Slashdot Mirror

The BBC has up an article looking at the dwindling opportunities for profit on games in the coming years. Soaring prices for game development, the increasingly-entrenched segmentation of the marketplace, and overwhelming emphasis on sequels means that it's looking increasingly dire for game development houses. While the success of the DS means that there's a wide market for games on that platform (witness Square/Enix's movement of the Dragon Quest franchise), the phasing out of the PS2 means that for the moment there is no 'leading platform' for game creation. The article talks about how the various game companies are responding to this challenge, as in Microsoft's reliance on exclusive deals and Sony's absorption of development houses into their infrastructure.

nadamsieee writes "Wired's Luke O'Brian recently reported about Congress' latest attempt to reform the patent system. In the article O'Brian tells of how 'witnesses at Thursday's hearing painted a bleak picture of that system. Adam Jaffe, a Brandeis University professor and author of a book on the subject, described the system as 'out of whack.' Instead of 'the engine of innovation,' the patent has become 'the sand in the gears,' he said, citing widespread fears of litigation. The House Oversight Committee website has more details. How would you fix the patent system?"

eldavojohn writes "Spammer Jeffrey Brett Goodin has been convicted under the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act, the first person in the U.S. prosecuted successfully under the law. He is facing a sentence of up to 101 years in a federal prison after being found guilty of numerous illegal acts. According to prosecutors, Goodin was convicted on multiple counts in addition to the CAN-SPAM conviction, including wire fraud, unauthorized use of credit cards, misuse of the AOL trademark and attempted witness harassment. From the article: 'The law forbids e-mail marketers from sending false or misleading messages and requires them to provide recipients with a way to opt out of receiving future mailings. During trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Goodin used several compromised Internet accounts to send e-mails to America Online users. The e-mails appeared to be from the company's billing department and told customers to update their billing information or lose service.'"

NewYorkCountryLawyer asks: "In UMG v. Lindor, the RIAA has submitted an 'expert' report (pdf) and 26-page curriculum vitae (pdf), prepared by Dr. Doug Jacobson of Iowa State University who is the RIAA's expert witness in all of its cases against consumers, relating to alleged copyright infringement by means of a shared files folder on Kazaa, and supposed analysis of the hard drive of a computer in Ms. Lindor's apartment. The RIAA's 'experts' have been shut down in the Netherlands and Canada, having been shown by Prof. Sips and Dr. Pouwelse of Delft University's Parallel and Distributed Systems research group (pdf) to have failed to do their homework, but are still operating in the USA. The materials were submitted in connection with a motion to compel Ms. Lindor's son, who lives 4 miles away from her, to turn over his computer and music listening devices to the RIAA. Both Ms. Lindor's attorney (pdf) and Ms. Lindor's son's attorney (pdf) have objected to the introduction of these materials, but Dr. Jacobson's document production and deposition are scheduled for January and February, and we would love to get the tech community's ideas for questions to ask, and in general your reactions, thoughts, opinions, information, and any other input you can share with us. (In case you haven't guessed, we are the attorneys for Ms. Lindor.)"

An anonymous reader writes "CNET have taken a look back at 30 years of Apple rumors during which we have witnessed Apple's 'rise, fall, and rise again, like a kind of technological Jesus Christ.' Some of the rumors are outrageous, and some came true. The list includes such treasures as the Apple-Nintendo merger, which the article calls 'utterly outlandish,' and the persistent rumor that Apple will release Mac OS X for PC — described as 'so counter-productive and financially damaging for Apple that we doubt the company has ever seriously considered it.' There is also mention of the iPhone, which CNET says is 'an elaborate hoax dreamed up by Steve Jobs to keep journalists busy.'"

