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PlayStation (Games)

BioShock 2's First DLC Already On Disc 466

Posted by Soulskill
from the read-the-rest-of-this-post-in-a-month-for-five-bucks dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from 1Up: "Trouble is brewing in Rapture. The recently released Sinclair Solutions multiplayer pack for BioShock 2 is facing upset players over the revelation that the content is already on the disc, and the $5 premium is an unlock code. It started when users on the 2K Forums noticed that the content is incredibly small: 24KB on the PC, 103KB on the PlayStation 3, and 108KB on the Xbox 360. 2K Games responded with a post explaining that the decision was made in order to keep the player base intact, without splitting it between the haves and have-nots."

Comment: Your tears, they taste delicious. (Score 3, Interesting) 634

by CharonX (#31397618) Attached to: Ubisoft's Authentication Servers Go Down
What everyone predicted has happened.
The servers fail just after the game is released, tens (hundreds?) of thousands of customers are highly unsatisfied, not to say irate.
This is already a PR disaster, should the servers keep failing (whatever the reasons - the people don't care if your servers are to weak to handle the load or if some /b/tards decide to DDOS them for "pool's closed" - they only care that they cannot play the game they BOUGHT) it will become a massive one.
Oh, and since Silent Hunter 5 was already cracked I suspect a crack for Assassin's Creed 2 won't be long.
So in a way, Ubisoft, you decided to ignore the warnings, now your tears, they taste delicious.

Comment: In Winter? 27 Degrees Celsius... In Summer? 30+ (Score 1) 676

by CharonX (#31333810) Attached to: What is the ambient temperature in your office?
I have the dubious joy of working in a medium sized (I'd say 40 to 50 square meters) office with 5 more coworkers. Not only do we three south-side windows (along the south side wall of the building) but also the pipes for heating the 20+ other offices in the building run through ours along two walls. Add to that the body-heat of 6 humans, 12 PCs (two for each of us) 18 monitors (three for each of us - LCDs fortunately) - no air-conditioning of course. And now, to keep really comfy, put the guy who feels cold at 15 degrees celsius right next to the windows... Joy...

Comment: Decisions, decisions... (Score 1) 631

by CharonX (#31187672) Attached to: Ubisoft's Constant Net Connection DRM Confirmed
Hmmmm.....
Pay big bucks to legally play a game that puts me at the publisher's fickle mercy and demands constant internet access - and bandwith - responding with draconian punishment if I fail to provide this.

OR

Pay nothing and get an illegal copy that works fine from the word "GO"

Decisions, decisions...

Comment: DRM, three Evils in One (Score 1) 372

by CharonX (#31008276) Attached to: Game Industry Vets On DRM
DRM, that is Digital Right Management, is actually three evils in one.
First of all, many publishers view DRM as a way to manage (read increase) their rights while reducing the rights of the consumers, i.e. restrict the resale, activation limits, remote killswitches etc.
Secondly, many legitimate consumers find DRM annoying - they purchased a product but cannot use it as they see fit - be it that cannot transfer their music CD to their MP3 player, or play that game without contacting the publisher's master server.
And thirdly DRM is an excellent excuse NOT purchase something, but rather obtain it illegally. After all, stealing from a "nice company" does feel wrong. Screwing some corporate morloch that does its best to screw you feels much less wrong.
Image

Lawyer Offers $1M For Proof His Client Could Have Done It; Oops 362 Screenshot-sm

Posted by samzenpus
from the choose-your-words-carefully dept.
A Florida attorney, Cheney Mason, made the mistake of offering a million dollars on a TV show to anyone who could prove that his client, Nelson Ivan Serrano, was able to travel across two states and kill four people in the time that prosecutors had alleged. Having a lot of free time, South Texas College of Law graduate Dustin Kolodziej decided to take Mason up on his dare. Dustin traveled the route prosecutors say Serrano took, completed the trip under the time allowed, and videotaped the whole process. He is now suing Mason in the federal district court — because the attorney doesn't want to pay, saying that his statement was just a joke.
Windows

