4) There has to be a bit of leeway because lists are purchased and occasionally even the best companies screw up.
.
Too fucking bad. If you are not unsure as to whether the numbers you are "purchasing" are opt-in, OK to call, you deserve to get hit with a huge fine. Quite frankly, even the concept of "purchasing" address and number information is something that should be clamped down, hard, unless expressly permitted by the person being called, and even then only one time, with clear audit trail, and extremely clear removal procedures known up-front, as well as tracking of said "transfer" of data so you can call the company you did give permission to and make them give up all the people/companies they transferred your data to. Should it turn out your data ended up somewhere else, too, they should be fined. Hard.
When companies begin to get hit with fines, and the threat of being identified as "bad marketers" receiving bad media... you bet your ass they'll start looking for more reputable marketing groups. You'll see a SHARP decline in the number of unwanted calls that occur.
Just like you see a SHARP decline in the number of unwanted eMails you receive. Right ?
The only thing that might change is the content of those calls. You might get called up more often by bottomfeeders trying to dump herbal penis enlargers or new ringtones on you. They really do not care, and VoIP botting is easy enough.
AT&T, Sprint and several others have been doing this for years. They have the data, they know who it is... all they need is little push from a Governmental agency dedicated to spam! The fines and such would self manage this agency. When fines are high this agencies focus is here... when it's low this agency can focus on other issues.
AT&T, Spring, and several others have absolutely no freaking interest in doing any of that. They are making good money from telemarketers. If anything, they'll try to find more loopholes to sell your account data to the highest bidder -- that is after they have called you themselves 10-15 times trying to sell you new crap. Prior business relationship and such. Bollocks.
I do not need to explain it. I am going by the manufacturer's claims of TDP under full load. This may be an upper bound, but if I can supply it, under full load, for all components, I can be sure that the machine won't brown out when I stress it to the extreme on all components. YMMV, and you are free to follow a different approach.
They buy an idea, then sit on it. No one benefits from it (except lining their pockets with no efforts on their part). Bad for consumers, bad for other businesses. Boo!
Let's step back a bit here though. "no efforts on their part" is not exactly true. They have capital in the matter. They are investing in those patents, presumably because they think the idea has merit -- but they are taking the risk that it does not. They do not "line their pockets" without the patent having some form of merit.
The patents came from somewhere, their original creators presumably got compensated and therefore had more incentive to patent in the first case (instead of keeping their ideas a trade secret).
Yes, the patent system is broken, yes, patent trolls suck, but don't make them out to be worse than they are. All the big corporations have giant patent portfolios as well. You could call them patent trolls too. Indeed, they engage in exactly the same conduct (cross-licensing-deals are borne out of this).
Patents are not an inherently bad concept, but yes, they have been abused quite badly in recent years. Reforming the system in a sensible manner would be good. Do you have any proposals as to how to go about it ?
I have a 8800GTX SLI setup. It draws 400W at the wall, which goes up to 500W under full load.
Of course you do not cite what other components are in there. But Let's gop with your 8800GTX SLI non-OC setup. The 8800GTX has a TDP of 145W per card with reference clocks -- so with 2-way SLI that would be 290W there. Note that this is not the actual maximum power the card could consume, but it is fairly close. If you overclock, you are going to need more. If you had a 3-way SLI setup, you would have to account for 435W from the Geforce cards alone. A reasonably beefy CPU will have a TDP of around 130W. Without any other components, you will have to account for 565W. Note that we are not talking about "idle" here, we are talking full load. Very few applications/games come close to that on beefy enough hardware -- but to account for a stable system, you'll need it. This is all at spec-clocks, overclocking will yield a lot more draw.
Furthermore its watercooled os includes all the pumps etc. Seems to me that 8800GTX draws at most 180W. That means if I put another 8800GTX in my box to get 3-way, it would still olny consume 650W under load.
How 500+180 makes 650 is interesting, to be sure. You also seem to assume that the efficiency of your PSU is close to 100% -- when in reality, you really should not be counting on anything above 80% -- even for ones rated at 85 and above, especially when they are not at 100% load, you will not usually get more than 80% efficiency.
The GTX285 cards are 55nm so draw even less power.
Baloney. I mean sure, your nice 8800GTX is 90nm, but it also only has ~680 million transistors. The GTX285 has 1.4 billion. Oh, and it has a spec-TDP of 183W, too (higher if you get the factory-overclocked versions of cards). Let's be conservative and say it really is 183W. Here we have a lower bound 549W draw under load from the tri-SLI setup alone, plus the CPU -- another 130W at stock speeds. Plus all the rest that makes up your computer. Minus the efficiency hit you will take. 689W TDP for processor+GPU alone and you want to stick a 800W PSU in there ? Laughable.
Even allowing for some overhead an 800W PSU would still be overkill.
We could have this discussion with a 1000W PSU. Proposing 800W for this setup is ludicrous, and you should know better.
