BadAnalogyGuy (945258) writes:

"Having been shot several times, ..."

I know Slashdotters are a pedantic bunch, and prone to nerdrage, but shooting someone for bad analogies is a bit extreme, even for them...

Strangely enough, UKIP is against ACTA, and presumably they're dead against the EU having any secrets whatsoever (given they want it abolished), yet the majority of their MPs voted against this motion. Are they too lazy to bother to read whatever it is they vote on? Did the party functionary who tells them what way to vote make a mistake? Or is UKIP just so instinctively contrarian in Europe that they oppose any EU consensus at all, even when it is in favour of their stated principles?

"Normally, it took me eight hours to get through the whole game."

Precisely what's wrong with today's games industry.

"I know you can use the Scroll Lock key in conjunction with Excel, but I'm not sure anyone else ever does. "

I use it all the time, to get out of that irritating Scroll lock mode caused by accientally hitting it the first time round.

... who doesn't yet think that Bono is a sanctimonious hypocritical, posturing, corporate shill who is always willing to suck up to any big businessman or politician he can grab a photo opportunity with, no matter how venal?

Just askin'

You're describing Microsoft Windows XP.

XP came with an automatic update function. A few years into XP's life, Windows Genuine Advantage was automatically rolled out in a service pack, and once installed it will degrade your computer if Microsoft decides you might be a pirate.

Your nightmare scenario is everyday reality for most people. Pleasant dreams.

I don't follow you. How are either of those two factors relate to the matter of the quality of the official versus unofficial matchmaking servers for Starcraft? Was blizzard's policy 10 years ago to turn battle.net into a retard-infested shithole, but they changed policy 5 years later in time for WoW? Are the people who set up unofficial servers for RTS games somehow a nobler, gentler breed than the unofficial MMO server makers?

The fact I can't follow your non-sequitur logic is hardly surprising, though, because your slashdot ID is divisible by 3.

Surprisingly it's not true of Starcraft, where the iccup server is a more pleasant place to be than battle.net. The players have more skill, newbies like me are far less likely to be stomped on by fairly good players, or worse, hackers, creating '1v1 noobs only' games, there's a ratings system which does, roughly, tell you how good your opponent is likely to be (although the lowest two rankings covers a huge skill range), and it comes with an anti-hack. I'm also led to believe that the admin does act to boot cheats from the ladder, but I've no first-hand experience of that.

And your 'glitch' problem doesn't apply to SC at all of course, since it's a player-hosted RTS, not an MMO.

Big Name Game Studios of course, silly!

Hah, this just shows how EFFICIENT Linux is. Until recently, Windows achieved their local privilege escalation vulnerability rollout by having almost every home user running as fully privileged administrator accounts all the time. Linux achieves all this through a small tweak to the kernel build system, thus getting this feature to 100% of Linux users without any manual intervention at all.

Surely this is the same story, from 2 months ago.

Errr, IW aren't providing a network to play on. The network is just a matchmaking service.
There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it shouldn't be the only option for a game like CoD.

Instead of the server admins, you're at the mercy of whichever user happens to click the 'host' button instead of the 'join' button. If they disconnect in a hissy fit because you fragged them, game over. If they've got a shit connection, or their roommate fires up bittorrent, expect big pings as 32 players flood this poor sap's connection past breaking point. Oh, and say goodbye to mods too, and by extension, the next TF2 or Counterstrike.

In short, the convenience you think you're getting in exchange for your freedom and the existence of a gaming community just isn't there at all.

"mostly when the few servers out there have PunkBuster turned off so you know that's where all the aimbot/wallhack noobs go"

Not to mention those of us who made cod4 go on Linux w/ wine, alas. Cod4's PB doesn't work, since it checks the integrity of various Windows API calls.

Because the EFF acts primarily through legal activity in the US, and in the TI case, it's threatening to defend hobbyists against a tsunami of bogus DMCA takedowns.

Whereas the other instances you cite are using technological methods to prevent modders. Nintendo did take down a homebrew device in Japan, but not in the US. Apple just kicks out anyone it doesn't like from the App store. Obnoxious DRM isn't actually illegal, unfortunately, so the EFF doesn't really have the tools to fight it. When the device makers start firing off lawsuits and/or wrongheaded DMCA takedowns, then the EFF might be able to take an interest.

If you need lawyers to fight lawsuits relating to Your Rights Online, then you might call in the EFF. If you just need technical workarounds for all the DRM in your devices, then it's a job for DVD Jon...