The problem is that there are zero consequences in skimping on components and lots of rewards. The bean counter can demand manufacturing uses caps with bad electrolytic compounds that burst in 6-12 months and render the product useless. If the failure happen when the device is out of warranty, it just means more sales next FY.
There is nothing to counter-balance this, because people will just continue buying stuff even when it has a self destruct mechanism.
The problem is that TIs are "good enough" (IMHO, of course), and have always been at best par for the course. The HP calculators are made to a much higher standard, and even though they are more expensive, for someone who relies on a calculator often it is worth it.
One example is the engineering of the venerable HP-48SX. The memory card didn't just use a card edge connector, it had a well made shutter to protect the contacts when removed from the device. One doesn't see this type of engineering much anymore as the Chinese companies most product makers OEM/ODM to just care enough to do the absolute bare minimum of materials and workmanship so as not to get sued.
True, but they have lost nothing for having such a locked down platform. The fact that they have had -zero- piracy on the PS3 for years is something which draws the PC gaming companies to their platform like flies to fresh meat.
Unfortunately, these days, there is nothing a company will lose by having a locked down platform and everything to gain. Which is ironic. One of the reasons Sony lost the MP3 player game is because they had such Draconian DRM. This caused people to flee from Sony to first Creative, then Apple
Has Sony lost any real battles fought over the PS/3? A guy found a way to the hypervisor, so they zapped the Other OS feature. Someone else has a jailbreak dongle which got stomped out of existence.
I don't see anywhere in this matter where Sony is out any significant profits whatsoever. So far, having the most locked down platform with no usable cracks happening for almost five years, and when one does appear, siccing the lawyers and nuking it from orbit gets rid of it, seems to be a very successful business model. No JB-ed PS3s, no piracy.
So far, what Sony has displayed to the world, and what other companies are emulating is that locking down a device is extremely profitable. Until this fact is changed, we will be seeing more and more devices, be it smartphones, tablet PCs, TVs, and perhaps soon, computers end up walled gardens.
eSATA also offers better RAID support, especially advanced items like hardware RAID 5 or even 6. I have yet to see a hardware RAID solution for USB drives [1].
[1]: This is different from a hardware RAID device having a USB interface.
This is likely why Windows 7 has explicit GPOs to either set USB flash drives read-only, or deny them the ability to mount whatsoever. Other programs that have this functionality are PGP Universal, and Symantec Endpoint Protection.
Now, if MS can put autoplay/autorun to rest six feet under with Clippy and Bob, that would be a good security advance.
People really need to read this, especially if they have a CHL in Texas. One guy in Austin thought he could allegedly open fire on someone else because of road rage. Big mistake -- assault with a deadly weapon charges are pending.
For a lot of people, going on the run for a long time will be extremely difficult. It either requires family who is willing to hide someone for that long, a lot of money to bribe people into shutting up and not ratting the person out, finding a chunk of land where people are not going to be on for 7 years (and if it isn't people, it would be the occasional plane with IR going by overhead) or being able to jack it to another country. Even in another country, unless someone blends in completely (as in being born there), people will wonder and maybe check the Internet to see if they can snag a bounty on the person. This applies if extradition treaties are in force or not, because bounty hunters can grab their catch anywhere.
In the scheme of things, $150k isn't that much especially over the time it takes for the statute of limitations to expire. If it were in the seven digits, maybe he could have bought some people off in another country (making sure they get more money than what they would get by handing him over to the authorities.)
Careful with desiccants. Eventually as time goes on, some of them get wet. If they are in contact with anything that can get moldy or corroded, it will cause damage. Instead, put the water adsorbing stuff at the bottom of the sealed pipe, then some spacers, then the items you want to have there. This way, the wet stuff remains at the bottom, while the valuables stay dry and relatively oxygen free.
Where I live, there are "gold consultants" [1] whose job it is to advise clients of potential hiding spots to put the shiny stuff so burglars cannot find it [2]. Of course, they are not told where the bullion is placed, that is for the homeowner. I've seen some separate the places listed into easy access, medium access, and hard to get. Easy access would be the kitchen cabinet space. Medium access would be between the studs, shoved in there during a drywall repair. Hard access would be buried somewhere. Not buried as in a couple feet, but buried as in 10-20 feet under the ground with a pier and beam deck covering it. This way, it likely won't ever be discovered, even by people who are determined to find it.
[1]: Ironically the same guys were doing this stuff during 1999 because of y2k panic. Same sales pitches.
[2]: A lot of consultants use FUD and tell people that owning gold bullion will be illegal soon, which gets people to open their wallets for them.
Very true. There are two sides to PC gaming: On one hand, we have the indies who actually value the PC platform. DRM is minimal to none, and the game is about playability than anything else. No, they won't have the insane poly count a big name title has, but they have the gameplay and the game is well debugged so it won't randomly crash on startup, or just blue-screen people's machines because of brain dead DX calls. Some companies actually use OpenGL so their works can run on operating systems other than Windows (what a concept!)
