But in the end you are still renting games that come with a remote kill switch.
That's nonsense. If the servers go down, I can still play whatever is currently installed that is non-multiplayer. Reinstalling stuff will be a tad difficult, but that's the nature of any medium. DVD damaged -> no reinstall. Steam servers down -> no reinstall. There's a higher likelyhood that your DVDs will get damaged than the Steam servers going down - probably by 50x or more. But if they do go down, it hits ALL your games, so it is a gamble.
I use steam because it's the only store where I can get awesome prices on games. Most game developers seemed to want to milk online distribution for money in the past, but Steam seems to be a fan of 75-90% off sales. Psychonauts for $2, Titan Quest + expansion for $4.99... this week has been good to me.:P
I also like GOG. GOG is the best - though usually steam has even cheaper sale prices. DRM that results in lower prices - am I imagining that?
I like Steam.
Re:right, so it doesn't matter in terms of sales
on
Game Industry Vets On DRM
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Oh, so if anyone treats you like shit they forfeit their rights to their stuff?
Methinks the law isn't on your side. And neither are ethics.
BTW, I have a collection of 150+ legally bought original games in my k'nex game holding tower.
Also, five paperweights from EA and Sega. Mostly EA.
And unfortunately, I have to use pirate copies of about a dozen games.
Once I have a working crack then and ONLY then will I buy, because I am frankly tired of shelling out $50+ for a paperweight I can even return when it is defective by design!
I regret buying Universe at War: Earth Assault for $5.
You don't use every part of your brain for every thought.
Plus... electronics are faster. Even a hundred million "neurons" firing at several ghz would give us a run for our money.
The real question is - if we break past the ghz barrier, how smart will AIs be? When we're finally able to simulate a hundred minds on a single CPU, what happens when you make it just one mind? One mind with perfect math skills, and the creativity to use them...
I've noted that the clock on the wall is ticking faster than it did when I was 10. It's deeply ingrained in my mind - oh how I hated that endless ticking.
I've thought for close to a decade now that our perception of time slows down as we age. It brings up some interesting ideas for Sci-Fi - an AI could easily have a perception of time hundreds to thousands of times faster than our own. Oh how the days would go on. Plenty of time to dream up things!
Before I got a UPS, I had my power cut out or surge from time to time. On two separate occasions files were being written when my computer shut off, and got stuck in a strange not-a-file not-a-dir state. The files and their parent folders could not be deleted, but I could format the partition to clear them. One happened to be in my temp folder, which is how I first discovered the issue.
As long as power is restored shortly, SSDs are supposed to complete the write... or is that only server grade ones? Either way, SRAM holds data longer than DRAM, so if the controller is programmed to, there's a chance it'll work.
Those JMicron drives were absolutely horrible - 4KiB of SRAM cache, later doubled to 8KiB? Even Intel's lowest end SSDs have 256KiB, plus another 32MiB of RAM for caching the locations of free spots to write files.
Oh, btw - the cache has to be SRAM so that if the power goes out, it can write the files when it comes back on. SSDs absolutely must have a RAM cache so that they can efficiently locate places to write files, or they will stall while the controller tries to locate one. That's why the low end controllers perform so horribly in random write.
But now even the worst controllers aren't too bad. If I remember right JMicron's newest low-end controller has 128KiB of cache, and there are cheap Intel knockoff SSDs coming out that perform decently. (same controller, but less RAM cache and less space) If what you want is blazing fast loadtimes in games, they aren't bad options, but they're still slower than a fast HDD and have way less space.
r wealthy people? If the government subsidizes heavily so that average people can buy this particular car then you have to explain why the government should be in the business of picking winners and losers in the market for private automobiles.
Hey - shut up. Ford got 5.9 billion, and they're not doing anything innovative.
Car manufacturing is damn expensive. It's not the price of materials so much as the price of setting up manufacturing plants! I'm glad your government is pushing money towards innovative things for once, rather than just bailouts.
Can you imagine what Tesla could do if they had the same sized loan as Ford? A lot more assembly lines than we're going to see, and cheaper prices.
Hint #2: Which OSS browser do you think has a public bug database listing all known vulnerabilities, whether or not they have yet been patched, and keeps that database updated immediately every time a new vulnerability is reported?
Better a public DB available to all than one only available to criminals!