An argument could be made that a 1kW PSU is enough -- and indeed, there are even (VERY FEW) manufacturers who will offer you a 1kW PSU with enough connectors for the tri-SLI setup (usually you only find that on the 1.2kW models). Don't forget hard disks (~10W while in use, up to 30W on startup), optical drives (idle ~10W, in use 20-25W). Add a single-digit amount of watts for every fan. Don't forget the motherboard and what it can supply on the USB ports. It adds up. And then there's water cooling.
You could maybe go with a well-made 1kW supply and some extra connectors. I'd opt for a 1.2kW one in that scenario. Note that this does not mean that the machine will draw 1.2kW -- it will do so only when it has to. Efficiency curves of power supplies are not nearly as bad as they used to be, either.
It's called Grid computing. Millions of people, every day, allow unknown other people to run software on their computers. (worldcommunitygrid.org, seti@home, folding@home, distributed.net, and dozens of other networks). Microsoft could easily leverage these people (who, for the most part, simply do not care about their power bills, apparently) by offering grid computing under another brand -- or, alternatively, to offset the licensing cost of Windows. Don't want to pay for Windows 7 ? Just agree to run their client 12 hours a day.
If you care about GPU memory, the GTX295 only delivers 896mbyte per GPU (it's a dual GPU card), while the GTX285 delivers 1024mbyte. If you intend to do stuff with CUDA this may be the deciding factor for you -- and, to a limited extent, also for 2560x1600 gaming on 30" displays. The/only/ game where this would actually come into play, though, would by Crysis: Warhead, right now.
Power draw of a 3-way 285 SLI will likely be more than a "Quad"-SLI 295. Cooling might be an additional problem (there is not exactly much room between the cards to take in air, etc.) Single-GPU-performance of the 295 will be less than single-GPU performance of the 285 (it is more comparable to the GTX260 on the 295).
If you are going to go with a Tri-SLI-Setup, you will probably need a 1200W power supply, ESPECIALLY if you intend any sort of overclocking, and considering you'll likely want to be running this in tandem with a Core i7 920/940/965EE; Otherwise, you will very likely be CPU-bound instead of GPU-bound. The Phenom might make a platform for it too, but I have not done much proper research into that area.
When doing Tri-SLI, the cards will be running in 16x / 8x / 8x configuration. While this is not optimal, the X58 chipset simply does not have more lanes than that to spare -- if your application is Memory GPU-Transfer-heavy, this might become a problem. All current games are not (it makes zilch difference in benchmarks). Spending money on a NF200 to get a "true" 16x / 16x / 16x configuration is wasted money -- it is not actually true, but provides 16x / 16x PCIe-communication between two cards, which are then connected to the X58 via one PCIe 16-lane connection (so communication with the third card is still bottlenecked, as is communication with the CPU/Memory). In current implementations, this simply does not have any benefit at all.
And to stay on the ground in all this : if all you want to do is play games, you will be served well with a single GTX285 in almost any situation, for now. The only game that can actually dip is Crysis Warhead. Other games will still play fine even at 2560x1600.
Exhibit A : iTunes Plus DRM-Free files, "purchased" by mxs. Exhibit B : Through a cunning feat of social engineering, mxs has obtained myxiplx's eMail address and real name. Exhibit C : Hex editor. Exhibit D : BitTorrent, LimeWire, Kazaa, and Usenet.
What is to prevent me from changing the information contained in my purchased files to information pretty easily available from you ? (eMail address + real name is not really something that people would think of being secret; the only part a tad more intricate is figuring out when you bought what kind of music on iTunes -- but even that should not prove too hard for a dedicated attacker).
Should you be required to prove that you were not the person distributing these files ? Indeed, do you honestly believe that the RIAA will care about this scenario while bankrupting you and making your lawyer really, really happy ?
Though to be honest, I have not checked whether Apple cryptographically signs this information in their files, so this attack might actually be infeasible. Plenty of other attacks remain, of course (ever had your Laptop stolen ? How prevalent, do you think, are worms and viruses amongst the people using iTunes on Windows ? It should prove easy to pilfer the requisite records from their AAC-files, if one were to wreak some havoc...)
Remember when you lent a CD to your friend ? Yeah, don't do that with files. It's bad for you. Sharing is bad.
You are thinking short-term. Think long-term. I still play games that are 20 years old. Are you going to tell me that Steam is going to work in 20 years ? Can you guarantee it ? Will I be able to find the deactivation software ? Will it be legal ?
How is "someone" releasing a hacked steam client any different from getting a crack today ? It's the same kind of bullshit.
Sorry, no sale. Steam burned me once, it will not burn me again. They can keep their games.
Likely doing a bit more thinking than you do and assuming the risk of just that happening in exchange for paying a fraction of what they would be paying to other providers.
