Loosing your identity (RANTS)

[NoScream~SPARTA~]

Loosing your identity

 

I don't understand all you Steam shoppers, Apple Ipod users and facebook followers.

 

You give your identity away for nothing, you lock your rights up in an online contract that would scare a china man white. Steam is very similar to a comunistic state, you give them money they let you use the software, you misbehave or do something to upset them and they ban/banish kick your ass all the way out of your account and you loose everything, maybe it's more socialistic ;)

 

IPods, where do you start, worse than steam online, I fell prey to one and not cheap too but I loved the adverts and everyone seem to be doing the 'pod', I got it home and then reality set in, the only way to get crap on it was via my PC which had to first download and install itunes fcuking 10.xx which now LINKED my ipod, mylife, my private music collection to the 'i' in the sky iTunes. Without Itunes your lost, but taking the ipod back, the shop said I had broken the seal on the software licence so it was not returnable.... wankres ( misspelling intentional).

 

Face fcuking book, I will never be a part of but I was thinking of setting my own business up so quickly grabbed my business name on FB/ TWITTER/ YT/ .COM/ and any other place I could think of. Thing about FB is I was solicited by total strangers and I had practically zero info about me or my company up there but when I spoke to my niece, I found out she had so much info about herself floating about that any decent hacker could practically make a profile of you and come visiting. Are you all as gullible ?

 

You all do realize you are locked into these systems from life, a stay or loose it all system, You can never leave steam, if you get into trouble with them your screwed, all your downloads on the ipod belong to you but work with nothing else. All your data on facebook, once there can never be removed, someone is always copying, backing up inc. the google spiders. Stay free but direct, beta test, free platinum tester, try before you buy, I will laught and cry for you all, the day the STEAM SERVER becomes unavailable or STEAM is hacked or they go into receivership and all services are suspended, what was that about all your eggs in one basket.........

 

 

 

I'm so happy I know of very few twitter's and I hope you are all not compromising your futures by being a virtual you on an internet filled with pitfalls and opportunists.

 

 

Words of advice, Have multiple Identities, Have multiple passwords, I have 2 throwaways for accounts I don't give a shti about and 2 for average use involving no finances and two from money deals, then there is the grail, a single high level PWD that only I know and is a jumble of life characters based on things I know.

 

Have as least two on-line names, one you want your friends to know and and gamers alike and one for posting controversial opinions about anything you wanna talk about, normally associate on of the 'throw away passwords' to the account(s) It's not only practical but it's flexible when you need to interact with one time visit sites.

 

 

 

RANT over I'm off to investigate more of what fools seem to getup to on the net with their personal data............

 

So it's TTFN from Noscream-Viiiper-NightHawk-Sidewinder-MrViii-xXR4id the III

 

 

Me in Africa on holiday (honest) ..... keep it real.

[Fatal_Papercut~SPARTA~]

Don't hold back, John; tell us how you really feel.

 

P.S. Please post your email address in this public forum so that I can gift you a game via Steam.

[Gunthar~SPARTA~]

So the internet is evil, anyone who doesn't utilize CIA level paranoia using it is insane, and big brother is everywhere? That about cover it?

[MedicSN6]

[DaiSan]

Me and the kids

 

 

I also make and sell them to selected clients if anyone's interested, though I only accept bartered goods as payment.

[Watchman~SPARTA~]

I see Vii's been missing the server too.....

[Halli~SPARTA~]

 

So it's TTFN from Noscream-Viiiper-NightHawk-Sidewinder-MrViii-xXR4id the III AND FOUNDER OF SPARTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Africa wow that's a cool vacation, will you also visit north Africa or just the savanna areas?

[GySgt~SPARTA~]

On facebook set everything to Private and you will be okay and only give certain ppl your real Info..or better yet Dont give jack about your info or anything else out...some ppl are doing more then they should... so

 

much Drama and ppl posting there life WHY I dont care About if your relations dont work out, or you just pissed your pants from reading something none wants to know about this stuff..LOL!!! and none really cares

 

about your damn fingernails you just spent 80$ for when they really look like shit anyways..be real ppl come on why leave yourself open to dissapointment by spending money on crap when you cant even aford a

 

House or a car that will run good yeah yeah. I know its kinda like telling a Crackhead to stop buying crack.. Vanity is a real Bitch so go-ahead and create a fake image of yourself its the biggest lie ever..thats all

 

everyone talks about on FaceBook. I guess thats why I'm there LOL to Enjoy the Humor. and dont get me wrong i get a good laugh from the Drama ppl Post....Esp from Family.