PeeAitchPee writes "East Coast residents of the US were treated to the first launch from the mid-Atlantic region's commercial spaceport. The 69-foot Minotaur I rocket soared from the launch pad at 7 a.m. ET, after teams spent the week resolving a glitch in software for one of the satellites that had scrubbed a liftoff on Monday. I witnessed the launch while driving to BWI airport this morning and it was beautiful! It left a zig-zag contrail in the southern sky and the separation / ignition of one of the upper stages was clearly visible." The spaceport, a commercial collaboration of Virginia and Maryland, is on the Delmarva peninsula south of the Maryland line, just west of Chincoteague Island.

Nomura Securities' Yuta Sakurai has been quoted as saying that 'he cannot imagine a PlayStation 4' because of Kaz Hirai's promotion. He sees it as a move (eventually) towards Sega-like software focus. Sony has, of course, immediately denied this because ... they (understandably) like money. From the article: "Following the launch of the PlayStation 3 just a few weeks ago, and witnessing the huge consumer demand for the product, I think it would be rather short-sighted for anyone to predict there might not be a next generation of PlayStation product."

An anonymous reader writes, "Earlier this year Noam Eppel's Security Absurdity article generated much debate in the Information Security community (covered on Slashdot at the time). He claimed that we are currently witnessing a 'profound failure' in security. Now the author has posted a follow-up highlighting some of the community comments prompted by the article, titled 'Feedback to Security Absurdity Article — the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.'"

OriginalArlen writes, "In a story so surreal I had to check the primary source, the Register reports that the (London, UK) Metropolitan Police are trying out the use of eight tiny cams, mounted in the police helmet, to provide 360-degree evidence gathering in the event that an officer witnesses a crime. The press release also gives more evidence of the stealth spread of ubiquitous ANPR systems across the country as a spin-off 'benefit' to the London car congestion-charging scheme, which is likely to be rolled out across the country in the next few years. Are we already living in a Panopticon Society?" According to this report from the information commissioner for Great Britain, yep.

eldavojohn writes "Pending your beliefs about evolution, National Geographic is running an interesting article on the influences of behavior on evolution. The study supports the controversial idea that an animal's behavior in response to environmental change can spur evolutionary adaptations. By adding a predator to an island where a species of lizards lived with no predators, they witnessed a quick shift in the average length of legs on the lizards. Long legs meant to escape were useless against the new larger predators while short legs became the dominant feature since they increased climbing ability (to trees the predators could not reach). For the finer details on the research, visit the Losos Lab Research Page."

Newsweek's N'Gai Croal writes "In a two-part Q&A, Playstation marketing chief Peter Dille discusses the PS3 ad campaign, Microsoft's blogger superiority, why Ludacris is his kind of celebrity and more." From the article: "Emotion is a big part of the category. You've seen the baby spot, which kicked off the TV effort. The whole thought behind that was, look at the wide variety of emotions the PlayStation 3 can elicit. The other theme we're setting up is that the power of the PlayStation 3 is so awesome that anything placed in close proximity is witness to this awesome power. So this baby doll is whipsawed through a gut-wrenching range of emotions, from laughing and crying to reverse crying. That's going to set up a series of spots where you'll see the power of the PlayStation 3 in this white room environment." N'Gai also has a great piece up looking at why screenshots are no longer effective marketing for next-gen games.

CortoMaltese writes "The European edition of the Time magazine has selected Linus Torvalds as one of the heroes of the past 60 years. From the main article: 'In the 60 years that Time has been publishing an Atlantic edition, extraordinary people have emerged from the churn and turmoil, creativity and chaos of a period that witnessed the aftermath of world war, the toppling of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, the vanquishing of apartheid in South Africa, the advance of women, the failure of old certainties and the rise of new fears. These people are our heroes, and in this special anniversary issue, we celebrate them and their many achievements.' The article on Linus is titled 'By giving away his software, the Finnish programmer earned a place in history.' Linus is cited in the 'Rebels & Leaders' category along with Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, and others."