Sorry, but this is simply not the case. Most hosting providers expect you to use a tiny fraction of what your plan says you are allowed to use; most hosting providers oversell their bandwidth, hdd space, server power, etc. Some providers will look for ways to get rid of you if you consistently hit just below your allowed quota; some will offer you additional services for a lot more money; some will just kick you for some made-up reason (especially the ones that claim "unlimited" of anything); some will change the ToS and make up rules so that they can point at them and kick you. (Dreamhost.com, hello !)
It would not surprise me if ixwebhosting fell into the category of host who sees MP3s on an account and ban it citing copyright violations (without/EVER/ having received any DMCA notice or C&D, at that), with the true reason for it being that they do not like the bandwidth usage.
I can see a tiny bit of a case for the CD-check (though quite honestly, no, I do not agree with it -- it's YET ANOTHER thing that pirates don't have to deal with. If you have kids, you will definitely not want them to handle unprotected (physically) media too much -- the scratches will be a killjoy; Legitimate owners of games have been using NoCD-patches for AGES; it's ineffective, it inconveniences your customers (the ones that PAY you for the game, no less), etc.
The leasing is not really on any "generous" terms; 5 installs is exactly as bad as 3. 10 would be as bad as 5. Having to justify why you want to install the game again in a few years' time is laughable. Again, pirates do not have to deal with that crap. At all. Generosity would start at services such as you being able to download the entirety of the game if your media is scratched, perhaps by way of submitting your CD key or a picture of the receipt. But hell, that would actually make life easier for customers. Can't have that.
Yes, the submitter seems to be a shill for EA, painting this in a positive light and encouraging not to pirate to show them we appreciate it. No. I do not appreciate it. I own several C&C games. I will not be buying the next one. Congratulations EA, you just lost another sale.
Precisely what makes you think they'll not tell you to go take a hike ? Precisely what makes you think that the rabid band of fanboys will cuss you out on forums when you report on this, because you obviously are a pirate ?
First of all, the nature of the game is that it is played online, with an identity. You know UPFRONT that you are going to have to pay monthly fees, there is no secret about its nature (it has no single player component). You can download the installer, for free, without having an account. You can download all patches without having an account. (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/files/pc/wowclient-downloader.exe would be the link !). If you really, really wanted to, you could play this game on "unofficial" servers -- there is no DRM stopping you from doing this, and no authentication of the game with Blizzard in that case. Of course the ToS/EULA forbid this, but that is not DRM.
Blizzard is by NO MEANS perfect -- Warden has privacy implications, customer service in case of suspected (but not actual) cheating is absolutely horrid, and they are not all that fast with releasing patches and new content. Saying they have DRM, however, is simply untrue. So far.
... and they claim this as a POSITIVE attribute ? One percent of accounts ALREADY hit the 3 installation limit ? This game has been out for ~a week. One week, and already one percent of the customers are plagued by this DRM-scheme (some percentage of which will already have gotten customer service responses akin to "buy a new one" by the helpful customer representatives, as has happened with "Mass Effect").
After just one week, legitimately bought copies of the game stopped working for these people.
What will the stats be in 10 weeks ? 6 months ? Five years ? Can YOU offer up proof-of-purchase for all your games after 5 years ? Good on you. Should you have to ?
I find it pretty telling though that EA considers 1% for this timeframe to be a good number.
Except very few of my relatives appear to have exercised that option. The typical PC has a VGA port on the back and, if I'm lucky, a DVI port. It's good for HDTV but not for the CRT SDTV that they already own. Besides, cables generally don't run between the room with the PC and the room with the TV, especially in a rental property where it's a female dog to get the landlord to let the tenant put holes through the wall.
I'm hard-pressed to find a computer without a DVI port -- svhs out is a bit less common, but all the big retailers here have them built-in in the standard configuration now, too. YMMV. As for the positioning of the computer, I'd think that follows from its uses.
Why might this be, other than the monitor size issue? PCs have supported 8 game controllers connected through USB hubs since 1998 when Windows 98 came out.
I said uncommon, not impossible.
Provided you're enough of a business to get into GS1, because Amazon requires a barcode for each product. But I'll grant that studios big enough to lease an office can afford a GS1 membership. But still, how can you get the word out to the masses that your product exists? And how can kids spend their allowance money on Amazon or Steam or whatever?
The marketing-aspect is not exactly the same, but similar to a publisher. You can run ads in magazines as a smaller self-publisher too. If you are smart, you can get the word out in gamer communities on the 'net, and shower them with video and image material, regular updates on progress, playable demos, etc.
As for spending your allowance : ask daddy or mommy. Granted, you may not be able to sell utter crap that way (if the parents are any good), but it is possible.
