Civ 5/Steam:Offline Mode Question

[Aesir Rising]

Warms my heart to see so many trusting people. People so willing to trust a corporation, but not other human beings. Orwell would have been proud to see an entire generation grow up thinking corporations have - and deserve to have - more rights than humans.

[The_Coyote]

Originally Posted by Senethro

Big Brother is watching you through a kb up and half a kb down.

Genocide, drug dealing, murder, military battles, human rights violations and now nightmare dystopias. Why don't you just take your comparisons about this itunes for games straight to Hitler?

so much sarcasm in your posts - but no real informations.

But no please do your homework and prove every of your accusations with quotes. Making such accusions without refering to the context (out of context citation) - perhaps also accepting a wrongly summarization of them so that they look like a chain of argument - it´s a nice and usual method if the target would be to discredit the other person directly and not trying to argue about the matter.

This is my personal opinion about what you did and tried and yes it include a speculation about your target in this case. Of course i know the only person who knows for sure what you want to achieve is yourself, so i can be wrong or right. But it´s up to everybody to estimate your seriousness in this discussion.

But back to your post itself, what was your point? What did you wanted to say? Did you tried to say, "Sorry, but don´t agree with your opinion The_J" or did you wanted to say something different?

[Senethro]

Originally Posted by Aesir Rising

Warms my heart to see so many trusting people. People so willing to trust a corporation, but not other human beings. Orwell would have been proud to see an entire generation grow up thinking corporations have - and deserve to have - more rights than humans.

This isn't about corporations vs. people, its about people who have had positive experiences with steam vs. people who don't know anything about steam and are being unreasonable in their attempts to "prove" that it is evil. Not just that it could be bad, but that it is a moral negative. That you're invoking the name of Orwell in your post is an example of this.

[Senethro]

Originally Posted by The_Coyote

But back to your post itself, what was your point? What did you wanted to say? Did you tried to say, "Sorry, but don´t agree with your opinion The_J" or did you wanted to say something different?

My point is the hyperbole is ridiculous and, if truly believed, indicative of an unbalanced person.

[Greybriar]

Originally Posted by Aesir Rising

Warms my heart to see so many trusting people. People so willing to trust a corporation....

Isn't that how the term "sheeple" came about?

[The_Coyote]

Originally Posted by Senethro

My point is the hyperbole is ridiculous and, if truly believed, indicative of an unbalanced person.

So you simply disagree with the used hyperboles - a rhetorical device. Why did you not simply said this in plain text? I think you also know the exaggerated structure of a hyperbole and the not to taken literally meaning of this device. Also you should consider, that one reason for your jugdement could be the strongly differing positions in this case. Your personal feeling about the topic can be one reason that you think the used hyberboles are ridicilous, that The_J went over the top. Having another point of view - a different starting point - considering the topic could lead to another judgement of the hyperbole.

If some of the used hyberboles so far showed a lack of empathy is another discussion, but also this judgement can be (and i think will be) biased throu personal experiences, family history, own beleives, etc.. I you ask me, i would say yes, some went over the top, but because it´s my opinion and my opinion in this situation has no universality, i choose not to judge them.

Now saying that somebody who thinks that the meaning (it was only "data collection" by steam) behind the hyperbole could be true (remember: exaggeration in the hyberbole, therefore "Big Brother") is an indicative of an unbalanced person, could be seen as insulting formulation.

Btw, i think you also know that you mixed hyberbole of more than one user in your post.

[azzaman333]

Originally Posted by The_J

Anyone who trust's steam is throwing his data into the mouth of Big Brother .

I "trust" them on the basis that I haven't had a single issue with steam in 4.5 years of using steam, with a large percentage of that time being logged into steam and letting it idle in the background. Trust probably isn't the right word to describe it though.

[PieceOfMind]

Originally Posted by Senethro

This isn't about corporations vs. people, its about people who have had positive experiences with steam vs. people who don't know anything about steam and are being unreasonable in their attempts to "prove" that it is evil.

Oh dear.
People with positive experiences with Steam

vs.

People who don't know anything about steam AND
are being unreasonable in their attempts to prove it is evil.




Yep, I'm sure that's exactly the best description of both sides. [sarcasm] (I hate the actual sarcasm smilie)

What is it called when your only method of argument is to label both sides of a debate - one with a very negative description and one with a very positive description?

[The_J]

edit: @azzaman: You're probably right.

Originally Posted by Aesir Rising

3 of the 4 examples given were technical exploits, not social engineering scams.

But if you remove Steam or SteamWorks from the scenario, you remove the technical exploits as well as the human engineering exploits enabled by Steam Client and SteamWorks.

Agree

Originally Posted by Senethro

Big Brother is watching you through a kb up and half a kb down.

A kb are 1024 byte are 8098 bit. This is enough information for an ID and several other information.

Originally Posted by Senethro

Genocide, drug dealing, murder, military battles, human rights violations and now nightmare dystopias. Why don't you just take your comparisons about this itunes for games straight to Hitler?

With Hitler i want to wait until the release.

