How Did You Get Into Computers?

For the technology-enthusiast crowd, I pose a somewhat simple question to you: How Did you Get Involved with Computers?

There are several reasons that I could think of that someone would venture into this area:
1. Employment/salary opportunities
2. Never having to buy a pre-built computer again
3. For the general knowledge
4. To understand how the different components interact.

I know there are many others, and I know me personally I got involved because of a failed power supply just a few years ago. Until then, I just followed the crowd. Now I’m a computer enthusiast and always want to be.

So what is everyone else’s stories? Anything odd that got you into the technology field or just researching computers in general?

SecureROM, GTA IV, and You

In case you haven’t heard, GTA IV is confirmed to have SecureROM copy protection. The software will be installed automatically when you install the game.

There seems to be a couple of misconceptions about what SecureROM actually is:
1. SecureROM is NOT a rootkit. A rootkit masks processes that could be malicious. After the game is uninstalled, SecureROM does not stay running on your computer (unless you have another game using this copy protection) and only stores a settings file and a registry entry. If you are concerned with this, you would really be concerned with how much junk is left after uninstalling a program.

2. SecureROM is NOT to prevent people from pirating a game. What people fail to realize is the main purpose for a company to be in business is to maximize profits (Microeconomics 101). The purpose of this particular copy protection (at least the GTA IV limits) is to prevent the general, uninformed, non-technical people from copying the disk illegally and giving it to all of their friends for free. GTA IV is $50 (give or take) per copy, multiply that by the number of people that received the code and you will see how much profit Rockstar Games just lost. People that want to pirate a game will always be able to pirate the game, one way or another.

3. If you are not wanting to purchase a game with DRM (Digital Rights Management), you are out of luck. In case you don’t know what DRM is, it is a mechanism to control what people can and can’t do with software. Almost all games released in the past couple of years have included some sort of copy protection, even Playstation 2, Xbox 360 and other console games. If you don’t believe me, go try to backup on your PS2 or Xbox 360 games and then try to play the game in your system (without a modchip!). That is DRM!

4. Not purchasing a game because it includes SecureROM or any other form of DRM is not going to make companies listen to you. Companies really don’t care honestly. All they want to do is maximize profits (again classic Microeconomics). They don’t care what the consumer thinks of the software that is included with the disk, hence why customer service is not stellar.

5. Any form of copy protection DOES cost the company money. The reason it is included is so they make some sort of profit, otherwise the company would go bankrupt. The copy protection company is also out to make money.

Anyways, to recap, copy protection is not the enemy, it just prevents people from using the software in certain ways.

I know I’m probably going to get LOADS of hate mail for this one.