Consoles and handhelds indeed have somewhat of a vendor lock-in -- but to the console-maker, not a particular publisher (other than first-party titles, but for the sake of argument I'll disregard those here). If you have a worthwhile product, you can get licensed on those consoles. They'll want some say in the quality of the game and a cut of your sales on that platform, and the barrier of entry is higher than on PC-games (where all you REALLY need is a compiler or interpreter) -- but then again, those hobbyists also don't employ SecuROM. While it makes things easier, you do not NEED to sign with EA to get a title on the X-Box 360 or PS3. Hell, if your game is good, they'll try to accomodate you instead of the other way around (especially on the PS3).
As for the statement about TVs -- well, almost every graphics card nowadays is shipped with a TV-out option -- so that should not be a problem. Multiple controllers are uncommon on the PC though. The DRM employed on the PS3, Xbox360, and Wii is of a different nature -- it's console-specific and the same for every game, anyway.
And as I said, access to brick & mortar retail chains may be / will be harder. Then again, access to Amazon is dead-easy, access to online distribution is, too. It may be a different market, though it is a market. I'm sure we'll see a lot more interesting stuff happening on that side of things in the future, anyway -- just as we will with music, movies, and TV (right now, frankly, the commercial offerings for online distribution in those three are rather pitiful, too, as a whole).
If "marketplace realities" are that all publishers require digital restrictions management to protect the publisher's investment, the choice is either "publish with DRM" or "don't publish at all". Considering the latter choice might bring the developer under the scope of another law: fiduciary duty to its shareholders.
Right, because there are no studios self-publishing, there are no ways to self-publish without the stone and mortar retail-chain, and there are no conceivable negative implications DRM could bring on the bottom line. Fiduciary duty is all fine and dandy -- but any skilled CEO will be able to make the case for and against DRM while appearing to fulfill that duty. Fiduciary duty also does not dictate that you sign a restrictive contract with any group of publishers.
The issue is not quite as black and white as that. In any case, Maxis made their choice. Will Wright made his choice. EA made their choice. Now I'm making mine, and hope that enough others are making the same for it to matter whether you treat your customers as shitbags or not.
Excellent point. This is a very silly way to 'protest' about DRM.
Indeed. Of course, the OP just posted a link, without giving any justification -- he might not want to protest the DRM at all.
The best way to get companies to stop using DRM is to reason with them, contact them, and let them know how you feel.
Been there, done that. EA does not give a fuck. EA's "customer service" representatives give even less of a fuck. There are more reasonable people out there, and there are more reasonable companies who are getting it right from the get-go, too. Those do deserve to be supported.
I can tell you 100% that no matter how many people would pirate my games, it wouldn't convince me to abandon DRM. What convinced me to do it was actually reading through what the people had to say when they emailed me on the topic.
What made you choose DRM in the first place ? Was it just a knee-jerk reaction and marketing department mathematics ? Nowadays there are several companies trying to sell DRM technologies (and succeeding) -- I wonder what their marketing pitch is.
All rating the game badly will do is make amazon's ratings look unusable,
Why ? If the rating is driven by the customer having a genuine gripe with the product and the way the company deals with its customers, then a bad rating does seem to be a perfectly valid way to represent that -- especially considering that you/have/ to deal with the company after buying the product -- say when you upgraded three of your computer's components.
piss off everyone who worked on the game (many of which oppose DRM no doubt),
Quite frankly : good. Not to slight Will Wright here, but the way the game is delivered is also part of the experience you deliver. An excellent movie with crappy cutting, post-production, or delivered on bad film stock deserves to get bad ratings, too -- even though the acting may have been spectacular.
Amazon allows you to post comments. You can elaborate on why the game got one star and not five.
and reinforce the mentality that those who oppose DRM are doing so for childish reasons.
I can't subscribe to that notion. Besides, if the company delivering the game feels I am childish and should not be taken seriously -- good riddance. I can spend my money elsewhere, at a company that will actually treat me with respect.
Well-thought out, considered and intelligent emails to the publishers and developers will achieve a hundred times more,
In some cases, it may. In the VAST MAJORITY of cases, your mails will be filed away under "handled customer support queries", or thrown straight in the wastebin. We had this discussion with EA on Mass Effect. Guess what. Nothing changed. They just don't care. They know the gripes, they know the reasons for them, I assume they have intelligent people there who understand the issues having been brought forward. The only thing I can conclude from their actions is that they don't care.
as will boycotting the game (both legal and illegal copies) and only purchasing DRM-free games.
That will actually help. (I can't see how boycotting illegitimate copies helps in this case, but it's not a good thing to do for other reasons)
Slashdot Mirror
Two things.
4) There has to be a bit of leeway because lists are purchased and occasionally even the best companies screw up.
.
Too fucking bad. If you are not unsure as to whether the numbers you are "purchasing" are opt-in, OK to call, you deserve to get hit with a huge fine. Quite frankly, even the concept of "purchasing" address and number information is something that should be clamped down, hard, unless expressly permitted by the person being called, and even then only one time, with clear audit trail, and extremely clear removal procedures known up-front, as well as tracking of said "transfer" of data so you can call the company you did give permission to and make them give up all the people/companies they transferred your data to. Should it turn out your data ended up somewhere else, too, they should be fined. Hard.