Then we have the big named DRM packages that happen to have a game bundled with them. Had the money for the latest obnoxious DRM system been spent for QA, maybe it would not be forgotten in a quarter or so. Of course the big names produce stuff that lags in sales, so they blame it on "piracy", cut back further on PC release quality, add more DRM, and put more effort into consoles. Vicious circle here. I just hope that the big names that do this either cut out of the PC market entirely and leave it to Blizzard, ID, Valve, and the indies to keep putting out releases that are not just playable and salable now, but are worth buying years from now.
If they want to stay in the market, have a CD key system to keep the pirates from being able to use network resources. It will only be a matter of time before the DRM gets patched out anyway, so might as well not bother and put the cash to use in other places. I'm just hoping EA doesn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs and add obnoxious DRM to "Neverwinter". DRM would be the biggest reason I'd cancel a preorder of a title.
Say Apple charged 30% of the price for distributing OS X applications (not apps).
For a lot of software companies, that would make life easy. They would not have to worry about an infrastructure to keep people notified about updates, nor worry about buying bandwidth for app update downloads, nor worry about having have a download site (or physical boxes.) Advertisement is easy -- just tell people to go look at FooApplication in the App Store, and be done with it. You have a single source to write demos and limited versions.
Of course, essentially we are talking about Steam here, so the exact issues with Steam would apply, such as what would happen to purchased software if Valve goes out of business or shuts their servers down?
iOS is great for devices, but why would Jobs retool that instead of just using OS X for servers?
Obligatory car example: It would be like taking the aluminum V-10 from a Viper for a new freight hauling vehicle, as opposed to the cast iron V-10 from a Dodge RAM which is made for high torque and hauling as opposed to racing.
I was thinking the same thing, but adding a couple things as well, other than sprucing the graphic tiles up:
1: Ability to have a central character server and area servers. This way, a PW could be spread out on multiple machines, each serving up a lot of areas. This sort of can be done, but it essentially means exporting the characters to another PW, as opposed to being on the same PW and chatting with people, but in a different area.
2: Ability to use a SQL backend natively. This was sort of grafted in, but it would be nice to have the ability to use dedicated MySQL or PostgreSQL servers for ease of backups, as well as ease of recovering in case the server crashes.
3: Better control of doors. Once a door gets destroyed, it stays that way and can't respawn. Ideally, it would be nice to be able to repop items like that.
4: Better ability to offer downloads and updates, such as custom tiles, movies, and such, while making sure to filter any content which could be turned into executable code for an exploit.
5: A standard way of packaging client info for a PW in a non-executable format, preferably a ZIP file with an XML manifest, with the ability to PGP/gpg sign it. This way, the game can take the client data and store it without having to rely on potentially damaging executables.
Wasn't elf/halfling/dwarf as a class in the original D&D, as opposed to the Advanced rules? The original D&D came as boxes with softcover books, while the AD&D rules were hardbound. Then between 1 and 2ed AD&D, another release of the D&D rules came out that split things up into basic (levels 1-3), intermediate (4-6), etc.
The way to tell the difference between D&D and AD&D was alignment. If someone was lawful, that was D&D. If they were lawful-good, or chaotic-neutral, that was AD&D.
I still have the 1st ed AD&D books (somewhere), and there, other races could have classes, except there were level caps on everyone but humans, and half-elves.
The cool thing about 1E AD&D... there were no punches pulled. Death was common, and pretty much, death was permanent [1], and stupidity was lethal. You would be lucky if you "just" ran into a basilisk and the cleric could drag the statues out and then cast stone to flesh. Each room you advanced into, you had the thief scan for traps (using a mirror to check first for the gorgon). One mistake here and everyone would end up dead or captured (and the DM fires up his "party is captured" campaign.)
[1] Unless everyone was high level and had either a magic-user that could cast wish or alter reality (aging that magic-user a year or two), or a high level cleric that could cast resurrection. The wish was better because it meant no permanent loss on the CON stat, but one had to be VERY good at wording the wish spell, especially with a DM who would twist it any way possible.
What made NWN 1 a game where I bought multiple copies of (one per computer) were seven things:
1: The DRM or lack thereof. The CD protection got patched out, and a valid and unique CD key was needed to play multiplayer. This by itself made the game worth installing and buying multiple copies of, because they actually considered gamers as (WTF) paying customers, and not potential thieves. What a concept that is unheard of these days. I use NWN1's implementation of DRM and its exceedingly low piracy statistics as an example of how a game should be shipped. Why spend time on local DRM when that will be cracked anyway? Just have a valid/unique key for the network stuff to ensure people who paid their tickets can access that and spend the money that would have gone for DRM on making the game better.
