I am with you, pick what you like, and move in that direction.
It is so refreshing to see someone really follow their passion. A huge percentage of the population today is stuck in jobs they do not like. This leads to resentment, anger, and eventually very negative release of these emotions. What's worse, the smartest of these make it to the top of the food chain, then take out all of this amassed anger on society. Had they not been pushed into fields that did not suit them, they would have most likely contributed a lot more to society, and left the positions they now occupy to those that could fill such roles while living a happier life, and contributing much more to the world.
The way I see it, the purpose of life is to do what you want, enjoy doing it, and enjoy helping others do the same. It is very unfortunate that this does not happen.
Well, that's what I thought was arguing. Perhaps that wasn't what was understood. Hard to say. For me the discussion has been the purely theoretical possibility of using modern technology to send a large amount of data over frequencies that were previously used to send much less.
Tying it to the original topic, this was a roundabout way of saying you could do the same for wireless, and avoid the problem of overcrowded bands. Granted SNR would be a lot more of a problem for wireless, but you are also working at much higher frequencies, and you have other variables you can play with to improve signal quality, such as spatial multiplexing for 802.11n.
Sorry for the confusion, I did not mean to imply that infinite SNR was possible, but I was simply trying to illustrate a limit, showing that as we trend towards a higher SNR, we can grow the capacity. Obviously with 0 noise, we could have infinite capacity, but that situation is quite unrealistic, at least for now.
For your point 1, I don't recognize the formula offhand (Still need my morning coffee), but the formula is missing the R which you define right after, but has a B, which I'm guessing would be the 4k. I'll assume that's just a typo, but please let me know if I'm mistaken. If the formula is v2=4kTR, then the easiest thing to target would be the R, and not the T. We are already making progress in the area of high temperature super conductors. As those become a reality, we will get all that much closer to infinite SNR.
Remember, this is all part a discussion of whether it is possible to fit more than 56kbit/s of data into the 0-4000 Hz range. The idea of infinite SNR is getting pretty heavily into the realm of science fiction. I only used the formulas since they were brought up, in order to illustrate that they would not invalidate my point.
Ok, here's a pretty basic example; the first thing that comes to mind really. Obviously this is not something that anyone would waste time or money to build, for reasons mentioned earlier, and it would still take a fair bit of work to get off the ground.
You have a modern phone cable, which is usable for DSL signals. You have a carrier signal at 1kHz, so you sample 1000 times a second.
The data will be transferred by every frequency from 3000-4000, at 1Hz intervals (This could be much smaller, but this is for the sake of example. Normal DSL has at least this many divisions). During each sample interval, the data frequencies will have an amplitude of either 1 volts (=1), or 0 volts (=0). Transform the sampled data into the frequency domain, and analyze the 3000-4000 range. You will see a set of peaks form the 3000-4000. Each peak represents a binary 1, while each pit is a binary 0. Let's say 25% of that is checksum/protocol data, so you have every millisecond, 750 bits being sent. With a 1kHz carrier, you are now at 750 kbits/sec, using the 3000-4000Hz range, more after you add in compression.
This is all possible using modern hardware, and could probably be built with minimal investment and engineering effort. Noise at the 3000-4000Hz range could be practically non existent due to the quality of the cable and shielding, and noise at higher frequencies could be safely ignored, as it would not actually interfere with the data being transferred. Obviously, you would never see this on the market; who would pay for a 750kbit service that interferes with phone conversations, when you can pay for a 7.5mbit service for service that does not.
The main point to realize is that our hardware is already capable of picking up signal in the GHz range. For instance the difference between 1 GHz and 1.001 GHz. What this really means is we can tell the difference between something that pulses a billion times per second, and something that pulses 1 billion, and one million times per second. In other words the difference between a 1 nanosecond period, and a 999 ps period.
If you think there's a market, feel free to take this as a starting point, and roll with it.
Now first off, I'm not sure why you're trying to bring Nyquist's Theorem into this discussion. We've already established that we do not particularly care about reconstruction the analog signal, and certainly not about its accuracy. Please stop trying to change the argument.