When companies begin to get hit with fines, and the threat of being identified as "bad marketers" receiving bad media... you bet your ass they'll start looking for more reputable marketing groups. You'll see a SHARP decline in the number of unwanted calls that occur.
Just like you see a SHARP decline in the number of unwanted eMails you receive. Right ?
The only thing that might change is the content of those calls. You might get called up more often by bottomfeeders trying to dump herbal penis enlargers or new ringtones on you. They really do not care, and VoIP botting is easy enough.
AT&T, Sprint and several others have been doing this for years. They have the data, they know who it is... all they need is little push from a Governmental agency dedicated to spam! The fines and such would self manage this agency. When fines are high this agencies focus is here... when it's low this agency can focus on other issues.
AT&T, Spring, and several others have absolutely no freaking interest in doing any of that. They are making good money from telemarketers. If anything, they'll try to find more loopholes to sell your account data to the highest bidder -- that is after they have called you themselves 10-15 times trying to sell you new crap. Prior business relationship and such. Bollocks.
You can FUD like the best of em, I give you that.
I have MCs still running that were started 3 years ago (and used, too !), so bollocks on the crashes.
Corrupts files ? Care to give an example ? At least I have not run into such a bug.
I'll give GnuIT another look. Last time I tried it, I went back to mc.
I do not need to explain it. I am going by the manufacturer's claims of TDP under full load. This may be an upper bound, but if I can supply it, under full load, for all components, I can be sure that the machine won't brown out when I stress it to the extreme on all components. YMMV, and you are free to follow a different approach.
They buy an idea, then sit on it. No one benefits from it (except lining their pockets with no efforts on their part). Bad for consumers, bad for other businesses. Boo!
Let's step back a bit here though. "no efforts on their part" is not exactly true. They have capital in the matter. They are investing in those patents, presumably because they think the idea has merit -- but they are taking the risk that it does not. They do not "line their pockets" without the patent having some form of merit.
The patents came from somewhere, their original creators presumably got compensated and therefore had more incentive to patent in the first case (instead of keeping their ideas a trade secret).
Yes, the patent system is broken, yes, patent trolls suck, but don't make them out to be worse than they are. All the big corporations have giant patent portfolios as well. You could call them patent trolls too. Indeed, they engage in exactly the same conduct (cross-licensing-deals are borne out of this).
Patents are not an inherently bad concept, but yes, they have been abused quite badly in recent years. Reforming the system in a sensible manner would be good. Do you have any proposals as to how to go about it ?
Baloney.
I call the same on your comment.
I have a 8800GTX SLI setup. It draws 400W at the wall, which goes up to 500W under full load.
Of course you do not cite what other components are in there. But Let's gop with your 8800GTX SLI non-OC setup. The 8800GTX has a TDP of 145W per card with reference clocks -- so with 2-way SLI that would be 290W there. Note that this is not the actual maximum power the card could consume, but it is fairly close. If you overclock, you are going to need more. If you had a 3-way SLI setup, you would have to account for 435W from the Geforce cards alone. A reasonably beefy CPU will have a TDP of around 130W. Without any other components, you will have to account for 565W. Note that we are not talking about "idle" here, we are talking full load. Very few applications/games come close to that on beefy enough hardware -- but to account for a stable system, you'll need it. This is all at spec-clocks, overclocking will yield a lot more draw.
Furthermore its watercooled os includes all the pumps etc. Seems to me that 8800GTX draws at most 180W. That means if I put another 8800GTX in my box to get 3-way, it would still olny consume 650W under load.
How 500+180 makes 650 is interesting, to be sure. You also seem to assume that the efficiency of your PSU is close to 100% -- when in reality, you really should not be counting on anything above 80% -- even for ones rated at 85 and above, especially when they are not at 100% load, you will not usually get more than 80% efficiency.
The GTX285 cards are 55nm so draw even less power.
Baloney. I mean sure, your nice 8800GTX is 90nm, but it also only has ~680 million transistors. The GTX285 has 1.4 billion. Oh, and it has a spec-TDP of 183W, too (higher if you get the factory-overclocked versions of cards). Let's be conservative and say it really is 183W. Here we have a lower bound 549W draw under load from the tri-SLI setup alone, plus the CPU -- another 130W at stock speeds. Plus all the rest that makes up your computer. Minus the efficiency hit you will take. 689W TDP for processor+GPU alone and you want to stick a 800W PSU in there ? Laughable.
Even allowing for some overhead an 800W PSU would still be overkill.
We could have this discussion with a 1000W PSU. Proposing 800W for this setup is ludicrous, and you should know better.
