See, there's something called "balance". Most people nowadays don't understand this concept. People leave work, want to stay connected to emails and what not. Have dinner with their family, ding ding - EMAIL!!!, ding ding - NOTIFICATION!!!... seriously people...
In my environment, people go on vacation and ask how they can access their work computer/network remotely from a hotel and I wonder why the hell they bothered to take a vacation...? The interesting thing is, these same folks are older and single. You wonder why...? Seperate work from personal life...
Something individuals need to understand is that a balance is needed, something VW certainly seems to understand. I don't need to be notified that something's going on after work, I don't CARE to know. I am a salaried worker. I don't get paid more, and I don't get paid less, whether I work late, or whether I work early. No one gives a crap. So, my personal time is MINE, not my company's time.
As far as the comments "why bother with a blackberry"... some people's jobs are to be on the road and visit remote locations. A Blackberry is a perfect tool for staying in touch DURING WORK HOURS, not while that someone is at a bar later that evening while relaxing and picking up singles.
Wow... about that filtered water thing. In Egypt less reputable street vendors sell you refilled water bottles! Each bottle could be a $200,000 fine AND up to 6 months Jail time according to the FBI...!!!! Go GET 'EM Zephyr Hills Water Co.!!!!
Everyone should follow this credo. But, most people don't and then they also pirate the games, which causes companies like Ubishaft to go to extremes and alienate more people.
I haven't bought a single Ubisoft title ever since their rediculous OSP(?) DRM. This included Assassin's Creed 2 and Silent Hunter V. Luckily, I also heard that SHV was released in an abysmal state and that they dropped support on the product pretty much right off the bat.
But, I've made it a point not to buy any of Ubishaft's products until they:
1. Release products DRM free
2. Release solid and WORKING products
I really don't understand why people have such a problem with EA? EA has tried to make it a point in the recent past to listen to the consumer and provide:
1. More original products
2. Value added items to their products
3. Be more involved with the community (and I think BF3 is a great example)
But, the OP is right. Put your money where your mouth is.
The fact of the matter is that Ubisoft like so many Publishers out there ram timelines down developers throats, which causes the developers of the game to, often enough, release a game that is not ready for release. This creates hate and discontent towards the developer, ultimately the publisher, and creates distrust between the consumer and that particular publisher.
How many games have people bought only to be amazed at the status of the game's quality? Often times games are being released in what seems a beta state. Good examples of this are Creative Assembly's (Sega) Empire: Total War or UbiSoft's Silent Hunter V, that game was broken on release and support has been dropped entirely pretty much right as it came off the production line. How is a consumer supposed to trust a developer or a publisher and want to pay money for a product.
Now, we get other requirements like "always-on-internet" in order to play a game. This hardly creates value to a player that is always on the road. My father loved Diablo and Diablo II, but with Diablo III's always-on requirement he will not be able to take the game on the road (as my parents love to do RV trips all the time). He will not purchase the game because of that requirement.
The answer to all this:
Develop a solid WORKING title.
Create something innovative.
Maintain a relationship with the consumer.
Do not make your product a hassle.
Pretty much all of those tenants are being blatantly overlooked by Ubishaft and Sega. EA has been working harder at providing value-added to their products and I believe they are to be commended. It seems none of the developers/publishers, aside from Stardock and Valve, understand this.
Ever since Ubishaft decided to put that OSP DRM on their games, I've refused to purchase any of their games. I used to BUY a lot of their games... no more.
Someone mentioned that the reason they have less piracy, because of their DRM, is possibly because people are buying less of their products... I seriously hope so. I hope people give Ubishaft a friggin wakeup call and stop buying their games.
They won't change their ways until it hurts their bottom line... but then, in retrospect, they might say that the PC Game market is dying because no one's buying their games, and they'll invest more into consoles...
Their idiots either way... Yves Guillemot (CEO) is an idiot.
Can I just say... a bunch of the reviews are all XBox and PS3 related reviews. I can guarantee you that the majority of those people never played DN3d and don't have any clue.
From the looks of it, expectations were set too high and the reviews were just totally uncalled for.
Personally I can't but hope that the Mighty Cashcow that is Sony goes under and tanks. They killed so many different products, among one of which was HD-DVD. BlueRay is way overplayed and too expensive. HD-DVD would have been the way to go.
