If you can read this, you're on the Internet



  •  A screenshot of the GTA4 installer, recommending users to click a link if they don't have internet access

    If you don't have access to the Internet, check out the link from that window for help.



  • Meh. Maybe you can open it in the computer lab, or a library, or something.



  • Obviously there is an expectation that everyone (who has access to a computer in order to play the game) has access to the internet, even if it's dial-up.  I'd be pretty annoyed if I bought the game with the intention of playing it somwhere remote and I didn't know it had to be registered online before it could be started.

     I think we had a bigger WTF a few months back where some remote embedded system (like a weather station?) required internet acess to work.



  •  I thought the message was quite clear: Here is where to find help, and you can do it on any system with internet access, and here is how to get the codes to activate/how to get patch files on another system. Everything short of actually including the words "If you don't have access here an now, go to another machine that does and...", which I would have found rather childish and insulting.



  • GTA 4 can also be activated by telephone, the WTF is just their recommendation to visit that URL if you don't have access to the Internet.



  • What the hell is a release date check?

    PS.

    Is the game good? I'm a GTA fanboi and would like to know if I really should buy a new computer to play this one. ZeroPunctuation slaughtered it, but he's a bit of a twat snob.



  •  The installation is A REAL WTF! It installs tons of crap "required" to play locally in single-player. It needs XP SP3 or Vista SP1 (doesn't work on SP2). It needs a gfx card with pixel shader 3. It needs at least two CPU cores. It needs at least 1 GB ram and recommends 2.5. After installing SP3 on my sweet, clean XP SP2 and messing up my whole system, updating my gfx card drivers with the latest version and stopping all services I didn't need, I still couldn't get to play it so I removed it along with the THREE OTHER APPLICATIONS IT INSTALLED. The problem was I only had pixel shader 2, but I found an application that emulates pixel shader 3, so I went ahead and tried to install it anyway. The problem was now that because of their insane DRM, gta.exe calls gta_launcher.exe which verifies that everything is ok (DRM-wise) and then launches gta.exe which is just an app from which you can launch the actual game. Because of this "process-calling-process-calling-process" system they managed to implement (only the gods know what WTFs lie there), the application I tried to use to fake the pixel shader couldn't hook properly with the DirectX libraries.

    Rockstar really fucked up with this one because of the system requirements. The Youtube videos look really nice (do a search for "GTA IV goofs" (no quotes)).

    Ok, maybe it has the "right" to ask for a pixel shader 3 (who knows why they wouldn't bother with a patch for v2 at least), but what the hell does it wnat SP 3 for? Oh, did I mention it also needs SecuROM? You also need an Internet connection to install it or you have to call RS to get a license key to validate the installation (proving that the install date is greater than the release date). The fact that it tries to phone home is extremely suspicious.

    Rockstar is the new EA. It sucks.



  • Good news.

    I think I'll just download a crack or something. Or maybe not.



  • I'm guessing all those strict requirement come from the fact that they developed it for xbox & ps3 first. Which both have multi cores, and are both querenteed to support the newest pixel shaders and what not. Then when they wanted to port the xbox360 version they probebly discovered it would be to much work to make it all a bit more generic.

    That's my guess anyway.



  • TRWTF is the submitter, who confuses access to the world wide web with Internet access. The installer requires Internet access. You can have WWW access without Internet access, for example, the computer I'm sitting at now does not have Internet access, and the installation would not work. However, I can reach web pages (such as the daily WTF) through a proxy which does have web access. Only Firefox knows how to use the proxy.



  •  TDWTF is on the Internet. You are accessing TDWTF. TDWTF is not on your LAN. => You have access to the Internet.

    Not all of its resources, of course, because nobody ever does, but you have access to it. Hell, even carrier pidgeons sending papers with bits encoded as dashes/dots from you (living in the middle of nowhere) to a friend who has a computer with regular access to the Interne, can be considered Internet access for you. Sure, it would take thousands of years to get your favorite gay porn movie, but extremely slow or limited access doesn't mean "no access."

