----------------------------------- Martin Fri Oct 15, 2004 12:03 pm Software Piracy ----------------------------------- With the recent theft of Halo 2 (well, actually le Halo 2.) [url=http://bungie.net/News/Story.aspx?link=CABA3088-9E1B-49A3-A74D-77A67E324180]Read the story here, as well as the seemingly imminant pre-leak of Half-Life 2, what are your thoughts on piracy. It seems to me that the gaming industry is very concerned to crack down on it. Now, on one side of the arguement, much like music, games are far too expensive at the moment. Half-Life 2 Silver will sell for $75 canadian. On the other hand, this could be due to the fact that they realize how widly pirated their game will be. Now, if the gaming industry wants to fix this, they are going to have to crack down on software pirates, but they are also going to have to adapt. Games are going to have to be cheaper. This is a vicious circle: on one hand, I realize that piracy is wrong, but on the other hand, spending $75 on a game makes me feel like I am getting ripped off. Morally, regardless of the price, theft is wrong. If they were selling games for $1000 a piece, piracy would still be wrong. Games are not essential to life (regardless of what you may believe). I'll stop rambling; what are your thoughts? ----------------------------------- Dan Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:44 pm ----------------------------------- There is a easy way to fix this with is cd keys for the online part of the game. Shure poleop will still crak the game but they will not be able to do online play. Then the pricary whould ataclky make your game sell better since the poleop who dling will like it (if it is good that is) and whont to play online. Tho this whould be assuming online part of the game is free, so then u are realy paying 70ish doloars for a life time of online play with the game. Tho this gose wrong when comapnys start geting the idea to ban poleop based on the CD key since it whould be like taking back there product and not paying you for it. On the musick side of things i see nothing wrong with dling songs. 1st off it realy is hurting the reconding industry more then the aritsits and in canada you pay a tax on recorderable meaida any how that basiclk pays them back (or at least i think you do...). Also when u download songs it makes it more likey that you will buy the cd. And the recdoring isustry should make money on this if they are smart, if they set up good pay for muscik dling sites where you say pay like $10 a month and can dl as much as you whont/can then i think poleop whould sing up. ----------------------------------- josh Fri Oct 15, 2004 2:08 pm ----------------------------------- And the recdoring isustry should make money on this if they are smart, if they set up good pay for muscik dling sites where you say pay like $10 a month and can dl as much as you whont/can then i think poleop whould sing up. I would pay for it. and yah, their is a tax on all recordable media that is sold in Canada (so if u buy a spindle of CD's it is charged per CD in the spindle e.g. u buy 50 cds u pay a fee on each 1). Since the canadian RIAA manged to convince the courts to put this tax on they really can't do to much about persecuting downloaders cause ppl just say that they already paid the fee for the song. And so far it seems the judges are agreeing with the ppl. As far as games go, I do think they are way to expensive and I recently read an article on CNN that says, due to inflation, they will soon raise prices again. I think EA Games is raising thir price $5.00 next year. ----------------------------------- Martin Fri Oct 15, 2004 5:35 pm ----------------------------------- Canadian Recording Industry Association of America, eh? Not even $10 to download songs. I'd go with $5-$10 a CD. The system now is rediculous. ----------------------------------- templest Fri Oct 15, 2004 6:06 pm ----------------------------------- There is a easy way to fix this with is cd keys for the online part of the game. Shure poleop will still crak the game but they will not be able to do online play. Then the pricary whould ataclky make your game sell better since the poleop who dling will like it (if it is good that is) and whont to play online. Tho this whould be assuming online part of the game is free, so then u are realy paying 70ish doloars for a life time of online play with the game. Tho this gose wrong when comapnys start geting the idea to ban poleop based on the CD key since it whould be like taking back there product and not paying you for it. On the musick side of things i see nothing wrong with dling songs. 