Exchange Rates Spell High Prices for Windows 7 In the EU 548

Posted by timothy
from the congratulations-on-choosing-the-executive-version dept.
CWmike writes "European customers will pay up to twice as much for Windows 7 compared with US users, even though the new operating system will ship without a browser in Europe. Some of the money Microsoft stands to make on the European editions of Windows 7 comes from the weak dollar. Last week, for instance, the dollar fell against the euro the most in a month, hitting $1.41 per euro. For example, Windows 7 Professional, the key retail edition for businesses, will sport a price tag of 285 euros, or $400.60, and £189.99, or $313.84, at Saturday's exchange rate. In other words, EU customers will pay twice the $199.99 U.S. price; U.K. buyers will pay 57% more. And depending on your view on bundling IE, Europe's customers will be paying more for less, with Microsoft's decision to yank IE8 from Windows 7 in an effort to head off EU antitrust regulators, who may still force the company to take more drastic measures."

Comment: I used to not-mind ads... (Score 5, Insightful) 615

by CharonX (#27914559) Attached to: Adblock Plus Maker Proposes Change To Help Sites
Long ago I did not mind ads. Sure, I did not click any significant number of them, but I did neither mind those banners and whatnot being displayed. This changed as they became more and more intrusive and obnoxious. Blinking in bright colors; pop-up; pop-under; pop-in-front-of-the-actual-webpage; punch-the-monkey; you-are-the-100000000st-visitor; *brrrring**brrriiing*-now-with-sound. So I decided to to what I had to do; these "guests" had outstayed their welcome, and now I showed them the door.

Comment: So Pirates are bad, mkay, and DRM is good, mkay... (Score 2, Interesting) 504

by CharonX (#26185639) Attached to: An In-Depth Look At Game Piracy
The article is quite biased anti-piracy, pro DRM.
Instead of taking a balanced close look at the causes of piracy the same old (pro-piracy) arguments are assembled into strawmen and then quickly ripped apart. When the focus turns to DRM there is a lot of handwaving and chanting "if I don't want it to be true it will not be".
A shame really.

Comment: Inverted Bait and Switch (Score 1) 486

by CharonX (#24999491) Attached to: <em>Spore</em> DRM Protest Makes EA Ease <em>Red Alert 3</em> Restrictions
Ah, the good old Baid and Switch trick, but this time done in reverse.
First they try to force-feed us with some outright horrible DRM, and now they try to sell us a slighly lighter variant of this DRM as an "improvement".
I promised myself never to buy a DRM laden "can't ever resell" game. That's also the reason why I never bought HL2 or Bioshock. If I BUY a game I want to OWN it, and not only be able to install and/or play the game at the publisher's pleasure.
Biotech

Get the Family Dog Cloned 240

Posted by samzenpus
from the love-them-twice-today dept.
Anonymous writes "Some of you may have seen 'The 6th Day,' the movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger a few years back. If you recall there was a 're-pet' cloning service to get your dog back if you ever lost them. Enter 'Best Friends Again': 'A US biotech company on Wednesday announced it will auction off the right for five dog owners to have their furry best friend cloned, with bidding starting at 100,000 dollars. "BioArts International ... will sell five dog cloning service slots to the general public via a worldwide online auction," the California-based biotech start-up said in a statement.'"
Linux Business

Hilf Claims Free Software Movement Dead 395

Posted by ScuttleMonkey
from the faster-than-a-speeding-fud dept.
moe1975 writes to mention that Bill Hilf has taken a rather aggressive stance with regard to the status of the Free Software movement. With claims like; "The Free Software movement is dead. Linux doesn't exist in 2007. Even Linus has got a job today" it would certainly seem that the next offensive is going to be sponsored by denial. "For the desktop, Hilf sees a new frontier in terms of rich client programming. With more and more services by Amazon, Google, Yahoo and, of course, Microsoft being run as services rather than as software installed locally, it will be up to the desktop to provide richer functionality."
Science

Mercury Contamination Vs. Energy-Efficient Lightbulbs 801

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the why-can't-it-just-be-easy dept.
phyrebyrd writes "How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent lightbulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labor — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health."

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