Except that several people came forward saying they were approached to pay the 1000 euros and they hadn't pirated Witcher 2. So.... oops.
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Jun 8, 2015 19:14
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laserghost posted:When CDP started punishing people with pirated copies of The Witcher 2... edit: ^^^^that's some lame poo poo. Though I expect you could counter-sue for court costs and damages if you could prove you owned it legally. Magnus Praeda has a new favorite as of 19:18 on Jun 8, 2015 |
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Jun 8, 2015 19:14
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Magnus Praeda posted:By doing what? We posted at the same time but check out my comment above yours  "You didn't buy our $60 game? Pay us $1200 or we'll sue you now." Yeah that's loving fair, CDProjekt. Considering their origins as scene hackers that's some hypocritical bullshit right there. Zaphod42 has a new favorite as of 19:17 on Jun 8, 2015 |
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Jun 8, 2015 19:15
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Light Gun Man posted:I'm kinda weirded out at how much Netflix usage seems to be entirely "watch the new things immediately and then nothing" or something. They make these categories like "newly added" "recent release" "trending now" and "popular on Netflix" and they are like 90% the same things because they are the things that are new. It's like nobody ever watches anything from before the current month, as if they've already watched every single thing on Netflix that interested them previously. Maybe it just seems that way but drat it's kinda dumb.
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Jun 8, 2015 19:15
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The actual problem with Netflix is the lack of an advanced search function. Please don't tell me those are also obsolete.
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Jun 8, 2015 19:17
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pookel posted:The actual problem with Netflix is the lack of an advanced search function. Please don't tell me those are also obsolete. I don't understand Netflix' love for their super super lovely UI. Why does the view list have to be a List views aren't allowed. Starting from the previous position isn't allowed. Random isn't allowed. What the gently caress is this? I've got like 50 titles on my watch list and rotating through to pick one takes a whole five loving minutes, so the end result is I don't even use the stupid watch list and I literally have to search for everything I want to watch by name. Netflix ability to discover new content is cool, but they're way way way too confident in it. It mostly just suggests random things in the same genre. That's not a replacement for being able to conveniently search and select things, you idiots. Zaphod42 has a new favorite as of 19:30 on Jun 8, 2015 |
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Jun 8, 2015 19:18
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Like Foreign Films?? Enjoy all this Bollywood poo poo then!
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Jun 8, 2015 19:24
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