Shannon's Limit is a much better an example. We have C = B * Log2(1+S/N). B is fixed, so we are left with the SNR as the determining factor. Now granted, there may be physical limits on how high this value could ever go, but I have not seen any proof of such, so I will not assume they exist until mathematically proven otherwise. With that in mind, any current limitation on this value is still technological (medium quality, techniques to minimize noise, etc), not physical. If you can prove the SNR fundamentally cannot go above a certain value, I would love to see it, and will gladly admit that you are correct. If not, then I thank you for proving my point: As SNR goes to infinity, so does the channel capacity follow. Q.E.D.
So you see, I do not need to change any laws, when they do not actually prevent me from doing something.
But as fluffy99 just pointed out, this is not even a remotely valid comparison to make. Phone signal used all of the bandwidth in a rather wide range, in probably the most inefficient way possible. Even if DSL operated in the 0-4000 Hz range, it would use the spectrum much more efficiently than would an analog signal sampled at n times a second.
The idea I'm trying to get across is that technology is not limited to the techniques you are familiar with. So if we were limited to using the phone line as it has always been used, by sampling at fixed intervals, you would be absolutely correct. However, if an engineer was given the challenge to use the 0-4kHz range to transmit the most data possible, I assure you that the number would be much higher. Obviously, unlike you suggest near the end of your post, there is absolutely no reason to exceed 56k for this range. To do so would mean a return to the days of having to chose whether you want a telephone, or internet. Current technology is already beyond that. Also, even if someone did take up this challenge, the goal would not be to use POTS, which as you pointed out has certain limitations, but instead to use the 0-4kHz frequency to maximum efficiency, which would likely involve some entirely new data transfer methodology.
In other words, to spend time on increasing the speed of modems would be akin to modding a Model-T to go 100mph. I'm sure if you're dedicated enough, you could do it, but you could also go to a dealer and buy a car that does the same for 1/100th the cost.
I suggest you head over to Wikipedia and read up on some of the terms mentioned by the AC near the end of the thread. It explain what we're all trying to convey in a lot more technical detail.
Sure, it's trivial to calculate what we can do using older techniques, but how does that relate to whatever spec is going to be rolling out in 2019, when this might become more of a problem? After all, a bit of time on Wikipedia, both of these specs were developed in the 1990s.
And since we're on the topic, why did you not bring up the 802.11n protocol, which can accommodate 288 Mbits/s in a 20 MHz channel?
I think kevinmenzel illustrated the point quite well. Analog phone lines are indeed no faster than 56 kbits/second. That's why we went to a new technology, and now have DSL. However, I'm not proposing we try to get more data into current wireless protocols, clearly that is a waste of time as they were not designed to do this.
Physically though, the spectrum is effectively infinite. With technology advanced and sensitive enough, you could send all the world's data in a second, using the same spectrum that might now carry 10 bytes. Obviously, that might never even happen, but it is not wise to completely discount it.
Spot on. The problem with the article is that it fails to account for advances in technology. As we need more bandwidth, technology will evolve to give you more bandwidth. That in less spectrum, with higher reliability and less interference.
As you pointed out, this happened for wired connections in the past. In response, we are almost to commercial 40Gb and even 100Gb links, the latter being targeted for 40km stretches.
If they are that worried about pirates transfer games they could just design a simple app that can verify you own the game on your original PSP, and create a token in your account. If you could go the extra mile and uniquely identify the game, it would be even more secure. The worst you have to worry about in this case is some guys sharing games with their friends, something that happens anyway. Of course this requires something unusual; trust in your customers, which leads me to say that I should stop posting stupid ideas.
I find this comparison a bit unfair. Now granted, I do not know much about Windows Mobile, but when it comes to the iPhone, you do not actually download a custom OS image every time you jail break. As the name implies, jail breaking keeps the existing OS, but modifies it to allow unsigned applications to be installed.