2: The forums were not just active, but Bioware reps were very common and extremely helpful. Had a question about scripting? It was answered immediately with well thought out answers.
3: The sheer amount of very well done player written modules. There were easily thousands of modules worth playing.
4: Persistent worlds. This reminded me of the MUDs of yore, where they had a relatively small player base, but everyone knew each other and actually roleplayed. Newcomers were always welcome, and if they had any ability to interact with others, they usually found a place in the world.
5: NWN1 did not feel as it was rushed out the door unlike modern games which feel like early betas. The campaigns were of a decent length, (although I miss the detailed story of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2,) the tools to build modules and/or a PW were well documented and very good, and it was easy to add "hackpacks" or additional models or tile sets. The expansions were well worth getting.
6: NWN1 ran not just on Windows, but Mac and Linux. I had a PW server happily running on a Linux box for a long time. To boot, all three were patched at the same time, rather than having one platform languish. Other than Blizzard, every other game company gives lip service at best to Macs and just laughs loudly if asked for Linux support.
7: NWN1 was constantly updated, even years after the expansions. These days, you might see *one* update to a game, then it is scooted to the wayside and all development effort put into making another sequel.
My hope:
Maybe I'm wishing on a star here, but I hope Neverwinter harkens back to NWN1 in being a game that is timeless in the sense that even years down the line, people still buy the game for the player written modules or the persistent worlds.
If Neverwinter came out with only a CD key as copy protection, a good way to find player modules to download, a strong multiplayer server finder network, top notch editing tools for PWs and modules, vibrant game forums, and perhaps even some contests to get people to write modules, I'm sure it will do quite well over a long period of time, where other games would be long forgotten.
Being in IT, there are some concepts that just stand the test of time, regardless if it was the 90s and working with IRIX or today where one is using Nexus switches as SAN heads:
1: The concept of production equipment. This is a fact that a lot of people don't understand. Production machines don't get packages du jour installed on them. Any changes are well documented both to help other co-workers as well as for CYA reasons. This is a concept that a lot of people don't get until well-bloodied in the IT arenas. There is a reason why xroach and xbaby are likely not present on the production SAP cluster, and it is a good one.
2: The concept of the fact that sometimes a commercial product has a price tag, but it will more than pay for itself with time and effort saved. For example, I can cobble a backup solution together with rsync that all the machines on a network can dump to a device. Or I can use a chargeable backup product like Networker, NetBackup, TSM, or another utility that can do D2D2T, keep track of what media is where, generate recovery plans, ensure media is encrypted, and keep track of the rotation of media coming and going from Iron Maiden's offsite facility. For production critical stuff, the commercial program may cost a lot, but if deployed correctly, will be worth the price tag.
3: The concept of OS agnosticism. Yes, a person may like a certain platform, but in IT, various operating systems are best for different tasks.
4: Basic data center stuff. Don't store your beer in the CRAC ducts. Don't lift up the molly guard on the EPO switch as a joke because there is a chance of getting bumped and falling into it. Put the raised floor tiles back so the other people don't fall down. Don't use your tongue on the Ethernet cables to check for carrier because it corrodes contacts. Don't bring the 44 ounce Big Guzzles with lids that are not firmly in place. Same with uncovered coffee mugs. Don't stand on the racks to try to get something at the ceiling. Don't haul a 400 pound rack of Sun equipment with multiple disk arrays up the stairs because the elevator is slow. This is common sense stuff, but there are people who don't get this, and there is nothing worse than sitting in a server room as the room goes absolutely silent, since someone mashed the EPO button on a dare.
5: Common courtesy. Yes, someone may have root/Admin access, but if they are on systems they don't own trying to fix stuff, it causes big problems due to communication. If someone is on a system that isn't "theirs" and spots an issue, try communicating first.
6: Stuff changes. The days of remembering how easy and BSD-like SunOS 4.1.4 are long since past. Same with the days of SONET, dual-ring FDDI, ATM rings, and 4/16 mbps token ring networks. One has to adapt, remember the old stuff fondly, and realize that those technologies are history, replaced by Solaris, switched core/edge fabric, and cat 6a drops.
7: The ability to spend time wisely. There may be some issue that comes up that may take a lot of time to solve. However, it might be that that has to be handed over to someone else, or *GASP* company tech support must be called. Time for an IT person is precious, so tinkering with a problem may be fun, but it may land one into hot water as other things are left unfinished.
DRM writers can write drivers; they can be cracked. DRM writers can use hardware dongles; they can be virtualized. DRM writers can demand use of servers; the servers can be emulated. DRM writers can download items in pieces; the chunks can be put together via snapshots of a filesystem and memory.
For every item, there is a counter. Every dime spent on more Draconian DRM means a dime less spent on making the game suck less. And to me, some of the big PC companies which sell DRM with a game attached needs to start spending their cash on quality of releases, not new DRM schemes which will get cracked anyway.
