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How EVERYBODY is moving towards cloud storage/digital distribution.
(Do note that this rant is probably going to come out as a complete rambling mess)
Okay, this is really starting to bug me now. I'm getting sick of how everyone thinks that digital distrubution is the future. How everyone thinks that the idea of personal property is a "fad from old times".
Fuck that shit. I'm sick of how people expect me to pay money for files that I don't even fucking own technically--what happened to physical media? What happened to actually owning a physical thing that one could differntiate from every other physical thing?
Never mind, that as I said, I don't even own these things technically. I can pay 10 bucks for Audiosurf on Steam, but Valve still owns it. I didn't pay 10 dollars for the game. I paid 10 dollars for the right to play it. Fuck that. Same thing with Itunes, or any streaming service.
That was already bad, but when it happened to books (E-Books), I was just plain shocked. Seriously. Books are one of the few pieces of physical media that haven't died out, and now they're becoming digital too. God dammit.
What's worse is that basically everybody is embracing this neo-communist bullshit and I appear to be one of the few who dislikes it. Not to mention the corporations are all going to force it on everbody (yes, my tin foil hat is on tight today, why do you ask?), and one day there won't be physical media whatsoever.
Soon the very idea of "personal ownership" is going to be abolished, and we'll all be living this fucked-up neo-communist dream/hellhole.
Shit, my dad was right--not all new technology is good....
Comments
And what happens if the internet goes down in your area?
Same issue
^ Convenience?
At least for people like me. I admit that I'm a "Tech Conservative" for some things.
Those are marginally less bad.
I don't see as many problens with Steam because of its low amounts of DRM.
There's a giant world of difference between not technically owning the files on a disc you're actually holding and not technically owning the files on a server that's several miles away and is completely under the control of an external entity.
* legal ownership, the idea of being allowed to do whatever you want with something
* "personal" ownership, if I may call it that, the idea of being able to do whatever you want with something
These two apply differently to these three forms of media:
* physical media, a dedicated physical object with a reasonably secure and transferable instance of media data on it
* local media storage, storage of an instance of media data on one's computer or MP3 player, for example, that one can access without (much) limitation
* remote media storage, wherein you gain access to media by downloading (through the internet or another data transfer connection) the media data, effectively creating a temporary copy on one's local device
** note that this can, but usually is not, converted into local media storage.
As for Valve's Steam service, I don't see it so much as buying the right to play a game as I see it as buying easy, convenient access to what I want to play...PLUS backup of at least the game files, so that I don't have to worry about losing them or even transferring them to a new computer or to a backup drive. That said, there are times I'm not very happy with it, such as when it locks me out of signing on offline because it didn't update right or something.
As for me, I don't like cloud computing. Sure, I'll use it if the information isn't confidential, and disseminating it to the appropriate audience and/or collaborators remotely is most important. However, I'm not going to use it for any data that I wantnetwork-independent access to. And that includes pretty much all my music, documents, games, and such.
And sometimes, increasingly, videos too. Too many worthy YTPs and other videos are being takedown'd, for one reason or another, regardless of legitimacy. The great thing about local storage is that you don't have to depend on someone else agreeing that whatever it is should be allowed to be put up on the cloud.
Steam Calculator.
"Steam is way easier to use than driving to a store"
Driving to the store is vastly more fufilling than sitting at your computer and clicking a few buttons.
I try not to be the stereotypical "never moves from his computer desk" nerd.
Plus, I prefer to support the game and music developers more than the store that sells their product.
Also, seriously? Ad hominem attacks?
And you don't have to pay for gas n' shit, or spend an hour driving to a store. That's a big plus.
Convience isn't a bad thing.
^ Also what he said.
"Also, seriously? Ad hominem attacks?"
I wasn't going for an ad hominem, I was saying "Society is already inclined to view me as some fat, overwieght slob due to being a nerd, the best I can do is try not to live that kind of lifestyle".
Someone isn't going to look at your big collection of physical boxes and say "Gee, what a cool, active dude," anymore than they'd look at your Steam library and say "Ugh, what a fat slob" based solely on that.
Ninja'd by someone saying the same thing with less words.
urm, dude
you really need to understand that spending less money is an inherently good thing.