Torgo's Pizza - Slashdot User

Blizzard Boss Says Restrictive DRM Is a Waste of Time 563

Posted by Soulskill on Friday May 28, 2010 @03:24AM from the what-about-lan-play dept.

Stoobalou writes "Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce reckons that fighting piracy with DRM is a losing battle. His company — which is responsible for one of the biggest video games of all time, the addictive online fantasy role player World of Warcraft — is to release StarCraft 2 on July 27, and Pearce has told Videogamer that the title won't be hobbled with the kind of crazy copy protection schemes that have made Ubisoft very unpopular in gaming circles of late. StarCraft 2 will require a single online activation using the company's Battle.net servers, after which players will be allowed to play the single-player game to their hearts' content, without being forced to have a persistent Internet connection."

Comment Re:Document Management Systems (Score 1) 152

by Torgo's Pizza on Friday April 09, 2010 @03:09PM (#31793288) Attached to: ISO 9001-Compliant Document Control?

Highly recommend Documentum. I just finished writing a white paper on the ROI for our company's implementation between SharePoint and Documentum. Documentum comes out so far ahead in three and five year ROI figures it's not funny.

I always hear that Documentum is expensive, and at first glance it appears to be. However, considering that you get a true *and* complete enterprise content managment platform, you end up paying up front for what you need. SharePoint is a full-featured collaboration platform and a *basic* content managment system. Cheap at first, but you end up paying extra for third-party content and support for what you need later. SP is fine for some small companies, but it simply does not scale.

SharePoint is fine for departments to use for project management or collaboration. Anything else, including business process management, and you're going to pay for it later. If your IT wants to use it, that's okay as long as you have something else like Documentum, FileNet, or Alfresco to fill in the gaps.

Game Devs On the Future of PC Gaming 375

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @06:25AM from the all-ubisoft-all-the-time dept.

Shacknews wraps up a developer panel at PAX East discussing the future of gaming on the PC. They cover topics including DRM, digital download platforms and cloud-based gaming services. "Joe Kreiner of Terminal Reality: 'If you look at it from a giant publisher perspective, then the numbers on the PC just really don't make financial sense for you to bother with it. But if you start out with the mindset — you know, you're targeting that group, you make a niched product that's going [to] do well, if you look at a lot of the titles on Steam, Torchlight's a really good example — as long as you know that's your audience to begin with, and you make something inside of a budget that you know you're going to be selling those kinds of numbers, you can be very successful. I think it just takes a targeted developer. ... There is no [PC] platform, really. It's just a mish-mosh of hardware, an operating system that kind of supports games. The problem with that platform is, there's no standards and piracy is rampant, so why would we want to make a video game for that platform unless you had some sort of draconian DRM thing to keep it from being stolen?"

EA Shutting Down Video Game Servers Prematurely 341

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 06, 2010 @07:42AM from the sixty-dollar-yearly-fee dept.

Spacezilla writes "EA is dropping the bomb on a number of their video game servers, shutting down the online fun for many of their Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 games. Not only is the inclusion of PS3 and Xbox 360 titles odd, the date the games were released is even more surprising. Yes, Madden 07 and 08 are included in the shutdown... but Madden 09 on all consoles as well?"

Infinity Ward Fights Against Modern Warfare 2 Cheaters 203

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @07:56AM from the be-careful-they-cheat dept.

Faithbleed writes "IW's Robert Bowling reports on his twitter account that Infinity Ward is giving 2,500 Modern Warfare 2 cheaters the boot. The news comes as the war between IW and MW2's fans rages over the decision to go with IWnet hosting instead of dedicated servers. Unhappy players were quick to come up with hacks that would allow their own servers and various other changes." Despite the dedicated-server complaints, Modern Warfare 2 has sold ridiculously well.

US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday November 25, 2009 @05:02AM from the quick-who-knows-a-good-ps3-flight-sim dept.

bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."

Submission + - Firefox Co-Founder Blake Ross on Firefox and Opera

Submitted by

Kelson

on Thursday January 18, 2007 @01:54PM

Kelson writes: "Opera Watch recently interviewed Blake Ross, co-founder of Firefox. Ross spoke on Firefox's evolution, how it can improve, its relationship with Opera and other browsers, implications of IE7, and the state of the web today. When asked about the fan rivalry between Firefox and Opera, he called it "ridiculous," adding that "Millions of people out there rely on us to make the Web better, not have pissing contests." Asked to describe Opera in three words, he said, "Our best ally.""

Submission + - Single-pixel camera

Submitted by Assassin bug on Thursday January 18, 2007 @01:52PM

Assassin bug writes: From the BBC — Researchers in the US are developing a single-pixel camera to capture high-quality images without the expense of traditional digital photography.

Submission + - Owner of Winners, HomeSense says hacker stole data

Submitted by kartis on Thursday January 18, 2007 @12:39PM

kartis writes: is this the headline event that is going to finally get serious protections from our respective governments on privacy? Apparently this breach has been ongoing since 2003. "Millions of credit card accounts may have been compromised after hackers stole customer information last year from computer systems of TJX Cos., the U.S. parent firm of Canadian retailers Winners and HomeSense...Citing unnamed sources, the Globe and Mail reported Thursday that two million Visa credit card accounts in Canada and 20 million Visa cards globally have been affected." http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/01/18/winnersbr each.html

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