The Android, by contrast, is inherently more open. If you so chose, you can put on a whole new boot-loader, and install your own build of the OS. Of course, distributing Google apps with an OS that has no relation to Google is wholly different from hacking an existing OS, and keeping the apps on there. Don't get me wrong, I am still annoyed at Google for pulling this stunt, but give credit where it's due.
So, if you claim that Apple and Microsoft are more open than Google, I can only return your claim by saying Microsoft and Apple are not even in the same LEAGUE of openness. In that vein, the two cases are not even remotely comparable.
Google's (not too secret) goal is to effectively rule your internet experience. It makes no sense for them to dictate what browser they want you to use. All they really need, is for you to use a browser that can run their web apps sufficiently fast, without crashing or running into compliance issues. To that effect, they are releasing most of their non-web applications into open source.
If they really wish to start "Extending" the features, they would be shooting themselves in the foot. As a hypothetical situation: say 50% of the market uses Chrome, and 50% uses something else. Further, let's say 50% of the "something else" crowd would convert to get these new features. So, Google can capture 100% of the market by supporting standards, or 75% of the market share by trying to lock people in.
Above all, Google is still a company, and there would be absolutely no reason to accept a smaller market share of your primary market. It's basic math at this point.
Somehow, I doubt all of those 40,000 members will follow though with this boycott. When 9/10 of your friends are playing, it will take a special kind of person to go, "No thanks, I'm trying to prove a point."
You have a point, I could have upgraded a bit more of my offensive abilities, but I found that playing a support character that could unload stupid damage was always more fun. It's hard to say for your case though. You may be entirely correct in not feeling the love, as the game might be missing the key features you're interested in.
My suggestion, take a really careful look at your character, and what you do with it, and come up with something that would make it fun. Once you have that, just post on the champions forum asking for advice. It's always possible that some of the devs will see your post and go, "Hey, that's a good idea."
I think a lot of your issues are a matter of how you build your characters. As a crazy weak glass cannon I find myself blocking more often than not, especially since it also happens to be a good way for me to build up energy. Also, even at level 20, my rotation involves at least 3 abilities, and up to 5 depending on the situation. This is only likely to grow as I get new skills.
Perhaps you should try tweaking your build, or even doing a full retcon if you still have it available. From what I read, you might enjoy the game a lot more if you play it differently.
I'm completely with you on the stats though. They really turned out to be a giant pain.
People are not used to making as much progress as we have in the past few years. When you grow up while taking certain things for granted, it's quite a shock to see them proven null and void. The natural response is to fear it, and try to come up with every thing that could possibly go wrong in order to feel justified in said fear. It's not really a bad thing though, in fact these people often bring up good points.
I'm sure as time goes on, the younger generations will be less focused on worrying about these questions, and more on making sure the worst case scenarios don't come to pass. As long as progress is not impeded, all is fine.
I don't think shareware is going far enough. You really want your customers to feel trusted and appreciated. That will put them in a more positive frame of mind, and thus more likely to pay you for what may be a very good work. In my view, you can classify people that get games into a few categories.
First, you have the people that will almost certainly buy the product. Currently, these people will probably download the demo in order to try it out, or they may just go to the store and buy the game outright. In either case, their mind is already set. Giving them the full version, and asking for a set donation to remove a nag screen will just make them feel trusted and appreciated. You could do worse with your most dedicated player base.
A sub group of the above are the impulse buyers. As long as you continue to sell boxed copies, and advertise through all the normal channels (Google, Steam, review sites), you should have this section of the market covered.
Second, you have the people that are not sure whether they want they game or not. They may not find the demo indicative of the full game, or they may want to play more (or all) of the game through before passing judgment. This group is where I believe most of the losses occur right now. With the modern DRM method, many such users will simply download an un-crippled version of the game off a torrent site, and play it without much hassle. Should a game be good enough, they may buy it to show support, but if the game is only passable, it may not be worth the effort of tracking down a hard-copy when you've already played it through. Having a simple method of providing patronage should solve this. In fact, it could open up a whole new world of people that pay AFTER finishing a game. To expand the idea, have several payment scales. If your default donation is $60 (or $6 for 12 months), you could also provide a $30 option to give the people that didn't feel your game was worth the full price a chance to contribute. Just require the user to complete the came first. Somewhat risky, but worthwhile if you really think your game is worth it.