    I doubt anyone has carrier pirgeons trained for such a purpose, which is probably what RS asumed. Not everybody has "free Internet access" at their local library. Not everybody has Internet in the town they're living in. You may just buy the game and take a long vacation in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Now please open that URL for help without access to any satellites.

    TRWTF is you, who thinks that you can reach the WWW (and by this, I mean the WORLD-WIDE web) without using the Internet.



  • @dhromed said:

    Is the game good? I'm a GTA fanboi and would like to know if I really should buy a new computer to play this one.
    Speaking from the Xbox 360 version, not really.  It's got all the same elements as previous games, and it's prettier to look at, but it feels more tedious somehow.  If you're like me, you'll spend your time driving cars that don't handle particularly well across the same freaking bridges back and forth, with brief interludes of fun occuring far too infrequently.



  • @bstorer said:

    @dhromed said:

    Is the game good? I'm a GTA fanboi and would like to know if I really should buy a new computer to play this one.
    Speaking from the Xbox 360 version, not really.  It's got all the same elements as previous games, and it's prettier to look at, but it feels more tedious somehow.  If you're like me, you'll spend your time driving cars that don't handle particularly well across the same freaking bridges back and forth, with brief interludes of fun occuring far too infrequently.

     

    QFT, 

    Also the highly annoying telephones you get from "friends", that always seem to call you when you are just about to start a mission. When they call, you need to pick them up within x seconds to take them out drinking or bowling or whatever. It's a mayor drag.



  • @dhromed said:

    I'm a GTA fanboi and would like to know if I really should buy an XBox 360 to play this one.
    FTFY.

    FWIW, I enjoy the game, but I didn't buy it ... I'm borrowing it from a friend.



  • @joelkatz said:

    TRWTF is the submitter, who confuses access to the world wide web with Internet access. The installer requires Internet access. You can have WWW access without Internet access, for example, the computer I'm sitting at now does not have Internet access, and the installation would not work. However, I can reach web pages (such as the daily WTF) through a proxy which does have web access. Only Firefox knows how to use the proxy.
    I presume that's a work machine, and you install games on it all the time!



  •  @joelkatz said:

    TRWTF is the submitter, who confuses access to the world wide web with Internet access. The installer requires Internet access. You can have WWW access without Internet access, for example, the computer I'm sitting at now does not have Internet access, and the installation would not work. However, I can reach web pages (such as the daily WTF) through a proxy which does have web access. Only Firefox knows how to use the proxy.

    WTF meter at peak



  • @rohypnol said:

     The installation is A REAL WTF! It installs tons of crap "required" to play locally in single-player. It needs XP SP3 or Vista SP1 (doesn't work on SP2). It needs a gfx card with pixel shader 3. It needs at least two CPU cores. It needs at least 1 GB ram and recommends 2.5. After installing SP3 on my sweet, clean XP SP2 and messing up my whole system, updating my gfx card drivers with the latest version and stopping all services I didn't need, I still couldn't get to play it so I removed it along with the THREE OTHER APPLICATIONS IT INSTALLED. The problem was I only had pixel shader 2, but I found an application that emulates pixel shader 3, so I went ahead and tried to install it anyway. The problem was now that because of their insane DRM, gta.exe calls gta_launcher.exe which verifies that everything is ok (DRM-wise) and then launches gta.exe which is just an app from which you can launch the actual game. Because of this "process-calling-process-calling-process" system they managed to implement (only the gods know what WTFs lie there), the application I tried to use to fake the pixel shader couldn't hook properly with the DirectX libraries.
     

    Excuse me, but you are the real WTF.

