Well, there’s a lot of hullabaloo revolving around the infestation of DRM on consumer PC games. I can understand the publishers’ point of view since they claim that DRM is a necessary means in the fight against piracy, and I agree, but it merely delays the inevitable. When I was in college, I was pretty big into the piracy scene. I was broke, computer savvy, and liked to play all the new glitteries. Me being broke was the main motivation for pirating games since I liked playing games but the majority of games on the market don’t exactly have any replay value, so after I beat it, I’m done. Since I had an Über-Fast internet connection, I became what was known as a “dump-site”. Meaning I got all the new fantabulous stuff before anybody else did. What I noticed during that time is that I often got “gold issue” versions of games that weren’t even out yet. Yeah, you read that right; to use a modern example, I would be playing a full, retail release quality copy of FALLOUT 3, right now! Now, since I’m married, my wife acts as a moral compass for me so I’m not allowed to pirate crap anymore, and since I can actually afford to pay for them, I’m not exactly motivated to put in the effort of procuring games through piracy. In all likelihood, if I were to venture onto usenets or IRC I could probably find a version of Fallout 3 but it’s not worth my time, especially since I already have the Amazon.com Exclusive Survival Edition on preorder. What I’m trying to say is, DRM doesn’t prevent or limit crap! Nine times out of ten, the pirated copy is some leaked gold version that someone working at the publisher or someone working at a retailer stole and sold to a pirate group. Yes, there is money involved and quite a bit as I imagine the ones getting paid take a significant risk in supplying the goods. So technically, like all pirate groups claim, “we buy our games” they do, it’s just stolen property. But enough of that ranting! Here’s the solution to the DRM: Subscription model. Now, before I get a crap ton of flame comments, hear me out. Charge $10-15 for the media or digital download, one month access, and the serial to activate. Then charge $2-3 per month for access to the game with the caveat that the game will be completely unlocked in the event that the game is officially “retired” or no longer supported, with a minimum term of support for two years, but no minimum requirement on the part of the subscriber. It’s a model based on the World of Warcraft, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online, etc. Sure, it’ll piss off a few people, but I for one would be more than happy to shell out $15 for the actual game, and then pay a total of about $50 for unlimited play for a year. Since I normally get bored or beat a game within that timeframe. Of course, like the MMORPGs listed, it’ll require an internet connection to log on to play but considering that according to a 2007 survey 47% of all households have high-speed internet, I’ll take a jump that 94% of gamers have it. And approximating that 50% of individuals between the ages of 14 and 40, exclusive, are gamers, there are approximately 50891140 gamers in the US so, 47837671 of them have broadband, and estimating that 25% of them will buy any particular game, 11959418, and that only 25% of those will buy it because they don’t like the subscription model, that leaves roughly 3 million people buying a game and paying the $3/mo. I would like to believe that this is conservative since most people would find $15 once and $3/mo quite reasonable, and since the company wouldn’t be wasting development dollars on a new DRM scheme that will be broken tomorrow or even next week it equates to more revenue. Hell, let’s be really conservative and say that 1% of gamers with broadband would buy into this. That’s 478377 gamers @ $15 a pop=$7175655 once and $717566/mo presuming that only 50% of those stick with it. That’s a nice chunk-o-change. In my mind this resolves the whole piracy issue. It takes the wind out of the sails of those who “do it because of DRM” and those who “do it because they can”. Besides, who cares if they continue to pirate it? Even if they manage to spoof the registration key, they’re still paying $3/mo to continue to play.

So, it’s been about three months since I downloaded Rohos. All I have to say is, “I’m impressed.” I have noticed that there are a few glitches in it though, either using Rohos to change the password on the machine doesn’t work for roaming profiles, or it doesn’t like high ANSI characters, e.g. ¢?ìçª?éáô²?Í׸·¥°ÂÞ?ݤå÷÷¶?ķ˽Ё?Ĩ?´þ?äÜ ¬Öøçùá?ò?¼?þ??âËøâ, ’cause I stupidly managed to completely bork my computer using those. I’ve since changed to use only alphanumerics AND using the proper Windoze network password change mechanism, I’ve not had any problems since. The only problem I occasionally have is when I try to use a computer that isn’t my own, since I don’t exactly know the password. I get problems.

So, I’m playing around with this nifty little program called Rohos, it seems really cool so I thought I’d give it a try. You guys can give it a look here,

So, my computer is still craptastic (crap + fantastic). It’s full of wonderful shiny parts of tasty hardware that would make most geeks drool. However, I’m regularly greeted with the locking up of my machine when I decide that I’d like to play a (graphically intensive) game, i.e., NOT World of Warcrack or any other wonderful terribleness that’s designed to run on an Osborne 1 (really, really old “laptop”). Originally, I couldn’t really figure out whether my problem was the result of not enough juice or overheating. After removing 8 HDDs and the RAID controller I settled on the latter since I was still having problems and a similar box was made by MaximumPC that uses a PCPower 750W PSU compared to my PCPower 1kW PSU. I’ve complained about my issues on a forum or two and I’ve been told that my case just doesn’t have enough airflow. That’s probably true considering the compartmentalization of the case, there’s essentially no airflow over the mobo area. Lately, I’ve been looking at some custom water cooling setups, I could get by with ~$600; but that’s just not good enough for me…I’m spoiled…I’ve been reading about nVidia’s ESA open “standard” that starting to be adopted by many companies including power supply and case manufacturers…ME WANTS! Yet, all that wonderful terribleness would run up the cost approximately an additional $2400. But since I’m not one to borrow money to get what I want, though that would be soooo easy, the ultimate price just isn’t worth it. Blast you Dave Ramsey and your popularification of common sense! So…I’d need a new job to take care of that ’cause workin’ ~75hrs/wk at ~$x.xx/hr just ain’t cuttin’ it for splurges like that. Well, I should probably monopolize on the time I could be sleepin’ instead of gabbin’.

Yay! Finally after about a month of procuring all of the components I managed to manhandle my new computer into existence.

Har be de specificationesessesseses:

Processor: Intel Quad Core 3.00 GHz

RAM: 4GB Corsair DDR2 (only 2.25 of which are actually usable but that’s an operating system thing)

Hard Drives: 12 one-terabyte  hdds in a RAID 6 array controlled by a 3ware 12-port RAID SATA controller

Video Cards: 2 XFX 8800 Ultra XXX (in SLI, of course)

Sound Card: Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer Pro

Motherboard: eVGA 775 SLI

Case: Lian-Li PC-2000BPlusII

Power supply: PCPower 1kW custom psu (15 sata drive connectors instead of ide connectors)

DVD drives: 2 Samsung S203B SATA drives

I’m sure there’s something that I forgot to document here, but that’s pretty much it.  Unfortunately, I lose a bit of the ram as a result of Windows XP’s 32-bit goodness but, I’ve got it if I ever decide to go 64-bit. But, I’m not exactly one to be an early adopter so I’ll probably end up waiting until 64-bit OS’s go mainstream. Of course, this machine was not without its hiccups, and I’m still trying to determine if I’ve snuffed them all out yet; but that’s another story.