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It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

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Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#351

Post by dubbel »

mastermage wrote: post #337
rgmerk wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer Cite your sources. There are specific issues in specific places (eg heritage restrictions in Paris), a higher prevalence of shared infrastructure rather than single family homes, and a higher level of renting rather than home ownership. And there are people on the green-left end of the political spectrum in parts…

German here: you are not allowed to install anything thats visible from the outside without the owners aproval (70% of people Rent in Germany) or even the aproval of the Apartment Owner Association (Imagine HOA but for Apartments and every bit as dumb)

German here: 53% of the Germans lives in a rented home.

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#353

Post by mastermage »

dubbel wrote: post #351
mastermage wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German here: you are not allowed to install anything thats visible from the outside without the owners aproval (70% of people Rent in Germany) or even the aproval of the Apartment Owner Association (Imagine HOA but for Apartments and every bit as dumb)

German here: 53% of the Germans lives in a rented home. Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...

whoops sorry I think i mixed the numbers up with the EU average, which is close to 70% point in case is that its much much more than in other countries.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#354

Post by rgmerk »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #255
rgmerk wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer Cite your sources. There are specific issues in specific places (eg heritage restrictions in Paris), a higher prevalence of shared infrastructure rather than single family homes, and a higher level of renting rather than home ownership. And there are people on the green-left end of the political spectrum in parts…

> climate simply hasn’t, until recently, required it. I would qualify that as it hasn't required it since the invention of air conditioning. Which also isn't strictly true; the high temperature for Paris on July 1st this year is identical to the high for the same day back in 2015[1], and there are several times since 1970 that the temperature was over 30C. Other sources[2] indicate 1947 was just as brutal as 2019 and…

Yes, there have been hot days across northern Europe before; however, the frequency of very hot weather has increased substantially.

It may not have gotten the headlines of this year’s heatwave, but we were in Switzerland and Germany for a month last July. For three of those four weeks, it was stinking hot. The maximum temperatures weren’t so bad, but the nights were oppressive, and there was no letup. If that’s going to be the norm most summers, it absolutely justifies investing in air conditioning.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#355

Post by Gravityloss »

Frieren wrote: post #283
feoren wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not in favor of adding regulation, except when it comes to issues you understand and care about. All the oversight and regulation about everything you don't care and/or know about is big bad government overreach. Every government agency is a useless waste of your tax dollars, except the ones you rely on and the ones where you have friends that work there. Do I have that right?

You did a summary of conservative ideology. All laws should be abolished so I can do whatever I want, but laws should regulate everything I do not like and the punishment should be harsh. It is an ideology based in short-term self interest. It is the way toddlers think about the world before growing up. Laws should help to create a well functioning society where everybody can participate and benefit from it in a fair…

I think it's an accurate description of a common way of thinking, though I wouldn't call it conservative in the global sense.

Another is some of the domestic manufacturing or hard tech movement people who present lofty ideals about jobs and sovereignty and so on. But there's a claim that when the surface is scratched a bit, it devolves into a want to keep their imported cheap input materials tax / toll free while introducing taxes and tolls to their foreign competitors' end products. I mean who would pay for domestic materials, they're much more expensive, there'd be no margin!

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#356

Post by reichstein »

pseudocomposer wrote: post #222
feoren wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not in favor of adding regulation, except when it comes to issues you understand and care about. All the oversight and regulation about everything you don't care and/or know about is big bad government overreach. Every government agency is a useless waste of your tax dollars, except the ones you rely on and the ones where you have friends that work there. Do I have that right?

I think “when you buy a product, be it a game, a house, a car, a computer, a tractor, washer, TV, it should continue to operate without rent-seeking behavior” is the best type of straightforward, uniformly-applicable pattern of regulation one could hope for. Opposing rent-seeking is literally why we have American democracy, which paved the way for French, Brazilian, Canadian, Indian, Mexican and so many other democra…

It's not that I don't agree, but lawyers will then ask you to define "buy" in such a way that it is distinguishable from a perpetual lease with a cancellation clause _to buyers_, without also disallowing a lot of actually useful leasing agreements.