    The requirements don't sound insane to me. Dual-core is a bit unexpected, but probably it's because of it's console (which have multiple cores) history. I can honestly think of only 1 card with Pixel shader < 3 which you would want to use to play such a game: the Radeon X800.
    It was known when it was sold that you might get problems with games that required DirectX 9.0c in the future, just a bad jugdment call of you/ATI. Besides a lot of games require 9.0c nowadays (splinter cell : something was among the first iirc)

    But the absolute TRWTF is that you used a DirectX 9.0c emulator and expect it to work good. Honestly, such a thing should never be implemented in anything other that the driver, which ATI/Nvidia are not going to do. Furthermore, you can get a 9.0c supporting AMD Radeon HD4670 or Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT for +- €100 which will outperform any 9.0b card ever made. Or you buy a 6600GT or something like that second-hand for a fraction of that

    And don't whine about needing to spend another few bucks just so you can play a game. If you don't like that: buy a console. You knew it would be needed every once in a while when you decided to use your PC for gaming

    @rohypnol said:

    Ok, maybe it has the "right" to ask for a pixel shader 3 (who knows why they wouldn't bother with a patch for v2 at least), but what the hell does it wnat SP 3 for? Oh, did I mention it also needs SecuROM? You also need an Internet connection to install it or you have to call RS to get a license key to validate the installation (proving that the install date is greater than the release date). The fact that it tries to phone home is extremely suspicious.

    It damned well has the right. As I mentioned already 99% of the card used to play this game have it. Furthermore that's the DirectX level the Xbox360 has which makes porting easier.

    SecuROM is a whole other story, and enough has been said about copy protection on games. I agree.



  • "TRWTF is you, who thinks that you can reach the WWW (and by this, I mean the WORLD-WIDE web) without using the Internet."

    Sure, completely misrepresent my point, then show that your misrepresentation is bogus. Nice.

    "Internet access", in the context in which they're using it, means that their installer can open up a port and talk to their installation server. It's what you get when you buy Internet access from an ISP, and it's more than just web access. It is perfectly reasonable for a person to have access to the world wide web without having what they mean by Internet access.

    If you paid for Internet access and got a proxy that could reach web pages, you would be pretty pissed. Web access is a subset of Internet access



  •  And how many people have their access restricted to WWW through a proxy, on computers on which they install GTA IV ?



  • @joelkatz said:

    If you paid for Internet access and got a proxy that could reach web pages, you would be pretty pissed. Web access is a subset of Internet access
     

    And yet 99,99% of the people are content with the half-hour of "internet access" they can get in internet-cafès on the corner of a street.

    And I don't mean the ones where you just have a windows computer with administrator rights and an ADSL account, I mean the kind where you are locked inside an IE shell...



  • @stratos said:

    @bstorer said:

    @dhromed said:

    Is the game good? I'm a GTA fanboi and would like to know if I really should buy a new computer to play this one.
    Speaking from the Xbox 360 version, not really.  It's got all the same elements as previous games, and it's prettier to look at, but it feels more tedious somehow.  If you're like me, you'll spend your time driving cars that don't handle particularly well across the same freaking bridges back and forth, with brief interludes of fun occuring far too infrequently.

     

    QFT, 

    Also the highly annoying telephones you get from "friends", that always seem to call you when you are just about to start a mission. When they call, you need to pick them up within x seconds to take them out drinking or bowling or whatever. It's a mayor drag.

     

    Ah yes. I suppose I won't be buying it, then.

    I thought the girlfriends in GTA:SA were annoying as well, until I noticed that the Get Out Of Hospital / Jail Free perks were permanent, so I stopped dating them. I'm uncertain why they implemented it if they knew that the only other reward is a set of funky suits that don't actually do anything (e.g. the policeman's uniform doesn't give you any special rights within the police station).

    The main issue with these "reality sim" aspects like getting fat or muscular is that they get squarely in the way of gameplay, which means failure to comply is never truly punished, which renders them completely obsolete. The skills system with weapons and vehicle control is good, however: there's a reward for paying attention to playing.

    All the soapy stuff is just plain bullshit. Is it forced on you, or can you fuck 'em and play the damn game?

    And once you find a safe house near a gambling point, you get free money! Bet it all, fail, rewind time, bet again => WINNAR. :D

    (I'm currently stuck in SA because handling a plane to shoot down other planes is just impossible and I give up; the game has beaten me. Unless you blokes/geezers have tips.)



  • @dtech said:

    And yet 99,99% of the people are content with the half-hour of "internet access" they can get in internet-cafès on the corner of a street.

    [citation needed]



  • "And yet 99,99% of the people are content with the half-hour of "internet access" they can get in internet-cafès on the corner of a street."