An anonymous reader writes "Kotaku is running an article prompted by an email from a foreign student in Japan. The reader unveils the sad reality of the modern gaming industry. Japanese businessmen made ample use of homeless people and Chinese nationals to obtain PS3s for re-sale. There was also a large amount of pushing and shoving, some fights, and almost no police presence at the most crowded stores." From the article: "Based on my observations of the first twenty PS3s sold at Bic Camera, they were all purchased by Chinese nationals, none of whom bought any software. After making their purchase, television crews asked for interviews but all were declined. These temporary owners of PS3s would then make their way down the street where their bosses waited. After several minutes, a dozen PS3s were rounded up, as their Japanese business manager paid out cash to those who waited in line for them. I witnessed a homeless-looking Chinese man, in his sixties or seventies get paid 20,000 yen for his services and was then sent away." Update: 11/12 05:40 GMT by Z : You're right. Sony only shares a portion of the blame here. Offsides on my part.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In UMG v. Lindor, in Brooklyn federal court, the presiding judge has held that Marie Lindor can try to prove that the RIAA's claim of $750-per-song statutory damages is a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Constitution, since she has evidence that the actual wholesale price of the downloads is only 70 cents. This decision activates an earlier ruling by the Magistrate in the case that the record labels must now turn over 'all relevant documents' regarding the prices at which they sell legal downloads to online retailers, and produce a witness to give a deposition by telephone on the subject. Judge Trager rejected the RIAA's claim that the defense was frivolous, pointing out that the RIAA had cited no authorities contradicting the defense, but Ms. Lindor's attorneys had cited cases and law review articles indicating that it was a valid defense. See the Decision at pp. 6-7."

prostoalex writes, "Wired magazine has coined a new term for the massive data centers built in the Pacific Northwest by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! Cloudware is, ironically, a return of the centralized data and bandwidth power houses caused by the decentralized and distributed nature of the Internet. George Gilder thinks we're witnessing something monumental: 'According to Bell's law, every decade a new class of computer emerges from a hundredfold drop in the price of processing power. As we approach a billionth of a cent per byte of storage, and pennies per gigabit per second of bandwidth, what kind of machine labors to be born? How will we feed it? How will it be tamed? And how soon will it, in its inevitable turn, become a dinosaur?'"

Bennett Haselton writes "Parties have reached a settlement in Joel Hodgell vs. EFinancial LLC, an anti-spam case in which I got involved because after Joel sued the defendant over spams he had received, the defendant asked the judge to make Joel turn over a copy of his hard drive." That might not sound that strange until you realize that the case in question was over webmail that was obviously never actually stored on his hard drive. And the witnesses knew it.

This was a pretty silly request because Joel was suing over spams he received at Hotmail and Yahoo Mail accounts, e-mails which were never stored on his hard drive at all. I think the absurdity of it stands as a good example of what you should be prepared for if you try to take a spammer to court, even if you're represented by a lawyer.

Joel had originally sued the defendant for 49 separate spams under the Washington anti-spam law, RCW 19.190. I generally support anti-spam plaintiffs since I've been one myself a few times. When I've written about this before, a lot of people have wondered if the hourly returns were really worth the amount of time you put into it. I should have made that more clear; even after factoring in clerical errors and judicial bias, the answer really is Yes. Once you get a feel for which spammers and telemarketers can be easily tracked down, and which ones are likely to have money, you have a decent chance of getting a settlement for $500 or more for less than an hour's worth of work, if you do it right , e.g. requesting the forms by mail instead of going downtown to stand in line. (The case takes months to move through the courts, but it's possible to keep your total amount of work spent under 1 hour.) And if you're in Washington, and the same spammer sends you a large number of spams and you save them all, then you have a shot at an even larger prize if you're willing to split it with a lawyer. (Lawyers often work on contingency, after all, and they won't take on the case if they don't think there's a good chance of getting paid.)

But in Joel's case, the defendant had hired their own expert witness, Larry G. Johnson, who wrote a declaration in which he acknowledged that the mails were Yahoo and Hotmail messages, and still said that the only way to determine the "authenticity and source" of the e-mails Joel was suing over, was to get a mirror copy of Joel's hard drive. After Joel showed me that declaration by their "expert witness", and re-iterated that he was suing over Yahoo and Hotmail messages that never touched his hard drive, I volunteered to write my own expert witness declaration for free pointing out, basically, how skull-crushingly stupid the defendant's request was.

