A small but startling adendum to the DRM issue - for those with long attention spans

[rascal101]

I detect a slight wearyness re the whole SH5 thing and the DRM in particualr so I thought the following might cheer a few people up.

The following represents a small new slant on the issue, especially for those of us capable of reading more than a couple of paragraphs without suffering attention deficit

I was talking to my GF about the uproar at SubSim and the games world in general re DRM or systems like it. I thought I'd have to explain it in some detail as she's not a gamer – but, she does have an interest in all things technical.

In fact she subscribes to the online techies journal Silicon.com. Turned out she knew exactly what I was talking about - you see she's one a number of folks world wide who're currently beta testing the next Office Suite Office 2010, apparently the Beta test was set up by, or through or in conjunction with Silicon.com

Now here's the fun bit - turns out with the next edition of Office suite you’re going to need ………guess what……permanent internet connection Ta Da! -

Is slightly different from what we’re encountering re saved games on SH5 as with the new Office you'll be able to save your worked documents on your own machine - BUT IN ORDER TO USE THE NEXT EDITION OF OFFICE YOU WILL NEED TO BE ONLINE in order TO USE IT - It wont function without it

Aint that something - we live in interesting times indeed!

And what’s more these things we're discussing are not so a response to piracy - but more from a relatively new direction or idea in computing that wants to make your the personal PC a thing of the past. I wonder if any one's heard of CLOUD COMPUTING?

Your PC will essentially be a terminal with the licensed programs you wish to use miles away on the publisher’s server, you’ll buy access to it but you will not own it and you wont even install it because you cant, your machines is just a terminal and that’s all it is – The publisher will own the content and you will purchase a license to access – or pay some kind of subscription fee, from the publisher's perspective this makes a lot of sense.

I sell and promote a range of online databases for schools, these are subscribed and we love them cos every year we get more money from the same customer who has to renew their access in order to continue to have access to the content. Basic and simple.

I’ve often thought the next logical step for the DRM and systems like it when applied to computer games was to do away with the whole customer purchase business model and move to a subscription system – you would subscribe to SH5 not purchase it. I believe there are a number of games that do this now, not games I'd be interested in and wiht the very patchy quality of the internet in many countries you'd have to be an idot, or just simply very nieve to go down this path.

Any way if you think it all sounds like a big conspiracy read up on CLOUD COUMPUTING - check the two links below from Silicon.com

See some links below, a selection of articles from Silicon.com which is the bible for computer techies:

http://www.silicon.com/tags/cloud+computing.htm

http://www.silicon.com/search/cloud+computing.htm

So there it is for those of us old timers who're decrying the seeming direction things are going there’s something else to gnash your teeth about -

For those others whose in-depth analysis of the DRM thing with SH5 has been to say it’s the way things are headed and to just deal with it – well there’s something in the above for both of us –

Interestingly there is considerable unrest out there about the new Office especially amongst the business community who are upset about the possible unauthorized access to confidential information, never mind the privacy concerns of the average citizen should be extremely concerned about.

My GF says there's no trade off re the new Office, nothing that might allay the fears as outlined above – if you want to use it you got to go online

Something to think about

R