What you call it is irrelevant.. If EA had made it "shareware" would you have been content? The fact of the matter is EA owns this product and can distribute it as it sees fit (this does not mean I think EA has made anything that even resembles a smart decision lately.)

I agree #39,A demo is a free demo and that is the way it should be.

Like I said, demo should be synonymous with freely
distributable. Or at least maybe another term that means
the same thing should be put to use.

-Hyatus
"da da da"

well demo is short for a demonstration of a certain product, and there are about a thousand examples of demos that aren't for free. Just look at E3, the whole thing is just a giant demo of products, but it costs money to get in unless your a privelaged member of the press...

not to nag or anything, i'm not really sure how to state my opinions on this issue. i just read all 38 posts at once and some of the posts are so far off topic that htey have confused me

This comment was edited on Jan 4, 02:32.

First thing with the math I notice is that I remember the blues server being moved - so I'm guessing that it has a dedicated linkup, which could easily cost 20k a year.

Posting the demo... honestly, he's not going to make a huge profit regardless of what he makes beforehand. If you want to assume that linking the demo gets him extra impressions, fine, but hosting the demo is going to get him maybe 5 impressions per person and then the cost of the download bandwidth, which is probably going to be easily more than the extra impressions if your line of thought is that people are drawn to the site because it has the demo for download.

Another thing I consider is that the news of the availibility was posted with knowledge that the demo was already highly widespread by the time they posted it, to the point where anyone interested could look and find it by themselves, at that point it's not really changing the situation any by posting news of the demo or links to it, rather aquiescing to a fait-acompli by acknowledging that the free sp demo was widely out regardless of the prior plans of the companies involved.

X10: The more popups they buy, the sooner they will go out of business. The sooner the better.

Math Major @216.26 - If I inserted 9/10 of my sausage into your posterior glory hole, 1/8 of it would be protruding from your filthy mouth. Given your colon's immense length and incredible capacity for storing your bullsh!t, how long is my sausage in English measurements? If I inserted the entire length, what length of the sausage (again, in English measurements) would be sticking from your mouth? What sounds would you make? Stinking halfwit.

What's up with all the X10 ads anyway? They've invaded the entire Internet it seems. Do they really make that much money selling crappy low-res webcams?

The billion and a fraction makes people tend to read it as nine tenths - because, when a fraction is given, usually it's because you're more than halfway there. Right?

Where did you pick that up? Sorry, but fractions are used whenever something is not a full number. And even if you talk about "commonly used fractions": people use "a third" and "a quarter" all the time and both are less than a half.

Just admit that you were wrong and fell for the joke, so that we can all shut up and go home %).

Are we all sniffing glue here or what? What does "billion" have to do with a hundred million? What kind of a fraction is 1/9?

I'll let you in on a little joke here. When I see the "One Ninth of a Billion", it reminds me of McDonalds. You know...Billions and Billions served. He's poking fun at his sites importance. Do you get it? If not, loosen up! Life is too short to get so warped over something like that.

Nope, I will accept no responsibility that misinterpretation other than being duped by something that was designed to do just that. Why do I even have to defend that? It's so obviously 1) misleading and 2) irrelevant to the "piracy".

Admiting that you were wrong on one point does not lessen your argument. Failing/refusing to admit that fault does make you look like a jerk however.






Snappy2Stroke

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This comment was edited on Jan 3, 07:24.

Well whatever - tell me you would phrase something as a "ninth of a billion" if you didn't intend to mislead (no offense, Blue - it's a very minor thing) people with the "billion" part. The best way to state it would be "over a hundred million". The billion and a fraction makes people tend to read it as nine tenths - because, when a fraction is given, usually it's because you're more than halfway there. Right? You're about a BILLION times more likely to hear "three quarters of a billion" than "ONE NINTH OF A BILLION!"

Are we all sniffing glue here or what? What does "billion" have to do with a hundred million? What kind of a fraction is 1/9?

Nope, I will accept no responsibility that misinterpretation other than being duped by something that was designed to do just that. Why do I even have to defend that? It's so obviously 1) misleading and 2) irrelevant to the "piracy".

This is no excuse to divert the discussion from the matter at hand - that this is a for-profit site and it needs to meet higher standards than a hobby site.

Maybe we all need to go back to grade school and learn about civility, respecting the law - and fractions. Probably not.

I *do* know what ninths and tenths are - I wont take the blame for not looking closely at a very strange figure... ninths... nine tenths... make the counter visible in plain numbers pls. :/

Are we supposed to take you seriously when you won't even take responsibility for multiplying incorrectly? Yeah, that was Blue's fault also...

And the counter is at the bottom of the page. It was at 118745655 when I last looked.

I *do* know what ninths and tenths are - I wont take the blame for not looking closely at a very strange figure... ninths... nine tenths... make the counter visible in plain numbers pls. :/

premise stands - don't distribute things that "were not intended to be released"...