At first, I tried looking for some alternative interpretation that might make their request seem less absurd. Johnson's declaration technically requested a copy of "the computer storage media on which the purported emails allegedly reside (e.g. hard drives, CDs, DVDs, floppy disks, etc.)". Perhaps by this he meant that he wanted a mirror copy of one of the hard drives at Hotmail or Yahoo? (Knowing, of course, that they'd fight it to the death, and the case could drag on for years?) But no, the order drafted by the defendant for the judge to sign, said "Plaintiff is ordered to allow Defendants inspection of its computers, computer storage media and subject emails as outlined in Defendants' CR 34 Request for Production and Inspection" -- Joel's computer specifically, not Hotmail's RAID array.

I also said publicly at the time that the real outrage was that their "expert witness" could make this statement when there was no chance he believed it. Larry Johnson's CV lists his credentials: educated at Harvard, admitted to the bar and licensed to practice law in Washington, doing computer consulting for 21 years, and (really) appearing in a movie called "Easier Said" as "Sheriff Tiny". And here he was making a statement, under oath, that could be refuted by a reasonably computer-literate 12-year-old. Not just outrageous that he said it. Not just that he got paid for it. (Actually, that doesn't make me too mad, because it was the spammer who paid him, so it was just transferring money from a full-time societal leech, to someone who is usually gainfully employed and merely amoral.) Outrageous that in the best-case scenario the judge would just ignore the testimony, instead of fining him or putting him in jail, which is what is supposed to happen in theory if someone gets caught lying under oath.

Well, one constant in this business is that the record for Biggest Judicial Outrage in the History of the World gets broken every three weeks.

On June 9, 2006, Judge Richard Jones of King County Superior Court signed the defendant's order commanding Joel to turn over a mirror copy of his hard drive to Sheriff Tiny. Which in practice meant: turn over a copy of your hard drive, or drop the lawsuit, or spend thousands more on an appeal.

I tell people this and I find they can't really believe a judge would go along with a request like that, they think I must be leaving something out. So I urge you to follow the links to the documents above. The defendant asked the judge to sign an order permitting inspection of Joel's hard drive, I wrote a response saying it was bogus, the judge signed the order anyway, and that was really all there was to it.

The way that Washington lower-court judges have handled anti-spam cases so far has been interesting. My experience has been that many of them don't take the cases seriously, but they usually try to find an obscure legal technicality on which to reject the case; probably they don't want a few victories to bring everybody out of the woodwork clutching a copy of their most recently received porn spam. (For example, one judge said the statute only allowed you to "recover" up to $4,000, and claimed that wouldn't apply in my anti-spam cases because I hadn't lost any money. However, in legal jargon, including some Supreme Court cases that I cited, the word "recover" is often used to mean simply taking something from another party, not necessarily something that you've lost. And anyway I doubt that the legislature, when they specified $500 in damages per message, intended for people to first have to prove that they'd actually lost $500.) I think most judges figure that if anybody tries to complain about their treatment in the courts, people's eyes will glaze over at the discussion of the legal technicalities, and it will just sound like someone complaining because they lost.

But once in a while a judge fudges an issue that involves no arcane legal jargon and that everybody can understand. If someone sues over spams received at Hotmail and Yahoo accounts, and a judge makes them turn over their hard drive, that doesn't have enough of an eye-glaze factor. People hear that and understand what it says about the courts.

Still, the judge's ruling stands. Lawyers have a saying that if a judge rules the sky is green, there's not much you can do about it unless you're willing to spend a ton of money.

Pharmboy writes "It seems a 13 year old was trying to pose as a Steam employee to gain access to someone else's account, and had the tables turned on him. In a battle of wits, it helps to be smarter than the next guy." From the post: "br0kenrabbit says: Unlike you, I DO work for Valve. Trace my ip and you'll see. Greg_ValveOLS says: huh?" In the interests of being nice to Futuremark's forums, I've gone ahead and pasted the whole coversation below. Read More for the entire, priceless, exchange. br0kenrabbit says: hi

Greg_ValveOLS says: good evening

br0kenrabbit says: What's ip?

br0kenrabbit says: up?