    Exactly.  Yet that would not let their installer work. Web access and Internet access are not the same thing. Web access is a subset of Internet access.

    Their installer requires Internet access. If you only have web access, the Installer will not work without manual activation.



  • @rohypnol said:


    ...I doubt anyone has carrier pirgeons trained for such a purpose...,

    I was shocked and saddened to see that no one pointed out that this has been implemented IPoAC (Internet Protocol over Avian Carrier) as documented in the following RFC http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 details of the first implementation here: http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/

    Uptake has been slow, but its a valid way to connect and its proven to work!



  •  RFC1149 has been obsolete for nine years now, due to its lack of QoS capability (providing only rudimentary collission avoidance). RFC2549 "IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service" is the replacement. Get with the program.



  • @joelkatz said:

    "And yet 99,99% of the people are content with the half-hour of "internet access" they can get in internet-cafès on the corner of a street."

    Exactly.  Yet that would not let their installer work. Web access and Internet access are not the same thing. Web access is a subset of Internet access.

    Their installer requires Internet access. If you only have web access, the Installer will not work without manual activation.

    First of all, lern2quote.

    Second of all, explain how you would install gta4 on such a computer in an internet cafe.



  • @dhromed said:

    The main issue with these "reality sim" aspects like getting fat or muscular is that they get squarely in the way of gameplay, which means failure to comply is never truly punished, which renders them completely obsolete.
    You say that now, but wait until you try to go back and get that girlfriend you missed earlier, but are all bulked up and she wants skinny guys.  What's that?  You don't care?  didn't think so.  I didn't either.

    @dhromed said:

    (I'm currently stuck in SA because handling a plane to shoot down other planes is just impossible and I give up; the game has beaten me. Unless you blokes/geezers have tips.)
    The best advice I can give is subtlety.  Don't jerk the stick around, ease the plane into doing what you want it to do.  It's not a wheeled vehicle and won't respond like one.  Trouble is, through 2 1/2 games, we've been trained to expect a certain response from vehicles and it's tough to break that expectation in a plane. 

    Also, use the right stick to get the camera in the right spot.  Sometimes it'll get stuck right in front of the vehicle, and I have do drive/fly blindly forward until I can get the camera positioned correctly so I can see where I'm going.

    It's been a couple of years since I've played GTA:SA though and I only ever played it on the ps2.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @joelkatz said:

    "And yet 99,99% of the people are content with the half-hour of "internet access" they can get in internet-cafès on the corner of a street."

    Exactly.  Yet that would not let their installer work. Web access and Internet access are not the same thing. Web access is a subset of Internet access.

    Their installer requires Internet access. If you only have web access, the Installer will not work without manual activation.

    First of all, lern2quote.

    Second of all, explain how you would install gta4 on such a computer in an internet cafe.

     

    His point was that you can write down the url on a piece of paper and go to an Internet Cafe and open the URL there, because 99.99% of the people have access to Internet Cafes.



  • @rohypnol said:

    @belgariontheking said:

    @joelkatz said:

    "And yet 99,99% of the people are content with the half-hour of "internet access" they can get in internet-cafès on the corner of a street."

    Exactly.  Yet that would not let their installer work. Web access and Internet access are not the same thing. Web access is a subset of Internet access.

    Their installer requires Internet access. If you only have web access, the Installer will not work without manual activation.

    First of all, lern2quote.

    Second of all, explain how you would install gta4 on such a computer in an internet cafe.

     

    His point was that you can write down the url on a piece of paper and go to an Internet Cafe and open the URL there, because 99.99% of the people have access to Internet Cafes.

     

    No, that wasn't my point. That would explain why they would give you a link but not why it would be a hyperlink.

    My point is that "Internet access" and "web access" are not the same thing. Web access is a subset of Internet access.

    There is no WTF in the original post. They provide a hyperlink in case you have web access to reach their activation servers, which you might have even if you don't have sufficient Internet access for their installer to communicate with the activation servers.