1st off it realy is hurting the reconding industry more then the aritsits and in canada you pay a tax on recorderable meaida any how that basiclk pays them back (or at least i think you do...). Also when u download songs it makes it more likey that you will buy the cd. And the recdoring isustry should make money on this if they are smart, if they set up good pay for muscik dling sites where you say pay like $10 a month and can dl as much as you whont/can then i think poleop whould sing up. You mean like Diablo? Yeh, I can vouch for that. Before I got a job, and I did a great deal of downloading games, the only four games I had to buy were: Diablo II Starcraft Warcraft III / : TFT Counter-Strike It seriously works. As games get, more and more, on-line dependant, it'll be _much_ easier to implement this. But either way, the cd-key thing really does phuck up the downloader's game. ----------------------------------- josh Fri Oct 15, 2004 6:11 pm ----------------------------------- I heard that walmart is now pusing record labels to sell CD's for under 10.00 American. and with Wal Marts buying power who knows whatll happen :D :D :D [url=http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6558540/thekillers?pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single1&rnd=1097881825817&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.1040]Article Here ----------------------------------- Mazer Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:04 pm ----------------------------------- Any brilliant new form of copy protection for single player games? Besides the ol' find-the-codec-frequency-on-the-cd-case trick and others like it. ----------------------------------- wtd Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:17 pm ----------------------------------- Copy protection is inherently security by obscurity, and it's doomed to fail. ;) ----------------------------------- AsianSensation Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:13 pm ----------------------------------- it doesn't matter how hard companies tries to protect their CDs, I seem to find pirated version of the game all the time in China, selling at about 5 yen each (1 Can dollar). Those short Chinese guys...they are really good at bootlegging. In the cafes, there were not a single legal copy of CS or Starcraft or Warcraft. Every computer was loaded with a bootlegged copy of the game. ----------------------------------- Martin Sat Oct 16, 2004 2:12 am ----------------------------------- I have the ultimate copy protection idea: 1. Give the game a really stupid name, like Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3. 2. Make the game incredibly huge, like 34 DVDs and requiring 70 gigs of HD space to install. 3. Make the CD-Key contain non ASCII characters. Piracy problems would disappear. ----------------------------------- SuperGenius Sun Oct 17, 2004 9:42 am ----------------------------------- I have the ultimate copy protection idea: 1. Give the game a really stupid name, like Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3. 2. Make the game incredibly huge, like 34 DVDs and requiring 70 gigs of HD space to install. 3. Make the CD-Key contain non ASCII characters. Piracy problems would disappear. lol.. what a nice way for the gaming people to shoot themselves in the foot... but with the way things are headed i wouldnt be suprised to see them take more desperate measures, if not quite this drastic. ----------------------------------- Martin Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:10 am ----------------------------------- The new way to do copy protection is to actually install third party software without you knowing (Oh, it's all in the EULA) that then does all of the detection in the background. ----------------------------------- templest Sun Oct 17, 2004 1:44 pm ----------------------------------- I had to buy starcraft 3 times because of daemon-tools. I hate swapping discs, so I rip iso's onto the HD and use those instead. But thanks to starcraft's _new_ security measures. If the CD (or in this case the image) doesn't include their "Security ID String... blah, blah, blah" which is one obscure, note: inaccesible (at least directly), partition on the CD, then starcraft auto-downloads a file to corrupt your starcraft installtion and auto-bans your key from being able to go online. So now I'm forced to use the CD. :cry: ----------------------------------- josh Sun Oct 17, 2004 1:51 pm ----------------------------------- isn't it illegal for them to auto download stuff to your PC like that??? I think if it wasn't b4 it is now with the new anti-spyware laws in the states, ----------------------------------- rizzix Sun Oct 17, 2004 2:48 pm ----------------------------------- mind u guys.. i think games are underpriced.. the complexity of algorithms etc. used in some games.. pfft.. we dont pay for what we get.. if u want to reduce the cost of something it should be those foolish easy to program.. word-processors and other such foolish apps.. that people use for businesses. ----------------------------------- josh Sun Oct 17, 2004 3:05 pm ----------------------------------- u have a good point there. However I do not want game prices to go up. The programmers that developed Halo obviously have more talent than the ones that developed word. I think M$ is gunna find themselves loosing money soon becuae of all the good open-source