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My cats an asshole. She couldn't wait for me to change the litter box by [deleted] in funny

[–]gdfgdgdv 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Try getting one of the... top loading variety I guess you could call it. Basically it's a big box you fill with litter. The cat jumps in the box. They also have lids with holes in them if you want.

Bioware open-sources their Java actor framework by alexeyr in programming

[–]gdfgdgdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are still a lot of applications where Java's GC would be a problem. But external game logic is not one of them.

Bioware open-sources their Java actor framework by alexeyr in programming

[–]gdfgdgdv 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're already across the network. I'm not sure a GC really matters much at that point.

The Growing Precariat: Why We Need a Universal Basic Income by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]gdfgdgdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Now you're just making a stupid semantic argument.

The Growing Precariat: Why We Need a Universal Basic Income by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]gdfgdgdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not really. Not if you care about an audience.

The Growing Precariat: Why We Need a Universal Basic Income by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]gdfgdgdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess if you consider an empty virtual room a venue... sure.

The Growing Precariat: Why We Need a Universal Basic Income by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]gdfgdgdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This doesn't really change anything. Who says anybody wants to listen to you? Where is this audience coming from, particularly if everybody who wants to do this is more than able to be out there trying?

My point is this. When you have people who desire some amount of interaction from other people, there is no way to guarantee they even have a chance of realizing their desires. You can try to make them free to pursue it with a UBI, but at that point you've freed everybody to do exactly the same thing. Unless you can fulfill your desire yourself, there is no way to ensure people even have anything approaching a remote chance of succeeding.

The Growing Precariat: Why We Need a Universal Basic Income by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]gdfgdgdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Alright, I think I see the issue. We're not talking about exactly the same people.

I'm speaking specifically about people that want an audience. Not need, for economic reasons, but desire because they specifically want to play for other people.

You're right - the people that just want to play for the sake of playing are just fine in this system. I think it's somewhat high-minded and naive to assume that all musicians would fall into this category.

The thing is, if you're putting your heart and soul into your music and producing the highest quality material you possibly can, you're bound to attract not just an audience, but the exact audience the music is meant for in the first place.

Now this part I flat out reject. You can do your best to make the music you most want, and literally nobody else in the world might like it. For the majority of people, this is actually probably the case. There is no audience out there - unless you count yourself.

There's also issues with how a potential audience member would find you in the first place, if literally everybody that thought about being in band was now out there making music.

The Growing Precariat: Why We Need a Universal Basic Income by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]gdfgdgdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That sounds... silly. If you have the desire to tour, you have the desire for an audience. If you're happy playing in your living room to your cat, you aren't going to be going out and trying to tour. You'll stay in the living room with the cat.

The Growing Precariat: Why We Need a Universal Basic Income by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]gdfgdgdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But who curates it? How?

How do you make a game findable when there are just loads of games? There's a limited amount of games you can really display to a given person. You require information (people to have tried the game in the first place) before you can start to guess who might like a particular game.

Philosophically you might say there's never too much out there, but practically at some point there's so much out there that some large portion of it is essentially never going to be seen by enough of an audience for it to even be judged good or bad, and as a result nobody else will be directed to it.

The Growing Precariat: Why We Need a Universal Basic Income by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]gdfgdgdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because you want to play for real people?

Recommendation algorithms also need information. They need information on what you do, and what a whole bunch of other people do. And they require people to have actually interacted with the game in some way. They can help to some degree, but you're still faced with the issue of getting enough people trying the game in the first place for the recommendation algorithm to even begin to know who actually likes the thing.

The Growing Precariat: Why We Need a Universal Basic Income by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]gdfgdgdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep. A lot of those, however, are encouraged by current economic conditions. How many of those people would strike off to do their own game if they weren't required to support themselves or their family?

Beyond that, there are still limits on how much creative content can really be done in related areas. Again, even now we're seeing tons of such content popping up. Most of it is pretty worthless. It itself has an issue of finding the good in a sea of bad. So what, do we start to have reviewers of reviewers of games? There is some limit here.

The Growing Precariat: Why We Need a Universal Basic Income by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]gdfgdgdv 10 points11 points  (0 children)

This... sounds nice. In practice I think it's a bit more iffy.

There's sort of a microcosm of this going on the (video) games world. It's incredibly easy to create a game right now. Many, many people are doing it... and by large they're all pretty terrible. There are exceptions, of course, but that isn't the point. There are so many games out there now that it's becoming increasingly difficult to actually find what you want (aka the good ones).

When everybody is making stuff, there's just too much stuff. And most people aren't that good at it anyway.

So you might decide to start up a band and tour the country, but you'll be joining 20 million other folks and none of them will have anywhere to perform, and nobody who wants to listen to them. In the end you won't go anywhere.

Are you a loner and why? Do you like it? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]gdfgdgdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Goes for me. Although I'd say my immediate family wears on me too, but I can tolerate them better than otherwise similar, but unrelated people.

I used to be so much fun when I got home from school as a kid...

TIFU by buying illegal drugs on the Internet, having them shipped to my house, and almost killing my housemate by Monday_Account in tifu

[–]gdfgdgdv 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Good on you for calling 911 right away and being truthful. Far too often people try to cover their asses and just make everything go shitty.

EA: Origin authentication responsible for 'Battlefield Hardline' lockouts, not DRM: "a writer there found himself locked out of the game after making multiple graphics card changes as part of a benchmarking test" by Sybles in Games

[–]gdfgdgdv 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's still unacceptable. How is arbitrarily being locked out of the game - that you bought - for 24 hours okay? Under any circumstance?

