Posts by Vince Lewis 1

Can you guys do a proper investigation into VALVe's attempt to conquer the living room.

Chaps,

I'm suprised that you have not properly analysed VALVes attempt to conquer the living room. All articles tend to gloss over how an average consumer will use a Steam Machine.

If Apple used the same logic as VALVe, then I'd have to rebuy all my music if I got my wife an iPod.

It seems even el Reg has been blinded by VALVes Holy light.

why the thumb down?

Is it because you think my understanding of Steam Family Sharing is wrong.

Givej HinD's 4 thumbs up this could be the case.

Please go to the VALVe own SFS page and read the FAQ, ypu will find my understanding is accurate.

Maybe you think VALVe are doing the right thing, Imagine your next budget meeting.

Our ERP supplier have gone a VALVe style licensing.

Last year we brought 5 ledger, 10 enquiry and 1 admin licenses.

This year we need 10 ledger, 10 enquiry and 10 admin licenses.

Please, those that gave thumbs down, explain yourselves.

RE: NoneSuch

To go into more detail.

Mr Ave Ridge buys a SteamMachine, creates an account and fills it with 50 games.

He sets up an Account for his Kid "Por" and shares the games to it.

All is fine, up until his Kid says "I want my own Steam Machine"

So Mr Ridge buys a second Machine and sets it up.

Por is playing Portal in his room, so Ave fires up Half Life 2.

5 minutes later Por comes down stairs crying he's been kicked out of his game and it won't let him back in.

Steam Machines are marketed to Mr and Mrs A.V. Ridge and their 1.8 children. They are going to expect the same basic functions and flexibility as all other consumer electronics. Currently Steam falls very short on a basic expectation all consumers will have.

If they already have 1 steam machine and 50 games, and purchase a second machine they will believe that when the first machine is in use the 49 other games will be accessable on the second machine.

Steam does not offer this functionality, and without it VALVe will fail in the consumer electronics market. VALVe must sort out the Steam Family Sharing before the release of the Steam Machine.

I've given this some thought.

Zuck is never going to get his 2billion back via Oculus directly. Its only ever going to be indirect, via services thst use VR, any VR.

The Rift is hardware, and while posible (but highly unlikely) to have facebook data slurping firmware that data has to be collected via its driver. The will be open source drivers.

Zuck is not going to be getting much usable data from me playing HL2 with an oculus, or from any of the first or second gen VR software.

Its the generations after that he's got his eyes on. The software that majority of people might use VR for, virtual shoping, movies and events.

If you don't want to feed zuck, then don't use those services.

The money and resources Oculus have just got are good for VR, the unpleasent VR facebook stuff was going to happen anyway. The only real change is the Rift will come sooner and better.

Can you ask VALVe about the State of SFS

There is a State of "VALVe can do no wrong" at the moment on all the Tech news sites.

And to a point this is because they are doing amazing things and really pushing new ideas.

SFS should be one of them....

“Our customers have expressed a desire to share their digital games among friends and family members, just as current retail games, books, DVDs, and other physical media can be shared,” explained Anna Sweet of Valve. “Family Sharing was created in direct response to these user requests.”

So says the press release from VALVe

However their current design for Steam Family Sharing (SFS) is an absolute insult to those that asked for such a function and makes a mockery of the licenses people have brought via steam.

Valve have wisely made a system which requires the lending account to log onto target machine, this is good since it reduces the chance of people setting up SFS with strangers.

However if the owner plays a game, all other games are locked out and can not be played. If someone is playing a shared game and the owner plays and entirely different game the original player gets booted off in 5 minutes.

Like sharing a pizza, eating one slice but not letting anyone else eat the rest.

People want a proper Per Game sharing system.

And to add insult there is the offline mode loophole. In offline mode you can not only play your games, but all other games shared too you. In offline mode you could have 10+ people playing the same game at the same time having only payed for one copy.

Back to the pizza, If I go into a locked room a whole pizza magically get taken from PizzaGut and appears on my lap, and the same for everyone else that does the same.

4 Months ago VALVe was told of this issue, an issue that could be fixed with 4 lines of code. Yet it remains.

User that have been raising voices and trying to unify those that want a fairer and better system are being banned from the Forums. Long running and active threads that discus the issue and have been giving suggestions have been systematically closed.

4 months with out a single response from VALVe.

Just realised who really doing the down voting

Lizard agents of the shadow government are influencing this board.

They don't want people thinking Agents are going about their jobs with out needless threats and violence, they want people to be in fear of every nature of the Government and Law enforcement.

Any notion of Anti terrorism units calmly talking to people, respecting peoples property and quietly leaving must be quashed. People must be made to fear their government its only through fear can they have control.

Interesting....

Anyone that has read the article and defends the actions of the authorities is getting down voted.

It is absolutely ridiculous. The Fire Dept gets calls to House Fires that are Bonfires, Police get called to disturbances that are just loud movies and the FBI get called called to potential terrorists that were just a couple doing some personal shopping on work time.

Unfortunately these things happen and when a lot of your leads come from public information there will be more false leads with Anti Terrorist information.

The Agents themselves most likely thought this is going to be dead end but they have to follow up, just as the fireman heading off to a prank call would.

This is not an "Enemy of the State" or "V for Vendetta" paranoid government action, but reasonable suspicion followed up by a non violent visit and conversation.

I'm not saying there isn't an erosion of civil liberties or too much surveillance on law abiding citizens, because there is. But this was a simple case of something looking like something it wasn't.

A Mac at a price I'd pay

Funny you should say about getting Mac devs to to use Won 8 by giving it away, because I recent got my first Mac at a price I was willing to pay for one. I found an old G4 iLamp in a skip.

A lovely machine with a pretty OS, though I eventully had to install linux in order to queue and play multiple video files.