Rant #11: Intel's new DRM
Posted: 10.1.10
ANNOYANCE LEVEL: 2
So, now that you're informed, let's take a look at the meaning and purpose of DRM. It stands for Digital Rights Management. It's a semi-successful means of controlling piracy, though even the most pain in the ass DRM's out there (Silent Hunter 5, GTA IV, for example) have failed to stop the products they're meant to protect from being pirated. Often, DRM can prevent legitimate owners of a game from playing it due to some glitch in the system. I believe The Sims 2, maybe 3 (or most any game that employs SecuROM), suffers from this. Say you have MagicISO, or Daemon Tools, or some other program installed. Let's say it's installed for LEGIT reasons (stay with me... it's possible!). SecuROM notices these and has been known to automatically assume your legit copy of the game (with the disc in the drive and everything) is stolen, and hence you can't play a game you paid money for. We had this issue with The Sims 2 (though, admittedly, we didn't pay money for it -- we borrowed the discs from a friend; but this shouldn't matter as we have the actual fucking discs!) It would install the game, but because MagicDisc/ISO was installed, refused to allow the game to start. What the bitch?
Now, you've got processors that are gimped because part of their hardware programming is locked by DRM?
What the fuck?!
Seriously?! So... you've got this shiny new processor... but in order to fully utlilize the capabilities of it, you have to pay more? So... let's put this into perspective. Let's say we have Pay-To-Use toilets (which they do in some places). Let's say it's 50cents to get inside to use it. So you're in this room, and you go to use the toilet -- but the lid won't raise. Next to the lid, there's a slot for another quarter to unlock the lid. So you shell out another 25 cents. Then you unleash a metric ass-storm of shit into the toilet, like fifty-nine million gallons of diarrhea come hailing from your rectum and it smells like a buffalo dumped out a turd which then shat out over nine thousand more turds. So now you've got a shit-stained ass. You reach for the toilet paper, and guess what? IT'S FUCKING LOCKED TOO, there goes another quarter! And if you're out of money, then you're walking out of there feeling pretty shitty.
It's not the same thing, but it's just as fucking stupid. Here's an idea: FUCK THE DRM AND JUST CHARGE AN EXTRA FIFTY BUCKS FOR THE FUCKING THING OUT OF THE BOX. You're just "losing" money to do it the other way, cause you know an hour after release some kid in high school is gonna figure out how to unlock it without paying you a fucking dime. That's what they did with Ubisoft's uber-DRM, yeah? Less than a fucking day. The only people affected by BS DRM like this are legitmate owners.
In all honesty, what Intel does doesn't bother me since every processor I've ever owned in my primary PC has been an AMD and I have no intention of changing that anytime soon, but it was mentioned that I should talk about this a bit. Also, if Intel actually manages to make this ridiculous idea work, AMD might get the idea to try it too, and that would be bad. Hopefully AMD isn't that fucking stupid, but if you've read my ATI Driver rant and have been to ATI's site... www.ati.amd.com -- yeah, they're the same company. We're all fucked.
Intel, I don't really care about this retarded ass experiment, assuming that's what this is, but if you guys are serious...