Finally, there are the hardcore pirates. These people don't care in the slightest that you worked hard to make this game. For them, it's a question of free entertainment. Trying to do anything about these people is absolutely pointless, because they don't feel any qualms with piracy. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, even if you did manage to get a perfect DRM scheme, this group would simply move somewhere with a easier to crack system. I say, just treat these people as they really are, free advertisement. You want these people to love your game, so they praise it on slashdot/facebook/twitter/blog/whatever. You do NOT, however, want these people mad, because they will smear you with the dirtiest sewage that they wade through daily.
I really think that you could even do large globs of money games, if you were to target the game at enough audiences. How about instead of DRM, you have a counter that's very visible in the menu that says, "You have used this for whatever days. Since you like it, you really should pay us for this, then we'll keep making better things for you."
The fact is, if a person does not like your game, chances are many of them wouldn't have bought it anyway. If they like your game, and have money, a lot of them will pay a bit to fund you further. You just need to make it really easy. In fact, have a "buy game" button which takes you to your paypal account/enter cc number window right under the "pay us" message. Maybe even offer payment plans ($5 a month for 12 months), that would offset the distaste for paying $60.
Most importantly, don't cripple anything. People hate to be pressured.
"I didn't snap a picture of it, but I checked the back of the PC accomplishing this feat, and all six of the DisplayPort connections were plugged into a single expansion slot"
Slashdot Mirror
I am with you, pick what you like, and move in that direction.
It is so refreshing to see someone really follow their passion. A huge percentage of the population today is stuck in jobs they do not like. This leads to resentment, anger, and eventually very negative release of these emotions. What's worse, the smartest of these make it to the top of the food chain, then take out all of this amassed anger on society. Had they not been pushed into fields that did not suit them, they would have most likely contributed a lot more to society, and left the positions they now occupy to those that could fill such roles while living a happier life, and contributing much more to the world.
The way I see it, the purpose of life is to do what you want, enjoy doing it, and enjoy helping others do the same. It is very unfortunate that this does not happen.
Piracy has been reigned in? When did that happen, I must have missed the memo.
Well, that's what I thought was arguing. Perhaps that wasn't what was understood. Hard to say. For me the discussion has been the purely theoretical possibility of using modern technology to send a large amount of data over frequencies that were previously used to send much less.
Tying it to the original topic, this was a roundabout way of saying you could do the same for wireless, and avoid the problem of overcrowded bands. Granted SNR would be a lot more of a problem for wireless, but you are also working at much higher frequencies, and you have other variables you can play with to improve signal quality, such as spatial multiplexing for 802.11n.
Sorry for the confusion, I did not mean to imply that infinite SNR was possible, but I was simply trying to illustrate a limit, showing that as we trend towards a higher SNR, we can grow the capacity. Obviously with 0 noise, we could have infinite capacity, but that situation is quite unrealistic, at least for now.
For your point 1, I don't recognize the formula offhand (Still need my morning coffee), but the formula is missing the R which you define right after, but has a B, which I'm guessing would be the 4k. I'll assume that's just a typo, but please let me know if I'm mistaken. If the formula is v2=4kTR, then the easiest thing to target would be the R, and not the T. We are already making progress in the area of high temperature super conductors. As those become a reality, we will get all that much closer to infinite SNR.
Remember, this is all part a discussion of whether it is possible to fit more than 56kbit/s of data into the 0-4000 Hz range. The idea of infinite SNR is getting pretty heavily into the realm of science fiction. I only used the formulas since they were brought up, in order to illustrate that they would not invalidate my point.
