You can't surf porn with a control column or an altimeter.

Most of the time my party defined insanity in finding solutions. I recall one "boss" that we tried to avoid peacefully, and the resulting situation involved his horde of minions singing him Happy Birthday as he chased us out of his palace with a rather large hammer.

This is so cool! He comes off as a Wizard or a mad scientist or something. This is a man who is truly passionate about his art. Wish things were looking more up for him, he seems like a cool, optimistic guy. If I lived anywhere near him, I'd probably try to go make friends with him or support his business.

It's unfortunate that somebody who would name their daughter X-woman likely will never breed. You're SOL. Wait, slashdot. You're par for course.

I loved Bioware's NWN. Not the single player, mind you, that *was* garbage. But the number of incredible stories and worlds you could play online for *free* has made this one of my favorite games of all time.

No love for X-Com on that list?

I find that there's something bizarre and paradoxical when industry when a major publisher distributes a product that UNIVERSALLY FAILS TO FUNCTION, and, from the channels I've observed thus far, the reactions are:

Laughter
Smug self-satisfaction
Affirmation that this is overall a good step for the industry

and coming in dead last in terms of apparant frequency, people who are upset because they've just lost $60.

How strange that this almost has a positive connotation.

But then you guarantee that once the servers shut down, customers lose their game. It would take a pretty insane patch to make the game work without a remote server if a "non-trivial" portion of the game was being run on said remote server.

The effort required to pirate a game:

1. Go to pirate website
2. Search for software
3. Wait
4. Install
5. Crack (copy a file)
6. Play
7. When patches come, re-crack (copy a file)

The effort required to purchase a game:

1. Go to store (takes transportation and time)
2. Search for software
3. Pay money (60 bucks, or the cost of the amount of time it took to download it given the purchaser makes 20 bucks an hour.)
4. Go home
5. Install
6. Play (inconsistent results due to DRM, often disc required in drive)
7. Patch (inconsistent results due to DRM)

The effort to pirate a game is easier than purchasing a game, regardless of DRM. Pirates get a disc image that they mount, with the crack inside, which they copy. Games with Starforce or SecuROM or something else, it's all the same effort to a pirate.

I know personally people in the following three groups:

1. People who buy games without DRM (They do exist, depending on your definition of DRM), but pirate games with it.

2. People who purchase games after pirating it in order to give appreciation to the developers of what they consider a fantastic game.

3. Pirates who would never give their money to the developer under any circumstances.

Groups 1 and 2 invalidate your hypothetical situation, and group 3 do not cause loss for the developer.

This whole stealing thing kinda gets a little hazy when the 'stealing' does not deprive the seller of a copy of his product to sell to someone else. Especially when the concept of selling stuff came from limited resources, when the resource in question is infinite in quantity. There is no "Mass Effect well" that will run dry, nor will we have a Peak Intellectual Property Crisis.

I would agree with you, were it not for the fact that the game company attributes all lost sales to piracy. All those people who don't buy a game on the grounds of avoiding these absolutely terrible control schemes simply get lumped in with the pirates, for the most part. There's no real way to separate the numbers of people who don't buy, and people who pirate.

Actually, I've always wondered how easily one could induce a Lithium battery's explosion, and if one could manage it on a flight. Even though the explosion would be small, and only one or two people would suffer minor injuries, and, if you're damn lucky, pierce the hull and cause a decompression and the masks to fall out.

But despite it's low effectiveness in killing everyone on board, it would set the media off. I mean, seriously, a BOMB actually going off on an AIRPLANE in FLIGHT? That'd go a long way to meet the supposed terrorist agenda of reducing our freedoms.

Doesn't matter whether or not you pirate it once you've made the decision to not purchase it. They attribute ALL lost sales to piracy, even if you didn't purchase or pirate it.

And you still give your money to Activision, telling them you do not hate it, or their heavy handed tactics.

Although, admittedly, there is little anybody can do to negate anti-piracy efforts. By neither purchasing or pirating a game, all you do is reduce the number of pirates, which, to Activision, means success. To pirate the game increases the number of pirates, justifying in their mind the actions they have taken against pirates (and legitimate users). To purchase the game, well, that's voting with your dollar, and telling them they are doing a bang-up job with everything they do.

Actually, if you e-mail them without pirating or purchasing their game, explicitly detailing why you did not purchase or pirate their game, with proper language and a respectful tone, maybe eventually enough people will do so to convince them to change their ways.

I haven't read the paper yet, as I'm just about the step out the door (I will read it), but the "ban on conspiracy websites" outlined in the linked article concerns me greatly. Conspiracies on the internet can look VERY similar to actual information about malpractice and corruption also found on the internet. The power to "ban" conspiracies would give a simultaneous power to ban leaks of information on corruption, which is a violation of the First Amendment for the EXACT motivations it was put in place to prevent.

Which is why I really doubt the article's validity, and hopefully reading the paper will confirm my doubts.

If it weren't for the profits of textbook publishers, why even bother printing them off? An ebook reader can handle most of the content a textbook has to offer, and even with how expensive they are, they'd still be cheaper than the bookload of a full cycle in school, without the heavy lifting. Heck, laptops too.