If the big names go away and leave the PC gaming industry, that would be good for PC gaming as a whole. We would see indies take over and fill the vacuum with original IP, and not just another FPS sequel.
Piracy? NWN1 did something which did well at stopping piracy in the long term, and that was eventually chucking the CD-ROM DRM and requiring a valid and unique CD key to play multiplayer. No matter what, the pirates will be cracking the game anyway, might as well just keep them from using network services which legit players would use. This is a simple DRM mechanism, and it does an excellent job long term.
Already, the big names treat the PC platform like crap. Might as well just show them the door, let them have the uber locked down console market, and let Blizzard, ID, and indies with something original to write take over.
It raises the bar though, and makes for offenses that can be charged if the person doing credit card fraud is caught.
A physical example. If a bike is leaning against a wall, that is just a mere theft. If it has a crappy lock, it is theft and property destruction. If the bike has a good lock and is locked to a parking meter in such a way that it can't be lifted off, then some thief cuts off the parking meter head, the thief is now facing larceny charges, as well as destruction of state/federal property. Similar with keeping things behind a display case. Smashing glass to grab something usually gets a lot more charges than grabbing something off a rack and bolting for the door.
I agree though -- nothing is 100%, but this makes fraudsters have to do more work, and potentially face more jail time if caught.
Every visa gift card I've encountered requires a lot of identifying info that gets cross-referenced. Give a wrong name? Good luck trying to use the card for the next purchase. The days of anonymous visa cards are long gone.
Sprint is working on 4G WiMax, which is a completely different thing than LTE. Everyone else (Verizon, AT&T) are going to be moving to LTE, and Sprint [1] has made random mentions of supporting LTE eventually as well. T-Mobile is going to be moving to LTE, but as of now, they are getting their "3.5G" stuff[2] out there in the interim.
My hope: The cell companies get a ton of tower sharing agreements and get LTE deployed widely. Not just metro areas, but in the sticks where I get almost no coverage, or if I do get coverage, it will be GPRS. This way, we can dispense with devices that have two versions of GSM 3G, CDMA devices with no R/UIM, iDen stuff, and just have phones that "just work" regardless of provider.
[1]: Sprint has a lot of wireless networks. CDMA, GSM (for people traveling abroad with "world phones" that have dual radios), iDEN, WiMax, and LTE. Just the fact they have so much real estate makes them going to be in business 5-10 years from now.
[2]: It can be argued that HSPA+ is faster than Sprint's WiMax. The main differences is that HSPA+ has two channels, one for voice, and one for data, and 4G does VoIP and puts everything as data.
Stepping around the mess of who writes drivers, there is another item here, and that is best interests:
Video card makers want to just get drivers good enough to sell the card, hope that not too many people have crashes. Otherwise, drivers have absolutely no ROI and are a cost center to the PHBs. So, it is in the video card maker's best interest to do just enough to get the card working, and then move software development to the next card about to go on the store shelves. Any cash spent writing fixes for already sold products is cash wasted (thus speaketh the MBAs who have passed ITIL/ITSM, but forgot that class in real life.)
Apple wants their machines to work, and work perfectly each time, ever time. Because there are far fewer models of Macs than there are of PCs to be tested, Apple has far less money that needs to be spent on making sure the drivers work right with their OS, and the model of card is chosen from the ground up to be Mac-friendly with support for EFI BIOS.
So, there is a bit of a conflict of interest here. This does explain why Apple chooses to write its own drivers.
I am going to be a devil's advocate here, but that might be a good thing:
One of the strongest selling points about Apple is that there there are only two points of contact for most things, perhaps even a single point for everything, as opposed to the endless transfers between hardware, software, OS, application, and driver vendors that one gets on other platforms. Apple being the one that writes the drivers means that the customer doesn't have to figure out whose fault it is (Apple's or nVidia's) if there is a crash, it is just one number to call.
I wish Google would build WaveSecure's functionality into the OS itself. Android needs remote wipe capability for it to get any type of foothold in the enterprise market, and it has none standard. Motoblur has that option, but that is essentially a third party program.
Maybe Google can even toss in some encryption too, for both the SD card and where the user data is stored. dm-crypt is present in the Linux kernel of 2.6 and could be easily used when the device first initializes. The key can be kept in one partition and perhaps be able to be backed up, while the encrypted user data would be kept in an encrypted partition. SD card data can either be encrypted on a file basis using EncFS, or on a block level using LUKS/dm-crypt. Then, all it would take to ensure all data is inaccessible to an intruder is to repeatedly zero out (preferably with the TRIM command) the area where the key is stored, then re-initialize a new key.
Linux can do this quite easily. It is just beyond me why this functionality has not found its way into Android. The only encryption Android offers is in 2.2 where apps are encrypted if they are stored on the SD card.