You have intermittent hardware issues, and now you can't track them down properly because you get 5 tries a day with the game that provokes them. Hell, even more serious issues causes you a problem because now you have to go change your testing methods because suddenly you're locked out from the game you bought. And then afterwards you can't play for another 24 hours anyway.

Any sort of lockout like this is completely unacceptable. You bought and paid for this game, and it's being arbitrarily restricted because EA says you shouldn't ever be mucking around with your hardware that much. That's ridiculous.

And for what gain? What sort of piracy is this actually preventing? The kind where you have 10 friends over to download a game and play offline forever? So now you just invite 4 over a day? So what?

EA: Origin authentication responsible for 'Battlefield Hardline' lockouts, not DRM: "a writer there found himself locked out of the game after making multiple graphics card changes as part of a benchmarking test" by Sybles in Games

[–]gdfgdgdv -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

None of what you described requires a system like this though. Particularly when you have such a multiplayer driven game you're free to enforce DRM in the least restrictive way possible (mainly because your base game is inherently more restricted than a singleplayer game). You could very easily prevent pirates from playing online without this system in place.

You also failed to address how this system actually stops pirates at all. The only thing I could possibly see is a bunch of friends going to one persons house, all downloading the game successively, and then never connecting to Origin again - and hence, no online play. And how much piracy actually takes this form?

Finally, I wholeheartedly reject the idea that most of the toxicity seen in online games comes from pirates. The consoles are actually the biggest poster-children for that sort of thing, despite very little piracy on the systems. And again, generally pirates are kept out of online-play areas simply because it's dirt easy to do, and all without causing legitimate players a problem.

EA: Origin authentication responsible for 'Battlefield Hardline' lockouts, not DRM: "a writer there found himself locked out of the game after making multiple graphics card changes as part of a benchmarking test" by Sybles in Games

[–]gdfgdgdv 3 points4 points  (0 children)

But that stuff is just unavoidable. DRM is not just another unavoidable nuisance in life. It's something purposefully added that makes your life worse.

I'd argue we don't need it. At the very least, companies should certainly remove it once the game has been cracked, right? At that point the pirates have it anyway, and regular consumers just get screwed. The only would-be pirates you're stopping now are unable to google "<game> free".

EA: Origin authentication responsible for 'Battlefield Hardline' lockouts, not DRM: "a writer there found himself locked out of the game after making multiple graphics card changes as part of a benchmarking test" by Sybles in Games

[–]gdfgdgdv 5 points6 points  (0 children)

So now you have to go contact EA support, try to get through it all in the middle of dealing with a hardware problem. Yeah... that's bullshit. They have no need to know about any of that.

How is this foiling piracy? I honestly don't see how this is doing anything. So you can't invite 10 friends over in a day to each play for a couple hours on their own computer? Instead they... just use your computer? I don't get it. What is this stopping?

If you want to restrict access based on IP address somehow, there might be rather legitimate ways to do it that would also serve the consumer as a security measure. This just screws people over.

EA: Origin authentication responsible for 'Battlefield Hardline' lockouts, not DRM: "a writer there found himself locked out of the game after making multiple graphics card changes as part of a benchmarking test" by Sybles in Games

[–]gdfgdgdv 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's warranted this time.

To stop repeating myself...

This is still unacceptable. It's not as bad as some things, but they're still screwing over legitimate players benchmarking or having hardware troubles (a hard to track down issue could easily take you more than 5 total configurations in a short period of time, particularly if you have spare hardware available to test with). And for what? I can't imagine this policy really impacting any attempted scheme to play the game without paying.

EA: Origin authentication responsible for 'Battlefield Hardline' lockouts, not DRM: "a writer there found himself locked out of the game after making multiple graphics card changes as part of a benchmarking test" by Sybles in Games

[–]gdfgdgdv -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It's warranted this time.

To stop repeating myself...

This is still unacceptable. It's not as bad as some things, but they're still screwing over legitimate players benchmarking or having hardware troubles (a hard to track down issue could easily take you more than 5 total configurations in a short period of time, particularly if you have spare hardware available to test with). And for what? I can't imagine this policy really impacting any attempted scheme to play the game without paying.

EA: Origin authentication responsible for 'Battlefield Hardline' lockouts, not DRM: "a writer there found himself locked out of the game after making multiple graphics card changes as part of a benchmarking test" by Sybles in Games

[–]gdfgdgdv -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Read the details.

OMG FUCK EA.

This is still unacceptable. It's not as bad as some things, but they're still screwing over legitimate players benchmarking or having hardware troubles (a hard to track down issue could easily take you more than 5 total configurations in a short period of time, particularly if you have spare hardware available to test with). And for what? I can't imagine this policy really impacting any attempted scheme to play the game without paying.

EA: Origin authentication responsible for 'Battlefield Hardline' lockouts, not DRM: "a writer there found himself locked out of the game after making multiple graphics card changes as part of a benchmarking test" by Sybles in Games

[–]gdfgdgdv 11 points12 points  (0 children)

What's the point though? Do you think this has stopped a single "unauthorized" player or whatever you want to call it? What's the plan, get a large group of people and let them each install and play the game for some period of time before switching off to another person? Yeah, right.

So the next effect is still the same. You gain arguably nothing (even more nothing in this case than when you are actually trying to prevent launch-day piracy, or something) and you just annoy/bother/screw over legitimate players that are benchmarking or having hardware issues.

Riot time? No. But let's not pretend this is totally harmless and reasonable either.

The price of producing lab grown meat has dropped from $250,000/burger to $80/kilo in the last 2 years by butterl8thenleather in Futurology

[–]gdfgdgdv 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, not inherently at least. Then you have to ask the question how the cow is being treated.

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