Greg_ValveOLS says: my name is greg a member of the valve online Support team

br0kenrabbit says: On MSN?

Greg_ValveOLS says: yes :)

br0kenrabbit says: Why?

Greg_ValveOLS says: we logged multiple ips from your account and ned to verifi your information

br0kenrabbit says: My information?

Greg_ValveOLS says: we believe someone may have stolen your account mmmm you havent shared youre account infomation with anyone have you?

br0kenrabbit says: No. I don't even have it written down.

Greg_ValveOLS says: hmmm maybe a keylogger on you r PC then maybe you need a format?

br0kenrabbit says: Well...

Greg_ValveOLS says: if you can verify your account information to me i can insure that only your ip have access to it Its a new security feature were trying because this happens so muchlogin names and passwords aint safe anymroe You know. L:)

br0kenrabbit says: Well

Greg_ValveOLS says: dont worry this connect it secure

br0kenrabbit says: Can I be honest with you, Greg?

Greg_ValveOLS says: k

br0kenrabbit says: Look, I don't know how you go this MSN account name, don't really care, either.

br0kenrabbit says: Unlike you, I DO work for Valve. Trace my ip and you'll see.

Greg_ValveOLS says: huh?

Greg_ValveOLS says: bs

br0kenrabbit says: Trace it.

Greg_ValveOLS says: how

br0kenrabbit says: Start/run/cmd type Tracert and then my IP address and hit enter.

Greg_ValveOLS says: oh k

br0kenrabbit says: As an employee, I know that Valve employees will NEVER contact users over MSN. I also know a valve employee will NEVER ask a user for his/her username and password.

br0kenrabbit says: I'm putting a temporary hold on your Steam account.

Greg_ValveOLS says: why?

br0kenrabbit says: Have you read the ToS?

Greg_ValveOLS says: Tod?

Greg_ValveOLS says: tos

br0kenrabbit says: terms of service

Greg_ValveOLS says: were?

br0kenrabbit says: Greg, this is a serious infraction against the Tos. You are at risk of losing your account.

Greg_ValveOLS says: why

br0kenrabbit says: I just told you why

Greg_ValveOLS says: :(

br0kenrabbit says: I need some information from you if you want me to unlock you account. I'm going to write you up but I will only suspend you account for three days, since this is your first infraction, okay?

Greg_ValveOLS says: k

br0kenrabbit says: First, what is the name the account is registered to. Not the user name, the persons real name who created the account. This is for verification purposes.

Greg_ValveOLS says: xxxxx xxxxxxx

br0kenrabbit says: Is this you?

Greg_ValveOLS says: ya

br0kenrabbit says: Are you the only user of this account?

Greg_ValveOLS says: ya

br0kenrabbit says: Okay, and what is the username

Greg_ValveOLS says: xxxxxxxx

br0kenrabbit says: Okay.

br0kenrabbit says: I see you have purchased a few of our games, thank you. :)

Greg_ValveOLS says: some. dude

Greg_ValveOLS says: m

br0kenrabbit says: Do you always log on from the same IP?

Greg_ValveOLS says: ya

br0kenrabbit says: And who is your internet providers, your ISP?

Greg_ValveOLS says: xxxxxxx

br0kenrabbit says: Thank you. One moment, please, let me verify this information.

Greg_ValveOLS says: am i gonna be bale to play 2nite?

br0kenrabbit says: What is your city of residence?

br0kenrabbit says: That depends on if you cooperate. You're doing fine so far.

Greg_ValveOLS says: xxxxxx

br0kenrabbit says: Illinios?

Greg_ValveOLS says: yes

br0kenrabbit says: Okay. And what is the password associated with this account?