Wow honey look at the taxes, I made 3/67ths of a million dollars last year. :/

Yeah clearly 1/10th the figures... $4000 a month? fine. sorry blue, wouldn't $40k be nice. :/

Like I said, demo should be synonymous with freely
distributable. Or at least maybe another term that means
the same thing should be put to use.

-Hyatus
"da da da"

I think this is a good point. If EA had called the demo the "Medal of Honor - Single Level Edition" or the "Medal of Honor - $5 Sneak Peak", or the... oh screw it.

What do I care anyway, I don't give a rat's pooter about realism in games. I'm already psyched about UT2.

Not that it matters, but why is everyone assuming that anon@216.26 is male? When I read his / her posts I'm reminded of a pissed off girlfriend who thinks she's sticking up for a boyfriend who probably couldn't care less.

Guy: "No really honey, it's not a big deal. He barely bumped me and I didn't really spill that much beer."

Girlfriend: "Well I don't care! I'm marching over there right now and giving him a piece of my mind! Hold my purse!"

My apologies Blue. I see that you indeed apologized publicly to EA and GCW for the post. I respect your decision to do this, especially since you weren't obligated to do so.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dude, a ninth of a billion is roughly 111,111,111. Do the math, asshole. The counter is at the very end of the main page as hidden text (same color as background). Hilight it to see it! At the time of this post it was at 118,731,821. Over a ninth of a billion. Ninth = 1/9. 900,000,000 = 9/10 of a billion. Go back to high school.

Well I am not a lawyer, and neither is anon@216.26... If he was he'd be quoting chapter and verse of the laws here. Not sure what crawled up his ass on this one but it's really not his concern.

I agree that the morality of the original demo posting is questionable. This is the first time I can remember that Blue's News has ever posted a file while at the same time admitting that it was not meant for release. I think the removal of the file and links is a sufficient gesture. EA asked for it to be taken down, and Blue did it immediately. EA knows that Blue did not steal the file. It was common knowledge and freely available from other sites. Again, Blue's removal of the file shows his respect for EA's wishes. Enough said.

I don't think it would be unreasonable for Blue to publicly apologize for providing a mechanism for the distribution of this file, but I don't think he is obligated to do it. At least he has the guts to let these posts stand and not simply delete them.

Blue - Most of us love your site and come here every day. I won't stop anytime soon. You professionalism and dedication are unmatched in the online gaming community. Please don't ever stop!

Sneak

1 billion divided by 9 is 111,111,111. back to school, troll boy.the counter is in the lower left corner of the frontpage, and loonyboi left the site this Summer. shows how much attention you've paid to a site you claim to have been visiting for years.

"Established 1995. Over a ninth of a billion visitors since 1997."

That's 900,000,000, not 118,000,000 - quite a big discrepancy for certain. Where's the counter? It says 900,000,000 on every page...

You're right, I don't know what ad rates or actual traffic this site gets, nor is that relevant. The point is that they are a competitor of CGW, in a way, and a for-profit operation as far as I can tell, and should tread lightly on other people's property rights - this isn't a hobby site.

I'm very sorry to be in the position of putting Blue on the spot, because I like Blue's News and I hope he and looney make a good salary off this project - and that they will be a little more thoughtful about posting and modifying others' archives in the future.

It's not for us to wonder about the legality of posting a demo... it's for Blue to worry about [and I doubt he's worried]. NEway, all that is important to us is that the demo has been released... do I care if it's fallen of the back of a website or travelled air mail via Austria to a secret web server in Asia.... NO!

Don't get all stuck up about copying Bluesnews with your own ads... even if you did no-one would visit so go right ahead and do it! It's an empty threat.

Don't forget to compare this to Creative who force you to purchase a CD [costs like 2$ or something] if you want your new Audigy or SB!Live to work on Windows XP... they decided not to use the web to distribute drivers anymore. How pathetic. Part of the costs of running a piece of hardware should include the bandwidth for hosting the drivers... even if it was a free CD it is hastle non-the-less.

"If freakin teenagers on IRC are going to get arrested for piracy"

If they broke the law they should pay for it... we're not talking like 'I just downloaded ONE free game then I got busted', it's more like 'I was distributing 300gb of warez a day'. But do you honestly see Blue getting in trouble over this or the magazine causing a fuss... NO!

The most important thing is this... some of the largest gaming sites have shut down recently because they can't make enough money... most people do these sort of websites as a hobby and lots INVEST money into it for no return. Just look at the problems www.neowin.net has had recently because no-one will host them [too many hits... luckily a good service provider came along] but it really isn't easy or cheap hosting a PROPER website. This isn't a free 30mb webspace website that you see plenty of.

PS - I must register sometime because anonymous posters just don't have the same impact as registered ones.

-mortensenj