Ok, here's a pretty basic example; the first thing that comes to mind really. Obviously this is not something that anyone would waste time or money to build, for reasons mentioned earlier, and it would still take a fair bit of work to get off the ground.
You have a modern phone cable, which is usable for DSL signals. You have a carrier signal at 1kHz, so you sample 1000 times a second.
The data will be transferred by every frequency from 3000-4000, at 1Hz intervals (This could be much smaller, but this is for the sake of example. Normal DSL has at least this many divisions). During each sample interval, the data frequencies will have an amplitude of either 1 volts (=1), or 0 volts (=0). Transform the sampled data into the frequency domain, and analyze the 3000-4000 range. You will see a set of peaks form the 3000-4000. Each peak represents a binary 1, while each pit is a binary 0. Let's say 25% of that is checksum/protocol data, so you have every millisecond, 750 bits being sent. With a 1kHz carrier, you are now at 750 kbits/sec, using the 3000-4000Hz range, more after you add in compression.
This is all possible using modern hardware, and could probably be built with minimal investment and engineering effort. Noise at the 3000-4000Hz range could be practically non existent due to the quality of the cable and shielding, and noise at higher frequencies could be safely ignored, as it would not actually interfere with the data being transferred. Obviously, you would never see this on the market; who would pay for a 750kbit service that interferes with phone conversations, when you can pay for a 7.5mbit service for service that does not.
The main point to realize is that our hardware is already capable of picking up signal in the GHz range. For instance the difference between 1 GHz and 1.001 GHz. What this really means is we can tell the difference between something that pulses a billion times per second, and something that pulses 1 billion, and one million times per second. In other words the difference between a 1 nanosecond period, and a 999 ps period.
If you think there's a market, feel free to take this as a starting point, and roll with it.
Now first off, I'm not sure why you're trying to bring Nyquist's Theorem into this discussion. We've already established that we do not particularly care about reconstruction the analog signal, and certainly not about its accuracy. Please stop trying to change the argument.
Shannon's Limit is a much better an example. We have C = B * Log2(1+S/N). B is fixed, so we are left with the SNR as the determining factor. Now granted, there may be physical limits on how high this value could ever go, but I have not seen any proof of such, so I will not assume they exist until mathematically proven otherwise. With that in mind, any current limitation on this value is still technological (medium quality, techniques to minimize noise, etc), not physical. If you can prove the SNR fundamentally cannot go above a certain value, I would love to see it, and will gladly admit that you are correct. If not, then I thank you for proving my point: As SNR goes to infinity, so does the channel capacity follow. Q.E.D.
So you see, I do not need to change any laws, when they do not actually prevent me from doing something.
But as fluffy99 just pointed out, this is not even a remotely valid comparison to make. Phone signal used all of the bandwidth in a rather wide range, in probably the most inefficient way possible. Even if DSL operated in the 0-4000 Hz range, it would use the spectrum much more efficiently than would an analog signal sampled at n times a second.
The idea I'm trying to get across is that technology is not limited to the techniques you are familiar with. So if we were limited to using the phone line as it has always been used, by sampling at fixed intervals, you would be absolutely correct. However, if an engineer was given the challenge to use the 0-4kHz range to transmit the most data possible, I assure you that the number would be much higher. Obviously, unlike you suggest near the end of your post, there is absolutely no reason to exceed 56k for this range. To do so would mean a return to the days of having to chose whether you want a telephone, or internet. Current technology is already beyond that. Also, even if someone did take up this challenge, the goal would not be to use POTS, which as you pointed out has certain limitations, but instead to use the 0-4kHz frequency to maximum efficiency, which would likely involve some entirely new data transfer methodology.
In other words, to spend time on increasing the speed of modems would be akin to modding a Model-T to go 100mph. I'm sure if you're dedicated enough, you could do it, but you could also go to a dealer and buy a car that does the same for 1/100th the cost.
I suggest you head over to Wikipedia and read up on some of the terms mentioned by the AC near the end of the thread. It explain what we're all trying to convey in a lot more technical detail.