I hope they go the way of Beta-Max... oh ya... that was another Sony product. Sony sucks.
This comes from an IT Director that had Trend OfficeScan on a network of over 230 workstations and found that Microsoft Security Essentials did a better job than Trend in keeping malware off of the systems.
When we switched from McAfee 8.5 to Trend Micro's OfficeScan 10(?) we had a huge influx of systems infected with malware through drive-by installations such as the AntiVirus 2008-2010 bug. That bug was so tough that Malwarebytes wasn't able to remove it 90% of the time and because of this we re-formatted 100% of systems that came in that way.
When I worked for the state, they were using Trend and it worked very well, but Trend has gotten extremely complacent. Their AV was extremely heavy, slowed systems down a lot, and even though it seemed to be scanning heavily, it wouldn't do an on the fly deletion of most drive-by bugs. It'd let them get to the temp folders and then sent out an email stating "Trend couldn't remove or quarantine X bug from C:\blahblahblah". What good is your crappy ass antivirus product then???
Why should I pay over $4500 for a yearly license when your product doesn't stop squat!?
MSE at least seems to be a decent on-demand virus scanner and according to AV-Comparatives was better than Trend Micro
, catching 96.3% of bugs vs Trend's 90.7% and it's FREE!!!
Trend Micro's product also had the highest incidence of false positives out of a test set of 1.2 million malware sample. Trend dinged 38 false positives vs MSSE at 3... THREE! Rhymes with FREE!!!
You wonder why Trend is losing out to MSE...??? Really? You have to ask?
AV Comparatives has four ratings: Advanced+, Advanced, Standard, and TESTED. MSE received the Advanced rating compared to Trend which only received a TESTED rating.
There's not a dang bit of good that comes from the FDA. Most of the people on the FDA's panels have been, are currently, or have a vested interest in the companies they support. Look at Monsanto for example.
Monsanto's genetically modified corn grains are proven by lab studies to cause cancer and a slew of other problems in Mice and Rats. Yet it's good enough to be given as feed to animals and humans alike? Any meat you eat from grocery stores has been grown through corn fed animals. And any of you think that there's no issue with that?
Hello rise in cancer, birth defects, hormone problems, diabetes, and a long list of other issues!!!! When will people wake up that the FDA has been bought by the greedy companies making the harmful foods we eat and the drugs we're SUPPOSED to use!?
Look at the statistics people... have we gotten healthier or sicker???
The UBISoft DRM was NOT hacked within 24 hours. It was partially complete. You could not complete any missions in Silent Hunter V, you could only do the tutorial and in Assassins Creed 2 you could only free roam. As soon as you tried to enter the Animus in AC2 the game booted you to the Pause screen.
This all may have changed since then, and I have personally not tried the pirated versions, although I have read extensive reports online about the "cracking" of the DRM.
All I know, is that this bogus DRM needs to go. I'm not predisposed to LEASING my games for full retail prices. This is putting a restriction on ALL Single Player games that use this DRM. Due to issues that are NOT under the PC Game owners control, UBIShaft decides when and where we game.
What's even more funny is that there was a post that I read that had a Ubishaft guy speaking about how Ubi provided the best service anytime anywhere... not so much apparently, if their servers go down and you can't play your game, eh?
Lovely... now we have people on here discussing the act of stealing and comparing it to simple copyright infringement.
All the pirates on here need to just get a life. Pirates are simply too stingy to actually buy programs/movies instead of purchasing them. Piracy has nothing to do with fighting DRM, and everything to do with stealing and there's not a good way to spin piracy. Pirates drive up the cost for legitimate buyers and do more harm than good. I don't know how many torrents exist on the web that are bad and loaded with viruses. It is because of irresponsible behavior like that, that malware continues to be a problem on the web.
Now onto the real issue of the original post. It kills me to see a company take such stringent measures to prevent Ebert from posting commemorative videos of his long time friend. That is really sad to see and really needs to be brought to the forefront.
pI can't believe this even made it as an article into Techdirt. This is a clear trademark violation and anyone who decides to go against trademark agreements needs to recognize getting a cease-and-desist.