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The problem is that there are zero consequences in skimping on components and lots of rewards. The bean counter can demand manufacturing uses caps with bad electrolytic compounds that burst in 6-12 months and render the product useless. If the failure happen when the device is out of warranty, it just means more sales next FY.
There is nothing to counter-balance this, because people will just continue buying stuff even when it has a self destruct mechanism.
The problem is that TIs are "good enough" (IMHO, of course), and have always been at best par for the course. The HP calculators are made to a much higher standard, and even though they are more expensive, for someone who relies on a calculator often it is worth it.
One example is the engineering of the venerable HP-48SX. The memory card didn't just use a card edge connector, it had a well made shutter to protect the contacts when removed from the device. One doesn't see this type of engineering much anymore as the Chinese companies most product makers OEM/ODM to just care enough to do the absolute bare minimum of materials and workmanship so as not to get sued.
True, but they have lost nothing for having such a locked down platform. The fact that they have had -zero- piracy on the PS3 for years is something which draws the PC gaming companies to their platform like flies to fresh meat.
Unfortunately, these days, there is nothing a company will lose by having a locked down platform and everything to gain. Which is ironic. One of the reasons Sony lost the MP3 player game is because they had such Draconian DRM. This caused people to flee from Sony to first Creative, then Apple
Devil advocate here:
Has Sony lost any real battles fought over the PS/3? A guy found a way to the hypervisor, so they zapped the Other OS feature. Someone else has a jailbreak dongle which got stomped out of existence.
I don't see anywhere in this matter where Sony is out any significant profits whatsoever. So far, having the most locked down platform with no usable cracks happening for almost five years, and when one does appear, siccing the lawyers and nuking it from orbit gets rid of it, seems to be a very successful business model. No JB-ed PS3s, no piracy.
So far, what Sony has displayed to the world, and what other companies are emulating is that locking down a device is extremely profitable. Until this fact is changed, we will be seeing more and more devices, be it smartphones, tablet PCs, TVs, and perhaps soon, computers end up walled gardens.
eSATA also offers better RAID support, especially advanced items like hardware RAID 5 or even 6. I have yet to see a hardware RAID solution for USB drives [1].
[1]: This is different from a hardware RAID device having a USB interface.
This is likely why Windows 7 has explicit GPOs to either set USB flash drives read-only, or deny them the ability to mount whatsoever. Other programs that have this functionality are PGP Universal, and Symantec Endpoint Protection.
Now, if MS can put autoplay/autorun to rest six feet under with Clippy and Bob, that would be a good security advance.
http://www.rc123.com/texas_castle_doctrine.html
People really need to read this, especially if they have a CHL in Texas. One guy in Austin thought he could allegedly open fire on someone else because of road rage. Big mistake -- assault with a deadly weapon charges are pending.
For a lot of people, going on the run for a long time will be extremely difficult. It either requires family who is willing to hide someone for that long, a lot of money to bribe people into shutting up and not ratting the person out, finding a chunk of land where people are not going to be on for 7 years (and if it isn't people, it would be the occasional plane with IR going by overhead) or being able to jack it to another country. Even in another country, unless someone blends in completely (as in being born there), people will wonder and maybe check the Internet to see if they can snag a bounty on the person. This applies if extradition treaties are in force or not, because bounty hunters can grab their catch anywhere.
In the scheme of things, $150k isn't that much especially over the time it takes for the statute of limitations to expire. If it were in the seven digits, maybe he could have bought some people off in another country (making sure they get more money than what they would get by handing him over to the authorities.)
Careful with desiccants. Eventually as time goes on, some of them get wet. If they are in contact with anything that can get moldy or corroded, it will cause damage. Instead, put the water adsorbing stuff at the bottom of the sealed pipe, then some spacers, then the items you want to have there. This way, the wet stuff remains at the bottom, while the valuables stay dry and relatively oxygen free.
Where I live, there are "gold consultants" [1] whose job it is to advise clients of potential hiding spots to put the shiny stuff so burglars cannot find it [2]. Of course, they are not told where the bullion is placed, that is for the homeowner. I've seen some separate the places listed into easy access, medium access, and hard to get. Easy access would be the kitchen cabinet space. Medium access would be between the studs, shoved in there during a drywall repair. Hard access would be buried somewhere. Not buried as in a couple feet, but buried as in 10-20 feet under the ground with a pier and beam deck covering it. This way, it likely won't ever be discovered, even by people who are determined to find it.
[1]: Ironically the same guys were doing this stuff during 1999 because of y2k panic. Same sales pitches.
[2]: A lot of consultants use FUD and tell people that owning gold bullion will be illegal soon, which gets people to open their wallets for them.
Very true. There are two sides to PC gaming: On one hand, we have the indies who actually value the PC platform. DRM is minimal to none, and the game is about playability than anything else. No, they won't have the insane poly count a big name title has, but they have the gameplay and the game is well debugged so it won't randomly crash on startup, or just blue-screen people's machines because of brain dead DX calls. Some companies actually use OpenGL so their works can run on operating systems other than Windows (what a concept!)