    Again, there is no WTF. This is perfectly normal behavior if it was calculated and intentional. However, my bet is that it wasn't intentional and the URL was just made a hyperlink automatically or without thinking. In fairness, this does result in it being made to look like people expect URLs to look, which helps with UI uniformity.

    Besides, you may be able to go online and then click on the link. Though in that case, a "retry activation" button would probably be more helpful.

    Oh, and about the quoting: That's kind of silly here where there aren't intervening posts and there's one authoritative source for them. It makes lots of sense on USENET when posts can appear in all kinds of orders in all kinds of places and posts have to provide you with context because you can't always be assured of scrolling up to see the history. It just makes the page larger and more irritating to read here, at least in some cases. An obvious exception would be a point-by-point reply.



  • @joelkatz said:

    No, that wasn't my point. That would explain why they would give you a link but not why it would be a hyperlink.

    My point is that "Internet access" and "web access" are not the same thing. Web access is a subset of Internet access.

    There is no WTF in the original post. They provide a hyperlink in case you have web access to reach their activation servers, which you might have even if you don't have sufficient Internet access for their installer to communicate with the activation servers.

    Again, there is no WTF. This is perfectly normal behavior if it was calculated and intentional. However, my bet is that it wasn't intentional and the URL was just made a hyperlink automatically or without thinking. In fairness, this does result in it being made to look like people expect URLs to look, which helps with UI uniformity.

    Right, it seems sensible to me either it was a work-around for people with proxies or enables users to write the URL down and use the web elsewhere to activate.  Making it a hyperlink seems sensible as well.

     

    @joelkatz said:

    Oh, and about the quoting: That's kind of silly here where there aren't intervening posts and there's one authoritative source for them. It makes lots of sense on USENET when posts can appear in all kinds of orders in all kinds of places and posts have to provide you with context because you can't always be assured of scrolling up to see the history. It just makes the page larger and more irritating to read here, at least in some cases. An obvious exception would be a point-by-point reply.

    The problem is that scrolling up to find context can sometimes be a PITA.  It seems replies can generally be more brief and succinct if the original context is supplied and the reply is written directly in response to it.



  • @rohypnol said:

    His point was that you can write down the url on a piece of paper and go to an Internet Cafe and open the URL there, because 99.99% of the people have access to Internet Cafes.
     

    wtf? my point was that web access is internet access (which joelkatz debated). I also didn't say 99,99% of the people have access to internet cafes (response to your earlier post), I meant 99,99% of the people going to a internet cafe for "internet access" are content with it.



  •  It's a WTF in itself that games require activations at all



  • @pbean said:

    It's a WTF in itself that games require activations at all

    Games require activation in an attempt to ensure that only people who purchased the game get to play it.

    However, it's usually very poorly implemented and easily circumvented, so they end up being WTFs.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @pbean said:

    It's a WTF in itself that games require activations at all

    Games require activation in an attempt to ensure that only people who purchased the game get to play it.

    However, it's usually very poorly implemented and easily circumvented, so they end up being WTFs.

     

    I'm waiting for the time that I purchase a book and have to activate it online or by telephone before I can read it. Then I go a torrent site and download a crack to read my book, because I can't be arsed to activate it, or I have exceeded the maximum number of times I can activate my purchased book.


  • Garbage Person

     This happens for college textbooks now. Certain important parts of the book (say, all the problems to work, or certain examples, or on occasion, even more vital things such as ACTUAL TEXT) have been moved to websites secured by a unique serial number. Even more often the textbook manufacturer offers online lab manuals, which the lazier set of teachers tend to like for their automatic grading.

     Of course, a fresh serial is always available for a price such that the amount you paid for the used book, plus the "activation code" is greater than or equal to that of the new book (depending on how good at buying used books you are)



  • @belgariontheking said:

    activation [ is ] usually very poorly implemented

     

    To be more exact,

    Activation is often poorly implemeted to the point where it feels like you are being punished for having bought it.

    I also like Steam.



  •  TRWTF is that you installed GTA4... Hopefully NOT ON VISTA or you might have a bit of BSOD fun!

     

    Ah the woes of securom, internet is a requirement.


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