There are plenty of games out there that have Ferraries and they don't get cease and desist orders because... they pay licensing fees. No brainer there.
Trademark your own slogan/design/name/etc and you can make money. That's the great grand world of capitalism.
Now... someone remove this pathetic excuse for an article please and bring some quality back to Techdirt.
Ummm... it's not HIS computer at work. It's a COMPANY computer and they can do what they like with it. The fact that he used it for ANY personal business shows his disregard for company policy or ethics.
Ummm... actually all Trademarks, for them to be legal, must be made at the Trademark and Patent Office. The only thing that doesn't have to be filed to be legal is a Copyright, since it arises at the creation of the work.
It's actually very interesting... I remember back in the day when the books were very popular. Children and Adults actually wrote continuations of Middle Earth stories themselves. This is just another way to pay homage to a great author/historian. :)
If movie houses try to squelch this one, it would be a sad day to see, and just confirms the greed of Hollywood.
I do think that the Anonymous person doesn't use TPB nor do they follow the Trials... so it's only fair to assume they're not aware of what TPB is. Insulting their intelligence is pretty immature.
The problem is not that they "bundle" IE with the OS. The issue at hand is that IE is so heavily integrated into the OS, i.e. Windows Explorer.
That is the real issue. Our organization cannot use Firefox for example because our accounting system is based off of ASP, so we need several ActiveX controls that will not work in Firefox. We are LOCKED into use IE.
That, I believe is the real issue that the EU has with Microshaft. The fact that no matter what you do, you cannot remove IE. It is used in some way, shape or form.
"whenever we end up with various 'automated' warning systems, we tend to start believing what the systems tell us -- even when we know they're fallible."
It's not the system that was fallible. It was a user programming error. It's humans that are fallible (despite what the Pope may believe). Computers just do what they're told. They do not make decisions without user input.
On the post: VW Will Block BlackBerry Email When People Are Off Work. Isn't That When It's Most Useful?
Re: Re: Not allowed to bring your leash home
On the post: VW Will Block BlackBerry Email When People Are Off Work. Isn't That When It's Most Useful?
People don't get it
In my environment, people go on vacation and ask how they can access their work computer/network remotely from a hotel and I wonder why the hell they bothered to take a vacation...? The interesting thing is, these same folks are older and single. You wonder why...? Seperate work from personal life...
Something individuals need to understand is that a balance is needed, something VW certainly seems to understand. I don't need to be notified that something's going on after work, I don't CARE to know. I am a salaried worker. I don't get paid more, and I don't get paid less, whether I work late, or whether I work early. No one gives a crap. So, my personal time is MINE, not my company's time.
As far as the comments "why bother with a blackberry"... some people's jobs are to be on the road and visit remote locations. A Blackberry is a perfect tool for staying in touch DURING WORK HOURS, not while that someone is at a bar later that evening while relaxing and picking up singles.
On the post: A Step By Step Debunking Of US Chamber Of Commerce's Dishonest Stats About 'Rogue Sites'
Really...
On the post: Debate Time: Ubisoft Says DRM Is Needed, Valve Says No It Isn't.
Re: I vote with my dollars
I haven't bought a single Ubisoft title ever since their rediculous OSP(?) DRM. This included Assassin's Creed 2 and Silent Hunter V. Luckily, I also heard that SHV was released in an abysmal state and that they dropped support on the product pretty much right off the bat.
But, I've made it a point not to buy any of Ubishaft's products until they:
1. Release products DRM free
2. Release solid and WORKING products
I really don't understand why people have such a problem with EA? EA has tried to make it a point in the recent past to listen to the consumer and provide:
1. More original products
2. Value added items to their products
3. Be more involved with the community (and I think BF3 is a great example)
But, the OP is right. Put your money where your mouth is.
On the post: Debate Time: Ubisoft Says DRM Is Needed, Valve Says No It Isn't.
Re: misdirection
How many games have people bought only to be amazed at the status of the game's quality? Often times games are being released in what seems a beta state. Good examples of this are Creative Assembly's (Sega) Empire: Total War or UbiSoft's Silent Hunter V, that game was broken on release and support has been dropped entirely pretty much right as it came off the production line. How is a consumer supposed to trust a developer or a publisher and want to pay money for a product.