The thing is, you never did _buy_ that Steam game. And you never bought the software on the TV, which you did buy the hardware of, you bought a software lease along with the hardware.

The latter case I can see something to do about - define the software and its functionality as an "essential component" of the hardware, and require companies to not break essential components of hardware they sell. They can stop offering online services, but the rest of the device should keep working.

For pure software leases, I don't see a good way to not have them be whatever the contract say they are, not without reclassifying them as something else than a copyrighted work. (But then "sellers" should be very clear what you're "buying".)

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#357

Post by sirwhinesalot »

reichstein wrote: post #356
pseudocomposer wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think “when you buy a product, be it a game, a house, a car, a computer, a tractor, washer, TV, it should continue to operate without rent-seeking behavior” is the best type of straightforward, uniformly-applicable pattern of regulation one could hope for. Opposing rent-seeking is literally why we have American democracy, which paved the way for French, Brazilian, Canadian, Indian, Mexican and so many other democra…

It's not that I don't agree, but lawyers will then ask you to define "buy" in such a way that it is distinguishable from a perpetual lease with a cancellation clause _to buyers_, without also disallowing a lot of actually useful leasing agreements. The thing is, you never did _buy_ that Steam game. And you never bought the software on the TV, which you did buy the hardware of, you bought a software lease along with t…

A lease should have a clear timetable. How long am I leasing this thing for? 1 year? 3 years?

I'm fine with companies leasing software. I don't like it, and I much prefer buying, but that's fine. That is what software subscriptions are, the terms and conditions are clear.

"Buying" something where access can be revoked at any time, for any reason, needs to become illegal.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#358

Post by cubefox »

incompatible wrote: post #254
user_of_the_wek wrote: post #123

I‘m wondering if there’s a better term to use than „digital games“. Those physical discs are just as digital as anything else.

Yeah, I was going to say that. Somebody has to pedantically state that it's a pretty silly terminology.

Maybe "virtual" games. Or simply "non-pysical" games.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#359

Post by pelagicAustral »

sciencejerk wrote: post #326
monegator wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you have repacks. It's basically impossible to find any game that isn't on GOG that is not shared as a repack. You don't get the installer, you don't get the original media, you have to trust that the repack is not filled with malware. (and also the repack process somewhat confuses wine/lutris. More than once i couldn't make the repack run on my linux box, but if i managed to find the genuine install medium.…

Are repacks just binaries?

compressed binaries

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#360

Post by reichstein »

rgmerk wrote: post #249
homer456 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes a minimum of 600 hours of training to get licensed to cut hair in California. Pex plumbing is banned in Chicago as a union protectionist regulation. The "chicken tax" regulation scheme has screwed up the US truck market for decades. Electrical code requirements for the wiring of kitchen islands have changed drastically with very small justification within a short span of time. To this day it is illegal to tr…

> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer Cite your sources. There are specific issues in specific places (eg heritage restrictions in Paris), a higher prevalence of shared infrastructure rather than single family homes, and a higher level of renting rather than home ownership. And there are people on the green-left end of the political spectrum in parts…

> https://www.build.aau.dk/report-from-aau-warns-danish-homes-...

The Danish Building code has requirements for retaining heat in the house, which is great in the cold winters, but devastating in the heart of modern summers. Combined with rules that practically require large south-facing windows to satisfy the total energy requirement limits, it gets very, very hot. And air conditioning subtracts significantly from your energy rating, making it almost impossible to include AC in a new building and satisfy the emission rating that any new building must satisfy.

The code allows only 25 hours a year where indoor temperature exceeds 28 degrees, but the validation of a building uses old temperature data, so on practice it's more hours of higher temperatures, and for houses that, even if you want to add AC later, wasnt designed for that.

Abs to add insult to injury, if you renovate an older building, you _can_ be required to bring it up to modern specs. That can be so expensive that it's cheaper to tear it down and build a new building. Because you can't do something half-good?

The building code _is_ a real problem, and changes ... well, haven't happened yet, so the buildings built today will be unlivable for as long as they stand in the new hotter summers.

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