Then we have the big named DRM packages that happen to have a game bundled with them. Had the money for the latest obnoxious DRM system been spent for QA, maybe it would not be forgotten in a quarter or so. Of course the big names produce stuff that lags in sales, so they blame it on "piracy", cut back further on PC release quality, add more DRM, and put more effort into consoles. Vicious circle here. I just hope that the big names that do this either cut out of the PC market entirely and leave it to Blizzard, ID, Valve, and the indies to keep putting out releases that are not just playable and salable now, but are worth buying years from now.
If they want to stay in the market, have a CD key system to keep the pirates from being able to use network resources. It will only be a matter of time before the DRM gets patched out anyway, so might as well not bother and put the cash to use in other places. I'm just hoping EA doesn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs and add obnoxious DRM to "Neverwinter". DRM would be the biggest reason I'd cancel a preorder of a title.
Say Apple charged 30% of the price for distributing OS X applications (not apps).
For a lot of software companies, that would make life easy. They would not have to worry about an infrastructure to keep people notified about updates, nor worry about buying bandwidth for app update downloads, nor worry about having have a download site (or physical boxes.) Advertisement is easy -- just tell people to go look at FooApplication in the App Store, and be done with it. You have a single source to write demos and limited versions.
Of course, essentially we are talking about Steam here, so the exact issues with Steam would apply, such as what would happen to purchased software if Valve goes out of business or shuts their servers down?
iOS is great for devices, but why would Jobs retool that instead of just using OS X for servers?
Obligatory car example: It would be like taking the aluminum V-10 from a Viper for a new freight hauling vehicle, as opposed to the cast iron V-10 from a Dodge RAM which is made for high torque and hauling as opposed to racing.
I was thinking the same thing, but adding a couple things as well, other than sprucing the graphic tiles up:
1: Ability to have a central character server and area servers. This way, a PW could be spread out on multiple machines, each serving up a lot of areas. This sort of can be done, but it essentially means exporting the characters to another PW, as opposed to being on the same PW and chatting with people, but in a different area.
2: Ability to use a SQL backend natively. This was sort of grafted in, but it would be nice to have the ability to use dedicated MySQL or PostgreSQL servers for ease of backups, as well as ease of recovering in case the server crashes.
3: Better control of doors. Once a door gets destroyed, it stays that way and can't respawn. Ideally, it would be nice to be able to repop items like that.
4: Better ability to offer downloads and updates, such as custom tiles, movies, and such, while making sure to filter any content which could be turned into executable code for an exploit.
5: A standard way of packaging client info for a PW in a non-executable format, preferably a ZIP file with an XML manifest, with the ability to PGP/gpg sign it. This way, the game can take the client data and store it without having to rely on potentially damaging executables.
Wasn't elf/halfling/dwarf as a class in the original D&D, as opposed to the Advanced rules? The original D&D came as boxes with softcover books, while the AD&D rules were hardbound. Then between 1 and 2ed AD&D, another release of the D&D rules came out that split things up into basic (levels 1-3), intermediate (4-6), etc.
The way to tell the difference between D&D and AD&D was alignment. If someone was lawful, that was D&D. If they were lawful-good, or chaotic-neutral, that was AD&D.
I still have the 1st ed AD&D books (somewhere), and there, other races could have classes, except there were level caps on everyone but humans, and half-elves.
The cool thing about 1E AD&D... there were no punches pulled. Death was common, and pretty much, death was permanent [1], and stupidity was lethal. You would be lucky if you "just" ran into a basilisk and the cleric could drag the statues out and then cast stone to flesh. Each room you advanced into, you had the thief scan for traps (using a mirror to check first for the gorgon). One mistake here and everyone would end up dead or captured (and the DM fires up his "party is captured" campaign.)
[1] Unless everyone was high level and had either a magic-user that could cast wish or alter reality (aging that magic-user a year or two), or a high level cleric that could cast resurrection. The wish was better because it meant no permanent loss on the CON stat, but one had to be VERY good at wording the wish spell, especially with a DM who would twist it any way possible.
What made NWN 1 a game where I bought multiple copies of (one per computer) were seven things:
1: The DRM or lack thereof. The CD protection got patched out, and a valid and unique CD key was needed to play multiplayer. This by itself made the game worth installing and buying multiple copies of, because they actually considered gamers as (WTF) paying customers, and not potential thieves. What a concept that is unheard of these days. I use NWN1's implementation of DRM and its exceedingly low piracy statistics as an example of how a game should be shipped. Why spend time on local DRM when that will be cracked anyway? Just have a valid/unique key for the network stuff to ensure people who paid their tickets can access that and spend the money that would have gone for DRM on making the game better.
