Dragon Age: Origins Will Ship Without SecuROM

It seems that EA has had just enough with users complaining about the protection software: the PC version of Dragon Age: Origins will be released without the dreaded SecuROM.

Chris Priestly, Community Coordinator at Bioware announced:

“We’re happy to announce that the boxed/retail PC version of Dragon Age: Origins will use only a basic disk check and it will not require online authentication. In other words, the retail PC version of the game won’t require you to go online to authenticate the game for offline play. We have chosen not to use SecuROM in any version of Dragon Age that is distributed by EA or BioWare.”

In addition, Priestly announced what everyone has been expected, since we are talking about EA: “a ton” of downloadable content to be ready after the release of the games, plus a reminder that the Dragon Age toolset beta has already been made available.

Dragon Age: Origins will be released this fall on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
The real India lives in its villages and smaller towns and therein lies the future of India. Rural India constitutes 69 percent of India’s population, and 86 percent of the rural population earns less than Rs 100 per day.

Here are some highlights from the IMRB/I-Cube report (as of March 2008) ; India’s ‘Rural population: 568m; Rural Literate Population: 368m; Rural English-Speaking Population: 63m; Rural Computer Literates: 15.1m; Rural Claimed Internet Users: 5.5m; Active internet users: 3.3m The opportunity is that there are more mobile phones than Radio in Rural India (100million subscriber base).

Rural India has been ignored for more than 60 years and the cloud will bring the change that is required to bridge the divide between rural India and urban India and will improve the Indian rural economy.

The government of India through BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd) is providing broadband connectivity up to the Taluka level which makes data connectivity a reality for rural India. This will allow rural India to log into the cloud.

Cloud is Gandhi Engineering

The term “Gandhi engineering" was used by NY Times in an article on the Tata’s Nano and it defines Gandhi Engineering as “a mantra that combines irreverence toward established ways with a scarcity mentality that spurns superfluities”
The cloud computing is a marvel of Gandhi engineering and encompasses Low cost ; High operational efficiency ; Elasticity and Scalability.

Advantages of cloud computing for rural India
• Low start-up costs make cloud computing especially attractive for rural India.
• Ease of management. No worry about keeping licenses or for that matter power and air-conditioning to run the data centers or purchasing additional hardware.
• Scalability make rapid rural penetration a reality; one can easily expand the number of users and locations at a modest cost .
• Device and location independence. The way you access a cloud could be your desktop. It could be someone else's computer. It could be a mobile phone. It could be a solar powered touch pad.
• Lastly the BSNL broadband project for rural India will provide the data connectivity.