But the trend of users getting infected seems to indicate IE is worse. User stupidity hurts, but so do unpatched remote code execution flaws.
Microsoft likes to tout how insecure other browsers and OS's are because they receive more security updates, but I'm not convinced. It's a poor measurement of security.
There's no way to know how many landmine exploits are in IE. I consider Firefox more secure, because as its market share goes up, the number of ITW exploits doesn't seem to be exploding.
I agree. Until you're in one of those situations, you don't know how your brain will fail. I can just imagine being in a dark room, trying not to get noticed, and having to flip a light on to enter a PIN. -_-
My brain fail moment was when a car flipped over right in front of me. I didn't hit them, but after stopping I noted that I had forgotten how to use my cellphone.:P
Articles about old hardware often get deleted too. Socket A motherboards and stuff. I've seen articles on older cellphone SoCs and their companies vanish as well. Apparently never getting large and then finally going out of business means you don't deserve to be noted in history.
They'd probably run faster or better. I can't count the number of engines that have trouble with nVidia multi-threaded rendering. (Source, for example) Java would chug memory, but at least it's reliable.
Slashdot Mirror
But in the end you are still renting games that come with a remote kill switch.
That's nonsense. If the servers go down, I can still play whatever is currently installed that is non-multiplayer. Reinstalling stuff will be a tad difficult, but that's the nature of any medium. DVD damaged -> no reinstall. Steam servers down -> no reinstall. There's a higher likelyhood that your DVDs will get damaged than the Steam servers going down - probably by 50x or more. But if they do go down, it hits ALL your games, so it is a gamble.
I use steam because it's the only store where I can get awesome prices on games. Most game developers seemed to want to milk online distribution for money in the past, but Steam seems to be a fan of 75-90% off sales. Psychonauts for $2, Titan Quest + expansion for $4.99... this week has been good to me. :P
I also like GOG. GOG is the best - though usually steam has even cheaper sale prices. DRM that results in lower prices - am I imagining that?
I like Steam.
Oh, so if anyone treats you like shit they forfeit their rights to their stuff?
Methinks the law isn't on your side. And neither are ethics.
BTW, I have a collection of 150+ legally bought original games in my k'nex game holding tower.
Also, five paperweights from EA and Sega. Mostly EA.
And unfortunately, I have to use pirate copies of about a dozen games.
Once I have a working crack then and ONLY then will I buy, because I am frankly tired of shelling out $50+ for a paperweight I can even return when it is defective by design!
I regret buying Universe at War: Earth Assault for $5.
UAWEA Launcher Error
Abnormal game exit detected.
Support wasn't very helpful...
You don't use every part of your brain for every thought.
Plus... electronics are faster. Even a hundred million "neurons" firing at several ghz would give us a run for our money.
The real question is - if we break past the ghz barrier, how smart will AIs be? When we're finally able to simulate a hundred minds on a single CPU, what happens when you make it just one mind? One mind with perfect math skills, and the creativity to use them...
I've noted that the clock on the wall is ticking faster than it did when I was 10. It's deeply ingrained in my mind - oh how I hated that endless ticking.
I've thought for close to a decade now that our perception of time slows down as we age. It brings up some interesting ideas for Sci-Fi - an AI could easily have a perception of time hundreds to thousands of times faster than our own. Oh how the days would go on. Plenty of time to dream up things!
Isn't Atkinson the guy that believes videogames are satanic?
He uses Rape Lay (a game not even available in Australia) to push his efforts to get videogames banned.
Or something like that. I'm not an Aussie. :P
All drives, mechanical and SSD, exhibit the problem you are describing. This is why we've had journaling filesystems for the past decade or so.
Doesn't seem to have helped my NTFS partitions. ;)
Well that explains it. Cheers.
No, I only play fun games. :P
I figured, one 12GB game, two 6-8GB games, and a 2-4GB one. But I suppose depending on what you play, it could be 2 to 150 games.
Poor wording on my part.
Before I got a UPS, I had my power cut out or surge from time to time. On two separate occasions files were being written when my computer shut off, and got stuck in a strange not-a-file not-a-dir state. The files and their parent folders could not be deleted, but I could format the partition to clear them. One happened to be in my temp folder, which is how I first discovered the issue.