Now, we get other requirements like "always-on-internet" in order to play a game. This hardly creates value to a player that is always on the road. My father loved Diablo and Diablo II, but with Diablo III's always-on requirement he will not be able to take the game on the road (as my parents love to do RV trips all the time). He will not purchase the game because of that requirement.
The answer to all this:
Develop a solid WORKING title.
Create something innovative.
Maintain a relationship with the consumer.
Do not make your product a hassle.
Pretty much all of those tenants are being blatantly overlooked by Ubishaft and Sega. EA has been working harder at providing value-added to their products and I believe they are to be commended. It seems none of the developers/publishers, aside from Stardock and Valve, understand this.
On the post: Ubisoft Removes 'Always On' DRM From New Driver Game; Replaces It With Something Slightly Less Annoying
Don't buy Ubisoft games
Someone mentioned that the reason they have less piracy, because of their DRM, is possibly because people are buying less of their products... I seriously hope so. I hope people give Ubishaft a friggin wakeup call and stop buying their games.
They won't change their ways until it hurts their bottom line... but then, in retrospect, they might say that the PC Game market is dying because no one's buying their games, and they'll invest more into consoles...
Their idiots either way... Yves Guillemot (CEO) is an idiot.
On the post: Duke Nukem PR People Publicly Threaten Those Who Give Bad Reviews
DNF reviews
Can I just say... a bunch of the reviews are all XBox and PS3 related reviews. I can guarantee you that the majority of those people never played DN3d and don't have any clue.
From the looks of it, expectations were set too high and the reviews were just totally uncalled for.
On the post: An Open Letter To Sony CEO Howard Stringer
Hope SONY tanks...
I hope they go the way of Beta-Max... oh ya... that was another Sony product. Sony sucks.
On the post: Once Again, Security Company Suggests Microsoft Making Its Own Software Secure Is An Antitrust Violation
Give me a break
This comes from an IT Director that had Trend OfficeScan on a network of over 230 workstations and found that Microsoft Security Essentials did a better job than Trend in keeping malware off of the systems.
When we switched from McAfee 8.5 to Trend Micro's OfficeScan 10(?) we had a huge influx of systems infected with malware through drive-by installations such as the AntiVirus 2008-2010 bug. That bug was so tough that Malwarebytes wasn't able to remove it 90% of the time and because of this we re-formatted 100% of systems that came in that way.
When I worked for the state, they were using Trend and it worked very well, but Trend has gotten extremely complacent. Their AV was extremely heavy, slowed systems down a lot, and even though it seemed to be scanning heavily, it wouldn't do an on the fly deletion of most drive-by bugs. It'd let them get to the temp folders and then sent out an email stating "Trend couldn't remove or quarantine X bug from C:\blahblahblah". What good is your crappy ass antivirus product then???
Why should I pay over $4500 for a yearly license when your product doesn't stop squat!?
MSE at least seems to be a decent on-demand virus scanner and according to AV-Comparatives was better than Trend Micro , catching 96.3% of bugs vs Trend's 90.7% and it's FREE!!!
Trend Micro's product also had the highest incidence of false positives out of a test set of 1.2 million malware sample. Trend dinged 38 false positives vs MSSE at 3... THREE! Rhymes with FREE!!!
You wonder why Trend is losing out to MSE...??? Really? You have to ask?
AV Comparatives has four ratings: Advanced+, Advanced, Standard, and TESTED. MSE received the Advanced rating compared to Trend which only received a TESTED rating.
AV Compratives Feb 2010 Report(pdf).On the post: How Pfizer And The US Gov't Set Up A Fake Subsidiary To Take The Brunt Of Lawsuit Over Falsely Marketed Drugs
Too bad the FDA is paid off anyways
There's not a dang bit of good that comes from the FDA. Most of the people on the FDA's panels have been, are currently, or have a vested interest in the companies they support. Look at Monsanto for example.
Monsanto's genetically modified corn grains are proven by lab studies to cause cancer and a slew of other problems in Mice and Rats. Yet it's good enough to be given as feed to animals and humans alike? Any meat you eat from grocery stores has been grown through corn fed animals. And any of you think that there's no issue with that?
