I'd suggest checking out FF14, actually! I just picked it up a few weeks ago and have been having a blast. Since they redesigned and relaunched it in August, it's actually probably the most fun MMO on the market (at least for me, YMMV)
10, 40, and 100gbps are the ethernet standards generally used in datacenters today. 400gbps would be a reasonable next step for high speed data over copper.
Mine runs Ubuntu quite well, actually. I use it hooked up to triple monitors at work, and can unhook it and take it on the go to have all my documents with me. Pretty useful.
What they're talking about here is the use of Steam as a copy-protection system, which is completely integrated into a game, including the retail "disk" version.
When one installs it from a disk, it first prompts you to either log into steam or make a steam account, and then it installs the purchased game into the Steam folder and activates it on your steam account. The first games to do this were official retail release of Valve games, but since then, many other games have implemented it due to the various advantages of using Steam in your game (good copy protection, Achievements/stats tracking integration, ease of updating, multiplayer server browser, etc).
What they're trying to say, essentially, is that these "other" retail games are promoting their competitors, and they don't like it.
In recent years, this restriction has been relaxed. The Forza Motorsport series in particular has been putting a lot of pressure on companies to allow realistic damage modelling. In Forza Motorsport 2, one could turn on simulation damage to the vehicles that modeled performance problems that would be created by, say, bumping into a wall, even though the visual damage was limited.
In Forza 3, they're also introducing rollover for the cars, which was previously prohibited by licensors, and are introducing even more realistic damage modeling (comes out this fall)
Damage modeling for the cars, all of the cars, is also carefully detailed. And in Forza 3, all 400 cars now include the ability to completely roll over in a race, something no racing game has ever tried before, Greenawalt said.
Getting permission from the 50 manufacturers for this unheard of level of damage modeling was a matter of talking to each individually.
"We go to a manufacturer and say we're a sim and as a sim, cars roll over," Greenawalt said.
So I think car manufacturers are getting somewhat more lenient with these things because they know that fans want to play a racing simulation. And with Forza, at least, if some manufacturer really insists on not having the damage modeling, they just get to not be in the game, and I think most know that would be terrible publicity with all their competitors in there.
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I'd suggest checking out FF14, actually! I just picked it up a few weeks ago and have been having a blast. Since they redesigned and relaunched it in August, it's actually probably the most fun MMO on the market (at least for me, YMMV)
10, 40, and 100gbps are the ethernet standards generally used in datacenters today. 400gbps would be a reasonable next step for high speed data over copper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Gigabit_Ethernet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Gigabit_Ethernet
Mine runs Ubuntu quite well, actually. I use it hooked up to triple monitors at work, and can unhook it and take it on the go to have all my documents with me. Pretty useful.
What they're talking about here is the use of Steam as a copy-protection system, which is completely integrated into a game, including the retail "disk" version. When one installs it from a disk, it first prompts you to either log into steam or make a steam account, and then it installs the purchased game into the Steam folder and activates it on your steam account. The first games to do this were official retail release of Valve games, but since then, many other games have implemented it due to the various advantages of using Steam in your game (good copy protection, Achievements/stats tracking integration, ease of updating, multiplayer server browser, etc). What they're trying to say, essentially, is that these "other" retail games are promoting their competitors, and they don't like it.
In Forza 3, they're also introducing rollover for the cars, which was previously prohibited by licensors, and are introducing even more realistic damage modeling (comes out this fall)
From this article: http://kotaku.com/5284706/forza-3-car-porn-in-motion
Damage modeling for the cars, all of the cars, is also carefully detailed. And in Forza 3, all 400 cars now include the ability to completely roll over in a race, something no racing game has ever tried before, Greenawalt said. Getting permission from the 50 manufacturers for this unheard of level of damage modeling was a matter of talking to each individually. "We go to a manufacturer and say we're a sim and as a sim, cars roll over," Greenawalt said.
So I think car manufacturers are getting somewhat more lenient with these things because they know that fans want to play a racing simulation. And with Forza, at least, if some manufacturer really insists on not having the damage modeling, they just get to not be in the game, and I think most know that would be terrible publicity with all their competitors in there.
I agree as well. I bought an older edition of that four or five years ago, and it has lots of interesting information about all kinds of subjects.