[Durka-Durka~SPARTA~]

I'm a facebook loser. Nobody ever comments on my thoughts, even the really interesting ones. Facebook is dead to me. Emo horse out.

[Donziboy2]

Do not trust facebook privacy settings.

Ifs its on the web people can get to it. So if you dont want anyone to know it then dont post it ever.

What goes on the web stays on the web.

[Rooster90]

Somebody is a little paranoid, eh?

 

I've had an account on Steam for about 7-8 years with 0 issues. Unless you're a reported cheater in a public game, your account will probably never be suddenly taken away from Valve. I've yet to hear of anybody complaining about their Steam games being taken away from them. The most they'll do if you get caught hacking is they'll ban your STEAM ID from that game or make your key invalid, forcing you to buy the game again. Idk where this totalitarian view of Valve is coming from. They're probably the most user-friendly, PC gamer loving developer in the world. Before Steam, the same "power" you complain about Valve having over your software was the same power developers/publishers had over their own games over their own online elements. In fact, I'd say the vast majority of software that is sold isn't really sold for people to "own", but licensed to the user under a Terms and Conditions agreement. It's everywhere, it's unavoidable, and doesn't affect me in the least.

 

Not really sure what to say about your iPod complaint. Idk how else you planned to put music on your iPod, lol. I don't have any problem using iTunes. It happens to be one of the best ways to organize my large catalog of music. I don't buy music from iTunes though, I still buy them the old fashioned way. CD's baby! Burn them to my computer, files are automatically put into iTunes and synced to my iPod. Not really sure how one could complain about a brand of software that works (nearly) flawlessly.

 

I can understand your concerns with facebook though. I'm very careful with who I have as friends and what info people outside of my personal network can see of me. Every month or two I go through my friends list and delete people I don't talk to or know very well. After having it for about 4 or 5 years I still only have about 150 friends. It's getting to be about that time to whittle that list down though. I have a kid on the way and I wont let him be exposed and open online until I feel he's smart and mature enough to maintain personal safety. Likely not until he's at least 13 or 14. And none of this 5 yr olds having cell phones either. Thats messed up. Go outside and play and be a kid. Get hurt doing something stupid on a bike, haha.

Edited May 26, 2011 by Rooster90

[Durka-Durka~SPARTA~]

I f-ing HATE itunes, and will never buy anything from them again. I made the mistake of getting an album from there, but couldn't put it on my generic mp3 player because of the formatting. Couldn't find a converter either. It was a royal PITA to get it into mp3 format so I could actually take it with me. From now on, I buy all my music from Amazon, which is absolutely painless, I don't have to download some fancy hipster bullcrap program that I don't want or need, all I get is MP3s and that's it. It works perfect for me, but for those who like the istuff, more power to you I guess.

[Rooster90]

Seems you have a problem with the iTunes store. I don't even use it, so I can't really comment on that.

 

I just use iTunes to organize my music, I keep them in .aiff, .wav. or high (320) bit-rate .mp3's for the highest quality audio. The only thing I use the iTunes store for is for it's Genius recommendations. Found a lot of cool music that way.

 

I thought it was common knowledge that Apple doesn't use crappy .mp3's, they use their own proprietary file format (AAC). Way better sounding file compression algorithm than mp3, less destructive.

[Gunthar~SPARTA~]

I have a friend that got banned from Steam once and he was going to lose almost 600 bucks in games. What happened was someone had a one number difference with his ID and they banned the wrong account. He had it fixed in a day or two. The problem with hating one thing because it seems as if it?s all controlling and may steal your identity is that in reality the majority of your information is already out there and can be stolen through public records and innocent situations. Steam, to me, has done a lot to promote computer gaming over the years and has helped the community to a much larger degree than it has ever harmed it. Take the recent thing with Sony online?s systems going down to hackers, when has that ever happened on steam? Just by playing a Sony game the hackers could have gotten your address, credit card info, and sensitive data on you. Steam has been labeled as a totalitarian system since the day it came out, yes I remember when it came out for the first time, but since then it has proven itself a friend to the community so what if it tells developers what game I play the most and how many hours I spend playing Hello Kitty online, all that does is give them information to keep making kick ass games. If people choose to be paranoid and refuse to play something because they think it will harm them then it?s their choice but ignoring Steam will never make it go away and frankly if it does we will take a huge leap backwards in the gaming community because I rarely see Best Buy selling older games for 10 bucks they still sell Vegas 2 for $35.