Sure, it's trivial to calculate what we can do using older techniques, but how does that relate to whatever spec is going to be rolling out in 2019, when this might become more of a problem? After all, a bit of time on Wikipedia, both of these specs were developed in the 1990s.
And since we're on the topic, why did you not bring up the 802.11n protocol, which can accommodate 288 Mbits/s in a 20 MHz channel?
Ooh, so many new terms to look up. This promises to be enlightening.
Though you would need to negotiate your slave contract discounts with your authorized, killer-robot-overlord happiness allocation unit.
I think kevinmenzel illustrated the point quite well. Analog phone lines are indeed no faster than 56 kbits/second. That's why we went to a new technology, and now have DSL. However, I'm not proposing we try to get more data into current wireless protocols, clearly that is a waste of time as they were not designed to do this.
Physically though, the spectrum is effectively infinite. With technology advanced and sensitive enough, you could send all the world's data in a second, using the same spectrum that might now carry 10 bytes. Obviously, that might never even happen, but it is not wise to completely discount it.
DSL users faeries on pixie dust. You really should keep up with these things.
Spot on. The problem with the article is that it fails to account for advances in technology. As we need more bandwidth, technology will evolve to give you more bandwidth. That in less spectrum, with higher reliability and less interference.
As you pointed out, this happened for wired connections in the past. In response, we are almost to commercial 40Gb and even 100Gb links, the latter being targeted for 40km stretches.
A few hundred khz of bandwidth is quite a bit of data that you could be sending, especially properly compressed/processed/split into segments.
If they are that worried about pirates transfer games they could just design a simple app that can verify you own the game on your original PSP, and create a token in your account. If you could go the extra mile and uniquely identify the game, it would be even more secure. The worst you have to worry about in this case is some guys sharing games with their friends, something that happens anyway. Of course this requires something unusual; trust in your customers, which leads me to say that I should stop posting stupid ideas.
Hmm, maybe I should look into that then.
I find this comparison a bit unfair. Now granted, I do not know much about Windows Mobile, but when it comes to the iPhone, you do not actually download a custom OS image every time you jail break. As the name implies, jail breaking keeps the existing OS, but modifies it to allow unsigned applications to be installed.
The Android, by contrast, is inherently more open. If you so chose, you can put on a whole new boot-loader, and install your own build of the OS. Of course, distributing Google apps with an OS that has no relation to Google is wholly different from hacking an existing OS, and keeping the apps on there. Don't get me wrong, I am still annoyed at Google for pulling this stunt, but give credit where it's due.
So, if you claim that Apple and Microsoft are more open than Google, I can only return your claim by saying Microsoft and Apple are not even in the same LEAGUE of openness. In that vein, the two cases are not even remotely comparable.
Google's (not too secret) goal is to effectively rule your internet experience. It makes no sense for them to dictate what browser they want you to use. All they really need, is for you to use a browser that can run their web apps sufficiently fast, without crashing or running into compliance issues. To that effect, they are releasing most of their non-web applications into open source.
If they really wish to start "Extending" the features, they would be shooting themselves in the foot. As a hypothetical situation: say 50% of the market uses Chrome, and 50% uses something else. Further, let's say 50% of the "something else" crowd would convert to get these new features. So, Google can capture 100% of the market by supporting standards, or 75% of the market share by trying to lock people in.
Above all, Google is still a company, and there would be absolutely no reason to accept a smaller market share of your primary market. It's basic math at this point.
Logic? On this site? What is the world coming to.
Somehow, I doubt all of those 40,000 members will follow though with this boycott. When 9/10 of your friends are playing, it will take a special kind of person to go, "No thanks, I'm trying to prove a point."
You have a point, I could have upgraded a bit more of my offensive abilities, but I found that playing a support character that could unload stupid damage was always more fun. It's hard to say for your case though. You may be entirely correct in not feeling the love, as the game might be missing the key features you're interested in.