An argument could be made that a 1kW PSU is enough -- and indeed, there are even (VERY FEW) manufacturers who will offer you a 1kW PSU with enough connectors for the tri-SLI setup (usually you only find that on the 1.2kW models). Don't forget hard disks (~10W while in use, up to 30W on startup), optical drives (idle ~10W, in use 20-25W). Add a single-digit amount of watts for every fan. Don't forget the motherboard and what it can supply on the USB ports. It adds up. And then there's water cooling.
You could maybe go with a well-made 1kW supply and some extra connectors. I'd opt for a 1.2kW one in that scenario. Note that this does not mean that the machine will draw 1.2kW -- it will do so only when it has to. Efficiency curves of power supplies are not nearly as bad as they used to be, either.
It's called Grid computing. Millions of people, every day, allow unknown other people to run software on their computers. (worldcommunitygrid.org, seti@home, folding@home, distributed.net, and dozens of other networks). Microsoft could easily leverage these people (who, for the most part, simply do not care about their power bills, apparently) by offering grid computing under another brand -- or, alternatively, to offset the licensing cost of Windows. Don't want to pay for Windows 7 ? Just agree to run their client 12 hours a day.
The idea is not as far-fetched as you may think.
If you care about GPU memory, the GTX295 only delivers 896mbyte per GPU (it's a dual GPU card), while the GTX285 delivers 1024mbyte. If you intend to do stuff with CUDA this may be the deciding factor for you -- and, to a limited extent, also for 2560x1600 gaming on 30" displays. The /only/ game where this would actually come into play, though, would by Crysis: Warhead, right now.
Power draw of a 3-way 285 SLI will likely be more than a "Quad"-SLI 295. Cooling might be an additional problem (there is not exactly much room between the cards to take in air, etc.) Single-GPU-performance of the 295 will be less than single-GPU performance of the 285 (it is more comparable to the GTX260 on the 295).
If you are going to go with a Tri-SLI-Setup, you will probably need a 1200W power supply, ESPECIALLY if you intend any sort of overclocking, and considering you'll likely want to be running this in tandem with a Core i7 920/940/965EE; Otherwise, you will very likely be CPU-bound instead of GPU-bound. The Phenom might make a platform for it too, but I have not done much proper research into that area.
When doing Tri-SLI, the cards will be running in 16x / 8x / 8x configuration. While this is not optimal, the X58 chipset simply does not have more lanes than that to spare -- if your application is Memory GPU-Transfer-heavy, this might become a problem. All current games are not (it makes zilch difference in benchmarks). Spending money on a NF200 to get a "true" 16x / 16x / 16x configuration is wasted money -- it is not actually true, but provides 16x / 16x PCIe-communication between two cards, which are then connected to the X58 via one PCIe 16-lane connection (so communication with the third card is still bottlenecked, as is communication with the CPU/Memory). In current implementations, this simply does not have any benefit at all.
And to stay on the ground in all this : if all you want to do is play games, you will be served well with a single GTX285 in almost any situation, for now. The only game that can actually dip is Crysis Warhead. Other games will still play fine even at 2560x1600.
Exhibit A : iTunes Plus DRM-Free files, "purchased" by mxs.
Exhibit B : Through a cunning feat of social engineering, mxs has obtained myxiplx's eMail address and real name.
Exhibit C : Hex editor.
Exhibit D : BitTorrent, LimeWire, Kazaa, and Usenet.
What is to prevent me from changing the information contained in my purchased files to information pretty easily available from you ? (eMail address + real name is not really something that people would think of being secret; the only part a tad more intricate is figuring out when you bought what kind of music on iTunes -- but even that should not prove too hard for a dedicated attacker).
Should you be required to prove that you were not the person distributing these files ? Indeed, do you honestly believe that the RIAA will care about this scenario while bankrupting you and making your lawyer really, really happy ?
Though to be honest, I have not checked whether Apple cryptographically signs this information in their files, so this attack might actually be infeasible. Plenty of other attacks remain, of course (ever had your Laptop stolen ? How prevalent, do you think, are worms and viruses amongst the people using iTunes on Windows ? It should prove easy to pilfer the requisite records from their AAC-files, if one were to wreak some havoc ...)
Remember when you lent a CD to your friend ? Yeah, don't do that with files. It's bad for you. Sharing is bad.
Are you still under the illusion that traffic is being classified by port and not content ? The "other side" has not been sleeping.
You are thinking short-term. Think long-term. I still play games that are 20 years old. Are you going to tell me that Steam is going to work in 20 years ? Can you guarantee it ? Will I be able to find the deactivation software ? Will it be legal ?
How is "someone" releasing a hacked steam client any different from getting a crack today ? It's the same kind of bullshit.
Sorry, no sale. Steam burned me once, it will not burn me again. They can keep their games.
Was a voting machine used ? Does it keep timestamped logs ? Whoops, not secret anymore.
Likely doing a bit more thinking than you do and assuming the risk of just that happening in exchange for paying a fraction of what they would be paying to other providers.