Hello rise in cancer, birth defects, hormone problems, diabetes, and a long list of other issues!!!! When will people wake up that the FDA has been bought by the greedy companies making the harmful foods we eat and the drugs we're SUPPOSED to use!?
Look at the statistics people... have we gotten healthier or sicker???
On the post: Despite Plenty Of Warning EA Still Decides To Follow Ubisoft Down The Wrong Path With DRM
Need to get your facts straight
The UBISoft DRM was NOT hacked within 24 hours. It was partially complete. You could not complete any missions in Silent Hunter V, you could only do the tutorial and in Assassins Creed 2 you could only free roam. As soon as you tried to enter the Animus in AC2 the game booted you to the Pause screen.
This all may have changed since then, and I have personally not tried the pirated versions, although I have read extensive reports online about the "cracking" of the DRM.
All I know, is that this bogus DRM needs to go. I'm not predisposed to LEASING my games for full retail prices. This is putting a restriction on ALL Single Player games that use this DRM. Due to issues that are NOT under the PC Game owners control, UBIShaft decides when and where we game.
What's even more funny is that there was a post that I read that had a Ubishaft guy speaking about how Ubi provided the best service anytime anywhere... not so much apparently, if their servers go down and you can't play your game, eh?
On the post: Disney's Takedown Of Roger Ebert's Tribute To Gene Siskel
Piracy vs Copyright law
All the pirates on here need to just get a life. Pirates are simply too stingy to actually buy programs/movies instead of purchasing them. Piracy has nothing to do with fighting DRM, and everything to do with stealing and there's not a good way to spin piracy. Pirates drive up the cost for legitimate buyers and do more harm than good. I don't know how many torrents exist on the web that are bad and loaded with viruses. It is because of irresponsible behavior like that, that malware continues to be a problem on the web.
Now onto the real issue of the original post. It kills me to see a company take such stringent measures to prevent Ebert from posting commemorative videos of his long time friend. That is really sad to see and really needs to be brought to the forefront.
On the post: Game Developer Won't Edit 'Aliens vs. Predator' To Appease Australian Censors
Frickin' AWESOME
On the post: Ferrari Doesn't Want Web Racing Simulation To Use Ferraris
Stupid article
pI can't believe this even made it as an article into Techdirt. This is a clear trademark violation and anyone who decides to go against trademark agreements needs to recognize getting a cease-and-desist.
There are plenty of games out there that have Ferraries and they don't get cease and desist orders because... they pay licensing fees. No brainer there.
Trademark your own slogan/design/name/etc and you can make money. That's the great grand world of capitalism.
Now... someone remove this pathetic excuse for an article please and bring some quality back to Techdirt.
On the post: Guy Convicted Of Hacking For Uploading Naked Picture Of Himself
Re: Endless Permutations
On the post: Lord Of The Rings Fan Film To Debut... Raising Some Copyright Questions
Re: Trademarks
On the post: Lord Of The Rings Fan Film To Debut... Raising Some Copyright Questions
Derivative Works
It's actually very interesting... I remember back in the day when the books were very popular. Children and Adults actually wrote continuations of Middle Earth stories themselves. This is just another way to pay homage to a great author/historian. :)
If movie houses try to squelch this one, it would be a sad day to see, and just confirms the greed of Hollywood.
On the post: The Pirate Bay's New Business Model Apparently Working Wonders
The Pirate Bay vs Somalia
JUST KIDDING!
I do think that the Anonymous person doesn't use TPB nor do they follow the Trials... so it's only fair to assume they're not aware of what TPB is. Insulting their intelligence is pretty immature.
On the post: Disappointing: Mozilla Siding With Bogus EU Antitrust Action Against Microsoft
That's no the point...
That is the real issue. Our organization cannot use Firefox for example because our accounting system is based off of ASP, so we need several ActiveX controls that will not work in Firefox. We are LOCKED into use IE.
That, I believe is the real issue that the EU has with Microshaft. The fact that no matter what you do, you cannot remove IE. It is used in some way, shape or form.
On the post: One More Reason Not To Blindly Trust What A Computer Tells You
Ummm no.. not infallible...
Interesting that the author writes
It's not the system that was fallible. It was a user programming error. It's humans that are fallible (despite what the Pope may believe). Computers just do what they're told. They do not make decisions without user input.
Next >>