Firdaush’s

Lately I have come to realize that many companies are taking the money minded route and no longer thinking of the little guy at the end.

Prosumer (pro consumer, enthusiast) and consumer products are all beginning to get locked out meaning not very customizable, you can not even change something without you getting sued or banned from a service. Xbox 360 for example, their motto is “Make it yours” but if you can’t modify it without potentially getting banned from Xbox Live what’s the point. When I say mod the 360 I don’t mean mod the software so you can play burned games that is obviously a crime. I mean modify the way it looks, there are so many possible mods but if consumers are going to get banned from the service what is the point. Another example would be overclocking computers. For those of you that don’t know what it means: It is when you push your computer’s CPU, Video Card, or anything else to do more than what it was designed for, basically improving performance at the cost of heat and the life of the product, like taking steroids. After you overclock a rig you will need to be able to expel the heat generated, the product was not designed to run at those specs so you are going to have to find your own way expelling that more much heat. That could be installing a new heat sink, water-cooler, or other means. While this is not illegal in any way, in fact post prosumer products nowadays come preoverclocked (right…). This used to be as simple as doing it right through the computer itself (using the Bios), now you either have to get software from the manufacturer or get a different software that hacks the hardware. This is not true for most cases but I think in due time this will be the route everyone follows. Since you can’t just boost the performance yourself anymore you are going to have to just go buy the new product. Next is the piracy control on all computer games. Bioshock, Crysis and a lot of other games put a cap on the amount of computers you can install the game on, even if that means your computer has gone to copouts and you need to reinstall the game you are going to have use one of installs. This does aggravate me and honestly Crysis, Bioshock are all going to have their own hack so why developers even have piracy control beats me. If they are smart enough to use a friend’s CD, they are smart enough to use a torrent.

Well thats my rant on what I think the companies are doing, if they all become money minded(*coughmicrosoftcough*)the little guy is going to have to say something. But then again there is a reason why we are called the little guy.