2: The forums were not just active, but Bioware reps were very common and extremely helpful. Had a question about scripting? It was answered immediately with well thought out answers.
3: The sheer amount of very well done player written modules. There were easily thousands of modules worth playing.
4: Persistent worlds. This reminded me of the MUDs of yore, where they had a relatively small player base, but everyone knew each other and actually roleplayed. Newcomers were always welcome, and if they had any ability to interact with others, they usually found a place in the world.
5: NWN1 did not feel as it was rushed out the door unlike modern games which feel like early betas. The campaigns were of a decent length, (although I miss the detailed story of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2,) the tools to build modules and/or a PW were well documented and very good, and it was easy to add "hackpacks" or additional models or tile sets. The expansions were well worth getting.
6: NWN1 ran not just on Windows, but Mac and Linux. I had a PW server happily running on a Linux box for a long time. To boot, all three were patched at the same time, rather than having one platform languish. Other than Blizzard, every other game company gives lip service at best to Macs and just laughs loudly if asked for Linux support.
7: NWN1 was constantly updated, even years after the expansions. These days, you might see *one* update to a game, then it is scooted to the wayside and all development effort put into making another sequel.
My hope:
Maybe I'm wishing on a star here, but I hope Neverwinter harkens back to NWN1 in being a game that is timeless in the sense that even years down the line, people still buy the game for the player written modules or the persistent worlds.
If Neverwinter came out with only a CD key as copy protection, a good way to find player modules to download, a strong multiplayer server finder network, top notch editing tools for PWs and modules, vibrant game forums, and perhaps even some contests to get people to write modules, I'm sure it will do quite well over a long period of time, where other games would be long forgotten.
Being in IT, there are some concepts that just stand the test of time, regardless if it was the 90s and working with IRIX or today where one is using Nexus switches as SAN heads:
1: The concept of production equipment. This is a fact that a lot of people don't understand. Production machines don't get packages du jour installed on them. Any changes are well documented both to help other co-workers as well as for CYA reasons. This is a concept that a lot of people don't get until well-bloodied in the IT arenas. There is a reason why xroach and xbaby are likely not present on the production SAP cluster, and it is a good one.
2: The concept of the fact that sometimes a commercial product has a price tag, but it will more than pay for itself with time and effort saved. For example, I can cobble a backup solution together with rsync that all the machines on a network can dump to a device. Or I can use a chargeable backup product like Networker, NetBackup, TSM, or another utility that can do D2D2T, keep track of what media is where, generate recovery plans, ensure media is encrypted, and keep track of the rotation of media coming and going from Iron Maiden's offsite facility. For production critical stuff, the commercial program may cost a lot, but if deployed correctly, will be worth the price tag.
3: The concept of OS agnosticism. Yes, a person may like a certain platform, but in IT, various operating systems are best for different tasks.
4: Basic data center stuff. Don't store your beer in the CRAC ducts. Don't lift up the molly guard on the EPO switch as a joke because there is a chance of getting bumped and falling into it. Put the raised floor tiles back so the other people don't fall down. Don't use your tongue on the Ethernet cables to check for carrier because it corrodes contacts. Don't bring the 44 ounce Big Guzzles with lids that are not firmly in place. Same with uncovered coffee mugs. Don't stand on the racks to try to get something at the ceiling. Don't haul a 400 pound rack of Sun equipment with multiple disk arrays up the stairs because the elevator is slow. This is common sense stuff, but there are people who don't get this, and there is nothing worse than sitting in a server room as the room goes absolutely silent, since someone mashed the EPO button on a dare.
5: Common courtesy. Yes, someone may have root/Admin access, but if they are on systems they don't own trying to fix stuff, it causes big problems due to communication. If someone is on a system that isn't "theirs" and spots an issue, try communicating first.
6: Stuff changes. The days of remembering how easy and BSD-like SunOS 4.1.4 are long since past. Same with the days of SONET, dual-ring FDDI, ATM rings, and 4/16 mbps token ring networks. One has to adapt, remember the old stuff fondly, and realize that those technologies are history, replaced by Solaris, switched core/edge fabric, and cat 6a drops.
7: The ability to spend time wisely. There may be some issue that comes up that may take a lot of time to solve. However, it might be that that has to be handed over to someone else, or *GASP* company tech support must be called. Time for an IT person is precious, so tinkering with a problem may be fun, but it may land one into hot water as other things are left unfinished.
None of this stuff is taught in a classroom.
Don't forget:
DRM writers can write drivers; they can be cracked.
DRM writers can use hardware dongles; they can be virtualized.
DRM writers can demand use of servers; the servers can be emulated.
DRM writers can download items in pieces; the chunks can be put together via snapshots of a filesystem and memory.
For every item, there is a counter. Every dime spent on more Draconian DRM means a dime less spent on making the game suck less. And to me, some of the big PC companies which sell DRM with a game attached needs to start spending their cash on quality of releases, not new DRM schemes which will get cracked anyway.