[Fatal_Papercut~SPARTA~]

As much as it pains me to say this, I agree with most of Gunthar's statements. While it is still possible to "live off of the grid", doing so has become much more difficult in today's society. To me, the pros outweigh the cons, and I do take every precaution that I can think of to protect my personal information.

 

When it comes to Steam in particular, I think it is THE greatest thing to happen to PC gaming since the day it went online, and I rarely purchase games elsewhere. Sure, technically I am only "renting" my games, but as the game market has changed, so has my attitude towards games and the way that I purchase them. I used to be enamored of boxed copies; I loved having something tangible that I could hold in my hands, and I felt a bit more secure by having a physical copy that I would always have available and could always reinstall years down the line, long after the game publisher had gone out of business.

 

These days, new retail games no longer offer that type of security. Having a physical copy no longer ensures that you can reinstall the game in 10 years, because even with a disc, many games still require online activation/authentication, and who knows if the servers that do these things will be online 10 years from now? In fact, I trust that it is more likely that Steam will outlast the any of the publishers currently in business, because it is likely that they will continue to adapt to the changes in the market. I think the only thing that would kill off Steam would be the death of the entire PC gaming market. If anything, Steam and other online retailers play a huge part in the continued existence and health of the PC games market.

 

On a strictly personal note, the idea of "renting" my games no longer bothers me as it once did. The fact is, with the large number of games that I own, I struggle (happily, I might add) to find the time to play all of them, particularly since I always finish games that have a story that comes to some sort of conclusion. It is very rare for me to go back and replay a game that I have already finished, even if I really enjoyed it, because that means that I will have less time to have new experiences that are waiting for me in my games queue. So while the idea of replaying old favorites is appealing--and I DO replay old games on rare occasions--I am no longer bothered by the idea that I may not be able to reinstall and replay some of my game 10 years down the road. In fact, I'm looking forward to whatever technology we will have in 10 years that will have me looking back and laughing at the "obsolete" technology that we used to play with--the very machines we are playing with today.

 

Online distribution is the future of gaming; I have no doubts about this. To shy away from it is to eventually shy away from gaming entirely.

[EL_n00biachi]

I've lost a steam account with Half life 2 and a few other games....dont realy care but...still sucks.

[NoScream~SPARTA~]

Online distribution is the future of gaming; I have no doubts about this. To shy away from it is to eventually shy away from gaming entirely.

 

I agree with this but to put all your eggs in one basket as the saying goes is a recipe for disaster.

It's like having all your assets in one place, lets say your house, where you keep all your possessions, wallet & money, if it burned down you loose it all and have no access to what was there.

 

That's why in the real world most people keep money in the bank, possessions in the house and credit cards in a wallet in your pocket. That way if you loose your wallet you can still call upon the bank or go home and raid the piggy bank.

 

Steam is ok if you treat it like you said, a rental shop, but some of their products are full retail price and in the shops you get a hard copy for that price. The thing about steam is, if they get hacked like Sony did with the PS3, all online games are NOT AVAILABLE to play.

 

I like hard copy games like hard copy DVD/ BLU RAY, it's yours to do as you will, your hard money traded for a hard product. I have movies on a HD but I also have the hard copy if the HD dies.

 

I got an Internet radio, the other day my internet link dies, I phoned the cable company and they said there was a fault that would be sorted in 6-8 hours...... The internet radio was totally useless for that time. If the games from steam are only available while steam is running then I certainly don't like the idea.

 

If the games from steam can be played online with the STEAM client logged off, that is good... but I thought they were no available when the steam client is off.

[Fatal_Papercut~SPARTA~]

I agree with this but to put all your eggs in one basket as the saying goes is a recipe for disaster.

It's like having all your assets in one place, lets say your house, where you keep all your possessions, wallet & money, if it burned down you loose it all and have no access to what was there.

 

If the games from steam can be played online with the STEAM client logged off, that is good... but I thought they were no available when the steam client is off.