Greg_ValveOLS says: xxxxxxx

br0kenrabbit says: Okay. Do not try to log into steam. If you are connected now you need to log off.

Greg_ValveOLS says: why

br0kenrabbit says: So I can update your account.

Greg_ValveOLS says: can I play 2 nite

Greg_ValveOLS says: clan fight

Greg_ValveOLS says: wont win without me heh

br0kenrabbit says: Heh. You'll have to wait a few minutes. Are you logged off?

Greg_ValveOLS says: ya

br0kenrabbit says: Okay. Give me just a moment.

br0kenrabbit says: Try to log in now.

Greg_ValveOLS says: k

Greg_ValveOLS says: It says login failed wtf wtf!!@?

br0kenrabbit says: Greg

Greg_ValveOLS says: did u ban me???????????>WHY

br0kenrabbit says: Greg

Greg_ValveOLS says: what

br0kenrabbit says: Valve will never ask for your username and password.

Greg_ValveOLS says: what????

br0kenrabbit says: I don't work for Valve dude, but you just got pwnt.

Greg_ValveOLS says: omg dude wtf why?

br0kenrabbit says: Why were you trying to steal my account?

Greg_ValveOLS says: i wanst

br0kenrabbit says: Then why were you asking for my information?

Greg_ValveOLS says: i was just making a joke but not cerious honest dude just give my acount back pllllleeease i'm only 13 and save d up for like a year to buy it

br0kenrabbit says: Greg

Greg_ValveOLS says: dude pleas

Greg_ValveOLS says: what

br0kenrabbit says: Go mow some yards, bitch.

grandgator writes, "Hyped by a good deal of fanfare, outfitted with some new features, and now available for download, Firefox 2.0 has already passed 2 million downloads in less than 24 hours. However, a growing number of users are reporting bugs, widening memory leaks, unexpected instability, poor compatibility, and an overall experience that is inferior to that offered by prior versions of the browser. Expanding on these ideas, this list compiles nine reasons why it might be a good idea to stick with 1.5 until the debut of 3.0, skipping the "poorly badged" 2.0 release completely." OK, maybe it's 10 reasons. An anonymous reader writes, "SecurityFocus reports an unpatched highly critical vulnerability in Firefox 2.0. This defect has been known since June 2006 but no patch has yet been made available. The developers claimed to have fixed the problem in 1.5.0.5 according to Secunia, but the problem still exists in 2.0 according to SecurityFocus (and I have witnessed the crash personally). If security is the main reason users should switch to Firefox, how do we explain known vulnerabilities remaining unpatched across major releases?"
Update: 10/30 12:57 GMT by KD : Jesse Ruderman wrote in with this correction. "The article claims that Firefox 2 shipped with a known security hole This is incorrect; the hole is fixed in both Firefox 1.5.0.7 and Firefox 2. The source of the confusion is that the original version of this report demonstrated two crash bugs, one of which was a security hole and the other of which was just a too-much-recursion crash. The security hole has been fixed but we're still trying to figure out the best way to fix the too-much-recursion crash. The report has been updated to clear up the confusion."

GillBates0 writes "CNN is carrying a story about a school in Boston which has have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable. According to the article, some elementary schools in other states have similarly banned "unsupervised contact sports". A parent was quoted as saying that her son feels safer now and that she'd witnessed enough 'near collisions.'" See, it's not just dangerous virtual games that are harmful to children!

LifesBlood writes "The PlayStation 3 operating system used at the Tokyo Game Show was apparently not final. Sony confirmed to GameDaily BIZ that the company has been in the process of finalizing it and that just like the Wii's OS, it will be upgradeable in the future." From the article: "We were told that this should not affect PS3 production whatsoever. Moreover, SCEA does not believe that the state of the OS at TGS had anything to do with the system resets or other glitches that some witnessed. Sony reiterated that it was the confined cases and other unfriendly trade show conditions that caused problems with the consoles. In addition, Sony said it has the capability to upgrade the PS3's OS after the console launches through its online network, memory stick files or Blu-ray discs."