If the big names go away and leave the PC gaming industry, that would be good for PC gaming as a whole. We would see indies take over and fill the vacuum with original IP, and not just another FPS sequel.
Piracy? NWN1 did something which did well at stopping piracy in the long term, and that was eventually chucking the CD-ROM DRM and requiring a valid and unique CD key to play multiplayer. No matter what, the pirates will be cracking the game anyway, might as well just keep them from using network services which legit players would use. This is a simple DRM mechanism, and it does an excellent job long term.
Already, the big names treat the PC platform like crap. Might as well just show them the door, let them have the uber locked down console market, and let Blizzard, ID, and indies with something original to write take over.
It raises the bar though, and makes for offenses that can be charged if the person doing credit card fraud is caught.
A physical example. If a bike is leaning against a wall, that is just a mere theft. If it has a crappy lock, it is theft and property destruction. If the bike has a good lock and is locked to a parking meter in such a way that it can't be lifted off, then some thief cuts off the parking meter head, the thief is now facing larceny charges, as well as destruction of state/federal property. Similar with keeping things behind a display case. Smashing glass to grab something usually gets a lot more charges than grabbing something off a rack and bolting for the door.
I agree though -- nothing is 100%, but this makes fraudsters have to do more work, and potentially face more jail time if caught.
Every visa gift card I've encountered requires a lot of identifying info that gets cross-referenced. Give a wrong name? Good luck trying to use the card for the next purchase. The days of anonymous visa cards are long gone.
Sprint is working on 4G WiMax, which is a completely different thing than LTE. Everyone else (Verizon, AT&T) are going to be moving to LTE, and Sprint [1] has made random mentions of supporting LTE eventually as well. T-Mobile is going to be moving to LTE, but as of now, they are getting their "3.5G" stuff[2] out there in the interim.
My hope: The cell companies get a ton of tower sharing agreements and get LTE deployed widely. Not just metro areas, but in the sticks where I get almost no coverage, or if I do get coverage, it will be GPRS. This way, we can dispense with devices that have two versions of GSM 3G, CDMA devices with no R/UIM, iDen stuff, and just have phones that "just work" regardless of provider.
[1]: Sprint has a lot of wireless networks. CDMA, GSM (for people traveling abroad with "world phones" that have dual radios), iDEN, WiMax, and LTE. Just the fact they have so much real estate makes them going to be in business 5-10 years from now.
[2]: It can be argued that HSPA+ is faster than Sprint's WiMax. The main differences is that HSPA+ has two channels, one for voice, and one for data, and 4G does VoIP and puts everything as data.
Stepping around the mess of who writes drivers, there is another item here, and that is best interests:
Video card makers want to just get drivers good enough to sell the card, hope that not too many people have crashes. Otherwise, drivers have absolutely no ROI and are a cost center to the PHBs. So, it is in the video card maker's best interest to do just enough to get the card working, and then move software development to the next card about to go on the store shelves. Any cash spent writing fixes for already sold products is cash wasted (thus speaketh the MBAs who have passed ITIL/ITSM, but forgot that class in real life.)
Apple wants their machines to work, and work perfectly each time, ever time. Because there are far fewer models of Macs than there are of PCs to be tested, Apple has far less money that needs to be spent on making sure the drivers work right with their OS, and the model of card is chosen from the ground up to be Mac-friendly with support for EFI BIOS.
So, there is a bit of a conflict of interest here. This does explain why Apple chooses to write its own drivers.
I am going to be a devil's advocate here, but that might be a good thing:
One of the strongest selling points about Apple is that there there are only two points of contact for most things, perhaps even a single point for everything, as opposed to the endless transfers between hardware, software, OS, application, and driver vendors that one gets on other platforms. Apple being the one that writes the drivers means that the customer doesn't have to figure out whose fault it is (Apple's or nVidia's) if there is a crash, it is just one number to call.
I wish Google would build WaveSecure's functionality into the OS itself. Android needs remote wipe capability for it to get any type of foothold in the enterprise market, and it has none standard. Motoblur has that option, but that is essentially a third party program.
Maybe Google can even toss in some encryption too, for both the SD card and where the user data is stored. dm-crypt is present in the Linux kernel of 2.6 and could be easily used when the device first initializes. The key can be kept in one partition and perhaps be able to be backed up, while the encrypted user data would be kept in an encrypted partition. SD card data can either be encrypted on a file basis using EncFS, or on a block level using LUKS/dm-crypt. Then, all it would take to ensure all data is inaccessible to an intruder is to repeatedly zero out (preferably with the TRIM command) the area where the key is stored, then re-initialize a new key.
Linux can do this quite easily. It is just beyond me why this functionality has not found its way into Android. The only encryption Android offers is in 2.2 where apps are encrypted if they are stored on the SD card.