My suggestion, take a really careful look at your character, and what you do with it, and come up with something that would make it fun. Once you have that, just post on the champions forum asking for advice. It's always possible that some of the devs will see your post and go, "Hey, that's a good idea."
I think a lot of your issues are a matter of how you build your characters. As a crazy weak glass cannon I find myself blocking more often than not, especially since it also happens to be a good way for me to build up energy. Also, even at level 20, my rotation involves at least 3 abilities, and up to 5 depending on the situation. This is only likely to grow as I get new skills.
Perhaps you should try tweaking your build, or even doing a full retcon if you still have it available. From what I read, you might enjoy the game a lot more if you play it differently.
I'm completely with you on the stats though. They really turned out to be a giant pain.
People are not used to making as much progress as we have in the past few years. When you grow up while taking certain things for granted, it's quite a shock to see them proven null and void. The natural response is to fear it, and try to come up with every thing that could possibly go wrong in order to feel justified in said fear. It's not really a bad thing though, in fact these people often bring up good points.
I'm sure as time goes on, the younger generations will be less focused on worrying about these questions, and more on making sure the worst case scenarios don't come to pass. As long as progress is not impeded, all is fine.
I don't think shareware is going far enough. You really want your customers to feel trusted and appreciated. That will put them in a more positive frame of mind, and thus more likely to pay you for what may be a very good work. In my view, you can classify people that get games into a few categories.
First, you have the people that will almost certainly buy the product. Currently, these people will probably download the demo in order to try it out, or they may just go to the store and buy the game outright. In either case, their mind is already set. Giving them the full version, and asking for a set donation to remove a nag screen will just make them feel trusted and appreciated. You could do worse with your most dedicated player base.
A sub group of the above are the impulse buyers. As long as you continue to sell boxed copies, and advertise through all the normal channels (Google, Steam, review sites), you should have this section of the market covered.
Second, you have the people that are not sure whether they want they game or not. They may not find the demo indicative of the full game, or they may want to play more (or all) of the game through before passing judgment. This group is where I believe most of the losses occur right now. With the modern DRM method, many such users will simply download an un-crippled version of the game off a torrent site, and play it without much hassle. Should a game be good enough, they may buy it to show support, but if the game is only passable, it may not be worth the effort of tracking down a hard-copy when you've already played it through. Having a simple method of providing patronage should solve this. In fact, it could open up a whole new world of people that pay AFTER finishing a game. To expand the idea, have several payment scales. If your default donation is $60 (or $6 for 12 months), you could also provide a $30 option to give the people that didn't feel your game was worth the full price a chance to contribute. Just require the user to complete the came first. Somewhat risky, but worthwhile if you really think your game is worth it.
Finally, there are the hardcore pirates. These people don't care in the slightest that you worked hard to make this game. For them, it's a question of free entertainment. Trying to do anything about these people is absolutely pointless, because they don't feel any qualms with piracy. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, even if you did manage to get a perfect DRM scheme, this group would simply move somewhere with a easier to crack system. I say, just treat these people as they really are, free advertisement. You want these people to love your game, so they praise it on slashdot/facebook/twitter/blog/whatever. You do NOT, however, want these people mad, because they will smear you with the dirtiest sewage that they wade through daily.
I really think that you could even do large globs of money games, if you were to target the game at enough audiences. How about instead of DRM, you have a counter that's very visible in the menu that says, "You have used this for whatever days. Since you like it, you really should pay us for this, then we'll keep making better things for you."
The fact is, if a person does not like your game, chances are many of them wouldn't have bought it anyway. If they like your game, and have money, a lot of them will pay a bit to fund you further. You just need to make it really easy. In fact, have a "buy game" button which takes you to your paypal account/enter cc number window right under the "pay us" message. Maybe even offer payment plans ($5 a month for 12 months), that would offset the distaste for paying $60.
Most importantly, don't cripple anything. People hate to be pressured.
That, only logged in.
"I didn't snap a picture of it, but I checked the back of the PC accomplishing this feat, and all six of the DisplayPort connections were plugged into a single expansion slot"
From the article.