Runic Games’ Max Schaefer talks RMT, DRM, and Modding

I personally agree with Max on all of these. I love that Runic Game released the game creation tools with Torchlight. I used TorchED to create my own content several night instead of playing the game. I had fun playing with the editor. I find a game more fun if you can play with it and if you get stuck you can help yourself with a little cheating. I am totally against DRM it cripples game and is a big hassle. I am not sure if I will be picking up D3 if I have to have a constant internet connection. I am on DSL and it is always on but I do a lot of gaming offline too. Actually most of my gaming is offline. I rarely play online computer games because of lag and the hassle of logging into a system. I am a casual gamer. I do not play for extended amounts of time. I play maybe 30 mins – 1 hr a night and do that every night of the week to relax after work. If I have to waste 5 minutes of that logging into a system before I can even play it really cuts down on my play time.

Here are Max’s views: http://www.incgamers.com/Interviews/348/runic-games-max-schaefer-talks-rmt-drm-and-modding

I personally agree with Max on all of these. I love that Runic Game released the game creation tools with Torchlight. I used TorchED to create my own content several night instead of playing the game. I had fun playing with the editor. I find a game more fun if you can play with it and if you get stuck you can help yourself with a little cheating. I am totally against DRM it cripples game and is a big hassle. I am not sure if I will be picking up D3 if I have to have a constant internet connection. I am on DSL and it is always on but I do a lot of gaming offline too. Actually most of my gaming is offline. I rarely play online computer games because of lag and the hassle of logging into a system. I am a casual gamer. I do not play for extended amounts of time. I play maybe 30 mins – 1 hr a night and do that every night of the week to relax after work. If I have to waste 5 minutes of that logging into a system before I can even play it really cuts down on my play time.

Here are Max’s views: http://www.incgamers.com/Interviews/348/runic-games-max-schaefer-talks-rmt-drm-and-modding

I personally agree with Max on all of these. I love that Runic Game released the game creation tools with Torchlight. I used TorchED to create my own content several night instead of playing the game. I had fun playing with the editor. I find a game more fun if you can play with it and if you get stuck you can help yourself with a little cheating. I am totally against DRM it cripples game and is a big hassle. I am not sure if I will be picking up D3 if I have to have a constant internet connection. I am on DSL and it is always on but I do a lot of gaming offline too. Actually most of my gaming is offline. I rarely play online computer games because of lag and the hassle of logging into a system. I am a casual gamer. I do not play for extended amounts of time. I play maybe 30 mins – 1 hr a night and do that every night of the week to relax after work. If I have to waste 5 minutes of that logging into a system before I can even play it really cuts down on my play time.

Here are Max’s views: http://www.incgamers.com/Interviews/348/runic-games-max-schaefer-talks-rmt-drm-and-modding

Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive?

Tom’s hardware asks “Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive?” The study uses info provided by google and a lot of other large data centers on their usage of SSD. It appears that the MTBF is about the same for a spinning disk as it is for SSD. I find this odd because SSD have no moving parts but yet they fail at about the same rate as hundreds of moving parts. Given that spinning disks have been around 40+ years there has been a lot of time to perfect their construction to limit the amount of failures. SSD have the advantage of being much faster at reading and writing then spinning disks with similar MTBF. The one disadvantage of SSD is that cost per GB compared to spinning disks. Read the article to get more detail on Tom’s hardware’s investigation into SSD failure rates.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html

Tom’s hardware asks “Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive?” The study uses info provided by google and a lot of other large data centers on their usage of SSD. It appears that the MTBF is about the same for a spinning disk as it is for SSD. I find this odd because SSD have no moving parts but yet they fail at about the same rate as hundreds of moving parts. Given that spinning disks have been around 40+ years there has been a lot of time to perfect their construction to limit the amount of failures. SSD have the advantage of being much faster at reading and writing then spinning disks with similar MTBF. The one disadvantage of SSD is that cost per GB compared to spinning disks. Read the article to get more detail on Tom’s hardware’s investigation into SSD failure rates.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html

Tom’s hardware asks “Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive?” The study uses info provided by google and a lot of other large data centers on their usage of SSD. It appears that the MTBF is about the same for a spinning disk as it is for SSD. I find this odd because SSD have no moving parts but yet they fail at about the same rate as hundreds of moving parts. Given that spinning disks have been around 40+ years there has been a lot of time to perfect their construction to limit the amount of failures. SSD have the advantage of being much faster at reading and writing then spinning disks with similar MTBF. The one disadvantage of SSD is that cost per GB compared to spinning disks. Read the article to get more detail on Tom’s hardware’s investigation into SSD failure rates.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html

The Most Expensive One-byte Mistake

I do not usually post articles from ACM.org but I found this one particularly interesting. The decisions some of these people made had an impact on millions of people in the future. One small decision could cost millions if it is the wrong decision.
Here is the first paragraph from the article: IT both drives and implements the modern Western-style economy. Thus, we regularly see headlines about staggeringly large amounts of money connected with IT mistakes. Which IT or CS decision has resulted in the most expensive mistake?

Read the whole article here: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2010365

I do not usually post articles from ACM.org but I found this one particularly interesting. The decisions some of these people made had an impact on millions of people in the future. One small decision could cost millions if it is the wrong decision.
Here is the first paragraph from the article: IT both drives and implements the modern Western-style economy. Thus, we regularly see headlines about staggeringly large amounts of money connected with IT mistakes. Which IT or CS decision has resulted in the most expensive mistake?

Read the whole article here: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2010365

I do not usually post articles from ACM.org but I found this one particularly interesting. The decisions some of these people made had an impact on millions of people in the future. One small decision could cost millions if it is the wrong decision.
Here is the first paragraph from the article: IT both drives and implements the modern Western-style economy. Thus, we regularly see headlines about staggeringly large amounts of money connected with IT mistakes. Which IT or CS decision has resulted in the most expensive mistake?

Read the whole article here: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2010365

How many servers does google have? 100,000 maybe? Try 900,000

This is the best estimate based on power usage.

Read more about how the number was calculated: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/08/01/report-google-uses-about-900000-servers/

This is the best estimate based on power usage.

Read more about how the number was calculated: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/08/01/report-google-uses-about-900000-servers/

This is the best estimate based on power usage.

Read more about how the number was calculated: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/08/01/report-google-uses-about-900000-servers/