As long as power is restored shortly, SSDs are supposed to complete the write... or is that only server grade ones? Either way, SRAM holds data longer than DRAM, so if the controller is programmed to, there's a chance it'll work.
Don't run your OS off it then. Install three or four games that you play quite a bit.
It is an option. You just have to factor the lack of space in.
http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=49278&vpn=OCZSSD2-2SLD30G&manufacture=OCZ%20Technology&promoid=1210
30GB OCZ Indilinx drive for a little over $100 CAD. Not a bad option, but not much space.
Those JMicron drives were absolutely horrible - 4KiB of SRAM cache, later doubled to 8KiB? Even Intel's lowest end SSDs have 256KiB, plus another 32MiB of RAM for caching the locations of free spots to write files.
Oh, btw - the cache has to be SRAM so that if the power goes out, it can write the files when it comes back on. SSDs absolutely must have a RAM cache so that they can efficiently locate places to write files, or they will stall while the controller tries to locate one. That's why the low end controllers perform so horribly in random write.
But now even the worst controllers aren't too bad. If I remember right JMicron's newest low-end controller has 128KiB of cache, and there are cheap Intel knockoff SSDs coming out that perform decently. (same controller, but less RAM cache and less space) If what you want is blazing fast loadtimes in games, they aren't bad options, but they're still slower than a fast HDD and have way less space.
Sure, it looks like he's plugging his website,
Don't worry. Nobody ever reads the article.
It's a good idea to give someone time to go over it before disclosing it. If they did it right away, criminals would be combing bugzilla for ideas. :P
Full immediate disclosure is nice, but it's nice for everyone. That's the problem. ;)
r wealthy people? If the government subsidizes heavily so that average people can buy this particular car then you have to explain why the government should be in the business of picking winners and losers in the market for private automobiles.
Hey - shut up. Ford got 5.9 billion, and they're not doing anything innovative.
http://dailyreporter.com/blog/2009/06/23/loan-means-ford-can-retool-midwest-plants/
(previously covered on slashdot, too)
Car manufacturing is damn expensive. It's not the price of materials so much as the price of setting up manufacturing plants! I'm glad your government is pushing money towards innovative things for once, rather than just bailouts.
Can you imagine what Tesla could do if they had the same sized loan as Ford? A lot more assembly lines than we're going to see, and cheaper prices.
Machine code is for smart x86 developers. I'm stupid, so I develop my webapps in Java. I got a 20x performance boost over PHP!
Hint #2: Which OSS browser do you think has a public bug database listing all known vulnerabilities, whether or not they have yet been patched, and keeps that database updated immediately every time a new vulnerability is reported?
Better a public DB available to all than one only available to criminals!
(Exploit trading is big $$$)
But the trend of users getting infected seems to indicate IE is worse. User stupidity hurts, but so do unpatched remote code execution flaws.
Microsoft likes to tout how insecure other browsers and OS's are because they receive more security updates, but I'm not convinced. It's a poor measurement of security.
There's no way to know how many landmine exploits are in IE. I consider Firefox more secure, because as its market share goes up, the number of ITW exploits doesn't seem to be exploding.
People pirate the $1 app because there's 25 similar apps all costing $1+, and only one does what you actually want.
Rather than DRM being the failure, it's Apple's search system and app descriptions. :P
Different cause, same result.
I agree. Until you're in one of those situations, you don't know how your brain will fail. I can just imagine being in a dark room, trying not to get noticed, and having to flip a light on to enter a PIN. -_-
My brain fail moment was when a car flipped over right in front of me. I didn't hit them, but after stopping I noted that I had forgotten how to use my cellphone. :P
$179?
Much of that R&D, I bet?
Articles about old hardware often get deleted too. Socket A motherboards and stuff. I've seen articles on older cellphone SoCs and their companies vanish as well. Apparently never getting large and then finally going out of business means you don't deserve to be noted in history.
FASM is another cross-architecture assembler, but with an interesting philosophy. Everything you need to compile something is stored inside the files.
There's none of this gcc.exe --[4 lines and 900 characters of garbage resolving dependancies and changing settings]
Let's write some nVidia drivers in Java!
They'd probably run faster or better. I can't count the number of engines that have trouble with nVidia multi-threaded rendering. (Source, for example) Java would chug memory, but at least it's reliable.
You'd probably need to static compile it, though.
http://www.excelsior-usa.com/jetinternals.html