I take it you have never heard of the MPAA and the power which it wields ? It's effectively censorship.
And who searches the TSA-searching searchers ?
Sorry, but this is simply not the case. Most hosting providers expect you to use a tiny fraction of what your plan says you are allowed to use; most hosting providers oversell their bandwidth, hdd space, server power, etc.
Some providers will look for ways to get rid of you if you consistently hit just below your allowed quota; some will offer you additional services for a lot more money; some will just kick you for some made-up reason (especially the ones that claim "unlimited" of anything); some will change the ToS and make up rules so that they can point at them and kick you. (Dreamhost.com, hello !)
It would not surprise me if ixwebhosting fell into the category of host who sees MP3s on an account and ban it citing copyright violations (without /EVER/ having received any DMCA notice or C&D, at that), with the true reason for it being that they do not like the bandwidth usage.
You are assuming that the coke-high RIAA executives will do something in the interest of the consumer. They will not. This will not happen.
It will really twist my nuts if:
1) Everything in the account becomes a inadmissible when an investigation of the legality of the account is conducted.
What investigation ?
I can see a tiny bit of a case for the CD-check (though quite honestly, no, I do not agree with it -- it's YET ANOTHER thing that pirates don't have to deal with. If you have kids, you will definitely not want them to handle unprotected (physically) media too much -- the scratches will be a killjoy; Legitimate owners of games have been using NoCD-patches for AGES; it's ineffective, it inconveniences your customers (the ones that PAY you for the game, no less), etc.
The leasing is not really on any "generous" terms; 5 installs is exactly as bad as 3. 10 would be as bad as 5. Having to justify why you want to install the game again in a few years' time is laughable. Again, pirates do not have to deal with that crap. At all. Generosity would start at services such as you being able to download the entirety of the game if your media is scratched, perhaps by way of submitting your CD key or a picture of the receipt. But hell, that would actually make life easier for customers. Can't have that.
Yes, the submitter seems to be a shill for EA, painting this in a positive light and encouraging not to pirate to show them we appreciate it. No. I do not appreciate it. I own several C&C games. I will not be buying the next one. Congratulations EA, you just lost another sale.
Precisely what makes you think they'll not tell you to go take a hike ?
Precisely what makes you think that the rabid band of fanboys will cuss you out on forums when you report on this, because you obviously are a pirate ?
Oh come on.
First of all, the nature of the game is that it is played online, with an identity. You know UPFRONT that you are going to have to pay monthly fees, there is no secret about its nature (it has no single player component). You can download the installer, for free, without having an account. You can download all patches without having an account. (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/files/pc/wowclient-downloader.exe would be the link !). If you really, really wanted to, you could play this game on "unofficial" servers -- there is no DRM stopping you from doing this, and no authentication of the game with Blizzard in that case. Of course the ToS/EULA forbid this, but that is not DRM.
Blizzard is by NO MEANS perfect -- Warden has privacy implications, customer service in case of suspected (but not actual) cheating is absolutely horrid, and they are not all that fast with releasing patches and new content. Saying they have DRM, however, is simply untrue. So far.
... and they claim this as a POSITIVE attribute ? One percent of accounts ALREADY hit the 3 installation limit ? This game has been out for ~a week. One week, and already one percent of the customers are plagued by this DRM-scheme (some percentage of which will already have gotten customer service responses akin to "buy a new one" by the helpful customer representatives, as has happened with "Mass Effect").
After just one week, legitimately bought copies of the game stopped working for these people.
What will the stats be in 10 weeks ? 6 months ? Five years ? Can YOU offer up proof-of-purchase for all your games after 5 years ? Good on you. Should you have to ?
I find it pretty telling though that EA considers 1% for this timeframe to be a good number.
Except very few of my relatives appear to have exercised that option. The typical PC has a VGA port on the back and, if I'm lucky, a DVI port. It's good for HDTV but not for the CRT SDTV that they already own. Besides, cables generally don't run between the room with the PC and the room with the TV, especially in a rental property where it's a female dog to get the landlord to let the tenant put holes through the wall.
I'm hard-pressed to find a computer without a DVI port -- svhs out is a bit less common, but all the big retailers here have them built-in in the standard configuration now, too. YMMV. As for the positioning of the computer, I'd think that follows from its uses.
Why might this be, other than the monitor size issue? PCs have supported 8 game controllers connected through USB hubs since 1998 when Windows 98 came out.
I said uncommon, not impossible.
Provided you're enough of a business to get into GS1, because Amazon requires a barcode for each product. But I'll grant that studios big enough to lease an office can afford a GS1 membership. But still, how can you get the word out to the masses that your product exists? And how can kids spend their allowance money on Amazon or Steam or whatever?
The marketing-aspect is not exactly the same, but similar to a publisher. You can run ads in magazines as a smaller self-publisher too. If you are smart, you can get the word out in gamer communities on the 'net, and shower them with video and image material, regular updates on progress, playable demos, etc.