alternatives that are comming out, even for things like office. ----------------------------------- SuperGenius Sun Oct 17, 2004 5:15 pm ----------------------------------- they can pretty much do anything they want to your comp if they say they can in the EULA, which they can just make really long and confusing so you either won't bother reading it or understand it. ----------------------------------- Genesis Sun Oct 17, 2004 5:43 pm ----------------------------------- even for things like office. Especially for things like office. OpenOffice.org is way better than word. It doesn't have the ten thousand unnecessary features that Word has, but has some that are actually useful, like the math symbols tool. ----------------------------------- templest Sun Oct 17, 2004 5:53 pm ----------------------------------- even for things like office. Especially for things like office. OpenOffice.org is way better than word. It doesn't have the ten thousand unnecessary features that Word has, but has some that are actually useful, like the math symbols tool. And the auto-binding of special settings. Bind two-key combos to do things like, superscript, underscript. Bold and italisize at the same time. Comes in _really_ handy for physics labs. ----------------------------------- josh Sun Oct 17, 2004 6:27 pm ----------------------------------- hows the spellcheck in open office??? adn how are the other things like their version of excell and powerpoint and access??? ----------------------------------- Genesis Sun Oct 17, 2004 8:11 pm ----------------------------------- hows the spellcheck in open office??? adn how are the other things like their version of excell and powerpoint and access??? The spell check is great. It picks up mispelled words...what else could you ask for. There's other features that can be turned on/off too like automatically capitilize the first letter of sentences, fix commonly mispelled words, etc. As for their versions of Excel, and Powerpoint and such, pretty good. How often do you use excel anyways. For your purposes, OpenOffice Spreadsheet will be more than adequate I'm sure. And if your making powerpoint presentations, use Flash. (Although the Presentation program that's included is identical to Powerpoint, so don't worry.) Another awesome feature of OpenOffice is the ability to export to .PDF's. And Access is for making Databases. Which I don't have any use for. But there's no version of it included with OO. ----------------------------------- josh Sun Oct 17, 2004 8:15 pm ----------------------------------- I think I might get it just to try and if I like it I will get rid of office, so I can save disk space. Are the files fully compatable with word, excel... I use excell just for the basic stuff and graphs for science I would use flash but with my schools comps they won't even let us put the flash player on somce of them. At least powrpoint I know it works. And I do like that program in office 2003 called visio becuase I can make my flow charts for compsci in it. ----------------------------------- Genesis Sun Oct 17, 2004 8:21 pm ----------------------------------- Ya, OpenOffice saves files in it's own .sxw format. Wich are way smaller than Microsoft's .doc files. But you can also save as .doc if you want, so if you need to access it from school, open Word files, or send it to someone who is likely not using OpenOffice, your okay. You can save as quite a few other formats as well. (Including .PDF which I already mentioned.) ----------------------------------- josh Sun Oct 17, 2004 8:26 pm ----------------------------------- thanx for the infor, downloading now ----------------------------------- wtd Mon Oct 18, 2004 12:38 am ----------------------------------- I think I might get it just to try and if I like it I will get rid of office, so I can save disk space. Are the files fully compatable with word, excel... I use excell just for the basic stuff and graphs for science I would use flash but with my schools comps they won't even let us put the flash player on somce of them. At least powrpoint I know it works. And I do like that program in office 2003 called visio becuase I can make my flow charts for compsci in it. Then you should probably check out Dia. Not sure if there's a Windows port, but it's definitely there for Linux. ----------------------------------- templest Mon Oct 18, 2004 6:44 am ----------------------------------- http://dia-installer.sourceforge.net/ ^-- Dia for Windows. ----------------------------------- josh Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:45 am ----------------------------------- thanx I will give it a look. So far I am not that impressed with the spell check in open office. I turned on the automatic check but when I purposely missspel words it sometimes doesn't underline them and even when I run a full spellcheck it doesn't pick up something like adfadsfs. ----------------------------------- Martin Mon Oct 18, 2004 11:37 am ----------------------------------- No, it's not illegal for them to put stuff