 

* Steam does have an offline mode, so most games can be played once they have been installed without the Internet connection. However, my understanding is that, after a while, you do need to eventually have your Steam client connect to the mothership, otherwise it will stop working. I don't know how long that time period is, because I've not had my PC disconnected from the 'Net for any great length of time. And, for as long as I choose to remain a gamer, I will never live anyplace that does not have broadband available. Gaming and the 'Net go hand-in-hand these days.

 

* As sad as it would be to somehow lose my Steam account, they are only games, not my life savings, home, or investments. I would not only get over it, but some of my friends and family would actually say that such an event would be a good thing. Then I would likely create a new Steam account.

 

* There is one downside that I do deal with by having almost all of my games through Steam these days (roughly 70%) is that fact that, every time I log into Steam, SOMETHING has to update (with Valve's damn games getting updates on a seemingly daily basis).

[Rooster90]

On top of what Fatal has already mentioned, you can also backup your entire Steam library onto a HD. And Steam/Valve backs up all of their users' content onto local HD's and multiple servers throughout the world (Cloud computing).

 

You do have a fair point that having all your eggs in one basket can be dangerous. The question of "what if Valve/Steam were to one day disappear?" is something I've thought of myself. And if the common everyday user thinks of it, I guarantee Valve has thought of a contingency plan if they were ever to be compromised or shutdown as a company. Either they would enable a way for Steam to continue operating long enough for people to download their libraries to their computers and be able to play them without Steam, or maybe they'd hand-off Steam to another company. Who knows whta would happen, and maybe it would be the PC apocalypse where gamers everywhere lose access to their vast libraries. Only time will tell... (or Gabe will if he's pressured enough.)

[GySgt~SPARTA~]

LOL!!! shh I have 2 FaceBook Accounts LOL!! so ehehe..had them both for about 4 years now.

[Gunthar~SPARTA~]

I can understand the issues with Steam but one thing no one has mentioned is the ability to uninstall and reinstall games at will from anywhere. I will give you two examples of how this is awesome.

 

1. During my time in the military I moved a lot and I?m sure others do as well. During those times of moving I have managed to lose half my game collection once and 1/3 of it another time due to lost packages or simply the stupid ex wife throwing it away. With steam I just log on and re-download the game no matter where I am at. Also great if you have kids who use your CD's as toys when you?re not watching.

 

2. Away from home: During my last deployment to the land of sand I got a new laptop the day before I left and had no time to install any of my fun and cool games. I simply went to the Wi-Fi spot on base logged into steam and started downloading my games as I read a book. Without this service I never would have been able to do this.

 

Steam was a risky thing to do in the beginning however it has become a cornerstone of the gaming community in the past few years and as such more and more games are requiring steam to work. In the end Steam offers a simple process for continued gaming, the deals are usually amazing which is something very rarely seen in a hard copy store. I went to Best Buy about 3 years ago and they were selling one of the MMO's for 35 bucks and it was due to completely shutdown its servers at the end of that month. The pre-release benefits on many games are awesome, but this is something that many hard copy game stores still do. My biggest reason is the selection, I am not sure how it is where you guys live but here my choices are Wal-Mart and Target with a few GameStop stores in the mix. Their selections of computer games are pointless and their knowledge is usually limited to the console noobs. I just think that the time for paranoia against Steam is past and we need to look to the future. I mean what if the greatest game in history comes out but you have to be on Steam to play it, will you really not play the game due to a hatred of Steam?

[EL_n00biachi]

Im not sure about Steam being a cornerstone of the gaming community,there's over 6 billion people on this planet....and only about 3 million are on Steam ;im not impressed.

[Donziboy2]

Erm they had around 25 million registered users for steam in 2009-10.

 

 

And what are we comparing it to?

The 7.5m copies of MW2 that sold on the xbox? 90% of which are played by 12 yearolds?

[MedicSN6]

Im not sure about Steam being a cornerstone of the gaming community,there's over 6 billion people on this planet....and only about 3 million are on Steam ;im not impressed.

 

Try comparing the amount of PC gamers there are on the planet (rather than the population of the entire planet) to the number of Steam users and I am sure it would be a bit more impressive.

[EL_n00biachi]

Well im sure itll still not be impressive ,and the 25million registered in 09-10 sure dont play alot then,cause there are only 2 3 sometimes 4 million people online.