As for spending your allowance : ask daddy or mommy. Granted, you may not be able to sell utter crap that way (if the parents are any good), but it is possible.
I did not claim it would be easy ;-)
Consoles and handhelds indeed have somewhat of a vendor lock-in -- but to the console-maker, not a particular publisher (other than first-party titles, but for the sake of argument I'll disregard those here). If you have a worthwhile product, you can get licensed on those consoles. They'll want some say in the quality of the game and a cut of your sales on that platform, and the barrier of entry is higher than on PC-games (where all you REALLY need is a compiler or interpreter) -- but then again, those hobbyists also don't employ SecuROM. While it makes things easier, you do not NEED to sign with EA to get a title on the X-Box 360 or PS3. Hell, if your game is good, they'll try to accomodate you instead of the other way around (especially on the PS3).
As for the statement about TVs -- well, almost every graphics card nowadays is shipped with a TV-out option -- so that should not be a problem. Multiple controllers are uncommon on the PC though. The DRM employed on the PS3, Xbox360, and Wii is of a different nature -- it's console-specific and the same for every game, anyway.
And as I said, access to brick & mortar retail chains may be / will be harder. Then again, access to Amazon is dead-easy, access to online distribution is, too. It may be a different market, though it is a market. I'm sure we'll see a lot more interesting stuff happening on that side of things in the future, anyway -- just as we will with music, movies, and TV (right now, frankly, the commercial offerings for online distribution in those three are rather pitiful, too, as a whole).
If "marketplace realities" are that all publishers require digital restrictions management to protect the publisher's investment, the choice is either "publish with DRM" or "don't publish at all". Considering the latter choice might bring the developer under the scope of another law: fiduciary duty to its shareholders.
Right, because there are no studios self-publishing, there are no ways to self-publish without the stone and mortar retail-chain, and there are no conceivable negative implications DRM could bring on the bottom line. Fiduciary duty is all fine and dandy -- but any skilled CEO will be able to make the case for and against DRM while appearing to fulfill that duty. Fiduciary duty also does not dictate that you sign a restrictive contract with any group of publishers.
The issue is not quite as black and white as that. In any case, Maxis made their choice. Will Wright made his choice. EA made their choice. Now I'm making mine, and hope that enough others are making the same for it to matter whether you treat your customers as shitbags or not.
Excellent point. This is a very silly way to 'protest' about DRM.
Indeed. Of course, the OP just posted a link, without giving any justification -- he might not want to protest the DRM at all.
The best way to get companies to stop using DRM is to reason with them, contact them, and let them know how you feel.
Been there, done that. EA does not give a fuck. EA's "customer service" representatives give even less of a fuck. There are more reasonable people out there, and there are more reasonable companies who are getting it right from the get-go, too. Those do deserve to be supported.
I can tell you 100% that no matter how many people would pirate my games, it wouldn't convince me to abandon DRM. What convinced me to do it was actually reading through what the people had to say when they emailed me on the topic.
What made you choose DRM in the first place ? Was it just a knee-jerk reaction and marketing department mathematics ? Nowadays there are several companies trying to sell DRM technologies (and succeeding) -- I wonder what their marketing pitch is.
All rating the game badly will do is make amazon's ratings look unusable,
Why ? If the rating is driven by the customer having a genuine gripe with the product and the way the company deals with its customers, then a bad rating does seem to be a perfectly valid way to represent that -- especially considering that you /have/ to deal with the company after buying the product -- say when you upgraded three of your computer's components.
piss off everyone who worked on the game (many of which oppose DRM no doubt),
Quite frankly : good. Not to slight Will Wright here, but the way the game is delivered is also part of the experience you deliver. An excellent movie with crappy cutting, post-production, or delivered on bad film stock deserves to get bad ratings, too -- even though the acting may have been spectacular.
Amazon allows you to post comments. You can elaborate on why the game got one star and not five.
and reinforce the mentality that those who oppose DRM are doing so for childish reasons.
I can't subscribe to that notion. Besides, if the company delivering the game feels I am childish and should not be taken seriously -- good riddance. I can spend my money elsewhere, at a company that will actually treat me with respect.
Well-thought out, considered and intelligent emails to the publishers and developers will achieve a hundred times more,
In some cases, it may. In the VAST MAJORITY of cases, your mails will be filed away under "handled customer support queries", or thrown straight in the wastebin. We had this discussion with EA on Mass Effect. Guess what. Nothing changed. They just don't care. They know the gripes, they know the reasons for them, I assume they have intelligent people there who understand the issues having been brought forward. The only thing I can conclude from their actions is that they don't care.
as will boycotting the game (both legal and illegal copies) and only purchasing DRM-free games.
That will actually help. (I can't see how boycotting illegitimate copies helps in this case, but it's not a good thing to do for other reasons)