on your computer without you knowing, since, in the EULA, you agreed to it. By clicking 'I agree' you are in fact agreeing to a contract, and part of that contract is that they can install this software (and update it). ----------------------------------- josh Mon Oct 18, 2004 1:06 pm ----------------------------------- damn I really should read those things :D ----------------------------------- josh Mon Oct 18, 2004 9:52 pm ----------------------------------- just tried open office a bit, so far I am not to immpressed with a few of the features. Some features that i don't like in open office that I use alot in word are: -the spell check in open office -The suggestions it gives at the top of the list are often far from what the word actually was -It has no spell check for the canadian english (why my spell check was not working before -the headers and footers are really messed up (i like ho word inserts the page numbers automatically if u ask it to) -I don't like how it tires to guess every word u type. If I hit enter for every word it guessed it would take me longer than to type the word. If n e 1 knows how to fix n e of the above problms please tell me because othrer than that I do like open office just as much as word and would really like to save the space on the HD that office takes up. ----------------------------------- Genesis Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:06 pm ----------------------------------- What's wrong with the spell check? It's the exact same as word. For everything else, go to Tools > Options and you can play around with whatever settings you want. There is Canadian English, change it under the language tree in the Options menu. You can turn off auto complete words through that menu. To insert page numbers, or anything else, into the header, go to Insert > Fields > Page Number. Make sure that the Main toolbar is on by right clicking on the Top toolbar, with the font list and stuff in it. And checking main toolbar. In that bar you should see a spellcheck button that you can activate that will underline mispelled words for you. (If that's what you're having problems with.) Anything else you can't get to work, just post. I'm sure I can help. OpenOffice can do everything Word can, and more, so don't worry. ----------------------------------- josh Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:10 pm ----------------------------------- kk thanx, I changed it to Canadian english when I first got it but if u look, it doesn't have an option to turn of spellcheck for that language. Maybe I was just spelling particularly bad today so thats why the spellc ehcck wan't working for me (I was trying to write a script for drama) Thanx for the help thought, I will definantly try playing with it a little. ----------------------------------- shorthair Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:10 pm ----------------------------------- I dont understand how you can complain about ope source software, it was developed profit free and is available ot anyone who wishes to use it ,if you want to fix the program then go edit the source code and re release it as a new office ( perfectly fine under GNU ) but know taht open office is a stripped version of star office ( the one they do charge money for ) i so happen to have 13000 licences for it thati cant use as marting said in hte EULA on download ( or whatever ) those licenses are non transferable so my get rich quick scheme didnt work.... so for a much better and much beefier version Staroffice is what you need its a measly 79.99 to the 300 of microsoft office.... and you get 5 licenses with one purchace , which beats microsofts 1 : 1 So there is my rant , have a good one :D ----------------------------------- josh Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:14 pm ----------------------------------- I appologize shorthair, Iddin't mean to compain about open source, (besides I am to n00b to be able to edit it) I was just saying the features so far I was having trouble with and I wanted to know how to fix them, I am sorry if it seemed like I was badmouthing it, but trust me, nothing would please me more than to get eh M$ crud off of my PC 9and ave about 200MB on my HD). ----------------------------------- shorthair Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:25 pm ----------------------------------- My apologies for it being so harsh , didnt realize it while typing it, jsut trying to get a point across , You can see my standpoint , people make this for us to enjoy freely... Im glad there is a service like this even wit hsome waterdown or incomplete features thakn you for understanding so well though have a good night Folks ----------------------------------- josh Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:27 pm ----------------------------------- You can see my standpoint , people make this for us to enjoy freely... Im glad there is a service like this even wit hsome waterdown or incomplete features I will second that, open source is the best!!!!