🚀 go-pugleaf

Loren Pechtel <lorenpechtel@hotmail.invalid.com> wrote:
> I also have 20 years of programming for a living and I fully agree
> with you.  Had Blizzard noticed it during development they should have
> taken precautions but there is no expectation for them to notice
> something like this.  It's a hardware problem.

Doug Jacobs  <djacobs@rawbw.com> wrote:
>I mostly agree, but then I have some questions:
>1: Why hasn't this happened with other software?  It's not as though 
>this game was designed to push the limits of PC hardware, unlike other 
>games in the past.  So obviously Blizzard has done something differently.

It has happened with other software, especially benchmarks which try
to push video cards to their limits.  Starcraft 2 is just the biggest
PC game to come out since people started blaming heat related failures
on software.

>2: When it was discovered that Starforce was damaging CD drives, people 
>weren't blaming the makers of the hardware - they were blaming Starforce 
>(and the companies who protected their products with Starforce.)  How is 
>this situation different?
 
Starforce intentially tries to operate optical drives in a manner they're
not designed to handle, but I doubt it has actually damaged a single
CD drive.

>Sure, the hardware should have failsafes in place to try and protect 
>itself against overheating...

Actually PCs should be designed to never overheat if they're operated at
normal room temperatures and with unrestricted airflow. 

>All they did was start up Starcraft2 and then their video card died.
>Regardless of the actual cause, all they know is that starting Starcraft2
>killed their video card.  Expecting customers to act as
>QA/testing/engineering is just ridiculous.

Except that in most of these cases the fault is with the consumer who
either built or rebuilt their PC and didn't ensure that it had adequate
cooling.  Starcraft 2 doesn't, and cannot, kill a properly built PC.

					Ross Ridge

-- 
 l/  //	  Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo]  rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
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