Originally Posted by Aesir Rising

Warms my heart to see so many trusting people. People so willing to trust a corporation, but not other human beings. Orwell would have been proud to see an entire generation grow up thinking corporations have - and deserve to have - more rights than humans.

My thoughts, my thoughts.

Originally Posted by The_Coyote

If some of the used hyberboles so far showed a lack of empathy

I guess i did.
No real reason to defend me here .

Originally Posted by The_Coyote

Btw, i think you also know that you mixed hyberbole of more than one user in your post.

No, he even forgot one .

[plesniak]

I don't trust companies that I can't phone. I have had problems with steam a few yrs ago...I won't deal with them again...They only care that you buy a game through them or from them...after that they don't care about u anymore. If u press your problems with steam then they start blaming the production company as the problem causer...round and round u go.

The Consumer must put thier collective foot down when it comes to stamping out the steams and thier ilk. If u dont buy or "play the game" so to speak then and alternative that is better than steam will have to be found.
#$#@ u steam...u got me for $50 a few yrs ago, never again. I am sure that I have also convinced several other gamers to boycott any games that come through steam.

[azzaman333]

I have not had a single problem with steam in 4.5 years of constant use.

[PieceOfMind]

I had a problem with Steam on the second day of infrequent use.

[tom2050]

Originally Posted by Senethro

Big Brother is watching you through a kb up and half a kb down.

Genocide, drug dealing, murder, military battles, human rights violations and now nightmare dystopias. Why don't you just take your comparisons about this itunes for games straight to Hitler?

If Valve and 2K were so honest, they would tell everyone that their is no difference between online and offline mode (both have been shown to communicate with the servers).

If they tell an untruth about that, why would you trust them with anything else?

[PieceOfMind]

There is no evidence that offline and online mode act the same way. More than likely there is ample evidence to the contrary.

Therefore, I don't see why one should expect Valve to be "honest" about something that is not even necessarily true. Hope that makes sense.

[Willem]

Originally Posted by Senethro

This isn't about corporations vs. people, its about people who have had positive experiences with steam vs. people who don't know anything about steam and are being unreasonable in their attempts to "prove" that it is evil.

You're so busy looking for the paranoid reasons why people don't want to use Steam that you refuse to consider the more mundane reasons. For myself at least, the fact that Ori mentioned the reminder messages to connect when you start a game more than enough reason not to use it. I'm not permanently hooked up to the internet so I would constantly be getting those annoying messages when I start the game up. No thanks. There's a number of other reasons why I don't want it as well, which has absolutely nothing to do with me thinking Steam is evil. I just simply have no use for it, so why should I be forced to use it in order to play a single game? If you like the online thing and have had a good experience with Steam, then that's all fine and good. But I have no intention of ever using any of it services, so to me it's nothing more than more bloatware. That display annoying messages on a regular basis by the sounds of it.

[Ferek]

Originally Posted by Aesir Rising

Warms my heart to see so many trusting people. People so willing to trust a corporation, but not other human beings. Orwell would have been proud to see an entire generation grow up thinking corporations have - and deserve to have - more rights than humans.

Lol I just registered for this forum to get some help with Civ4 (just bought it off Steam, seemed like a cool game) and this is what I see....some of you guys are pretty crazy.

*backs off slowly*





I've used Steam for years, and so do millions of other users, with no problems. It's like the PC version of Xbox Live.

[Senethro]

Ferek is the kind of guy who will make the boycotters irrelevent. Welcome to the forum Ferek, hope you found the help you wanted.

[ori]

Originally Posted by The_J

A kb are 1024 byte are 8098 bit. This is enough information for an ID and several other information.

just to clarify this a bit in multiple attempts I find between 12 and 17 uploads and between 10 and 14 downloads - each package has 48 bytes (the ~1kb was an estimate after seeing 17 uploads and assuming a bit more than 50 bytes each, I didn't count bytes carefully enough the first time). Each package seems to contain an ID since it has some part that doesn't change - so the actual information content transmitted is probably less than the kb, but how much is of course unknown and since the package number changes its likely that it transmits varying amounts of information.

[Xiao Xiong]

Originally Posted by tom2050

If Valve and 2K were so honest, they would tell everyone that their is no difference between online and offline mode (both have been shown to communicate with the servers).

If they tell an untruth about that, why would you trust them with anything else?

Why do you have such a hate on for Valve or 2K?

What I can tell you from personal experience is that I can disconnect from the internet, put steam into offline mode, and play the games I have bought. That is a fact.

90% of the software installed on your computer calls home to check for updates now and then I think you are making a big deal out of nothing.

[tom2050]

I don't hate Valve or 2K, but they should at least state that Steam still makes communication with the Steam Network in offline mode to do "this and that". The statement of the privacy policy makes it unclear to the average consumer, and states it in a way that sounds as if the Steam program makes no communication at all.

Some prefer their privacy to stay minimized. 3rd Party DRM systems like Impulse and Steam simply make this more difficult.

So to be in offline mode, you simply need to disconnect your computer's ethernet cable/telephone line from the internet/modem to truly be offline.