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Slashback: Bnetd, Salmon, Towers
All I'm certain of is my true love's hair. CompaniaHill writes: "As previously reported on /., first they though it was turquoise. Then they found an error in their early calculations, and announced it was really beige. But doubts lingered, and color experts pointed out that an objective color as viewed from the theoretical blackness of space would appear different when viewed on Earth in typical daylight. So adjustments were made, and calculations were revised and rechecked by color scientists Michael Brill of McClendon Automation Inc. and Mark Fairchild of the Munsell Color Science Laboratories. And now, at last, Ivan Baldry and Karl Glazebrook, astronomers at Johns Hopkins University, using spectral data from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, have announced the final result: The universe is decidedly salmon. Really."
The milestones are getting closer together. Dare Obasanjo writes: "Xindice (http://xml.apache.org/xindice), the Apache native XML database has finally reached version 1.0. Xindice used to be called dbXML and was mentioned in my article on XML and databases."
Three From the Courts TheFrood writes: "It looks as though the battle between Blizzard and bnetd (as reported in previous stories here(1), here(2), and here(3))is heating up. Vivendi has sent another letter to the EFF, which has wasted no time responding."
ElitusPrime writes with an update in the strange case of Ken Hamidi, the Intel employee whose mass-mail to Intel employees brought charges of trespassing. Now the California Supreme Court may take another look at the case. Says ElitusPrime: "If this guy is put in jail, I can think of more then a few other spammers that need to go up the creek with him..."
In a very different case, pagan26 writes: "It seem that DMCA will have its day in court. With ElmcoSoft."
Well, at least you can trust their word, right? Masem writes: "According to MSNBC, the developers of the spyware program WinWhatWhere will no longer have their install program trample the bits of anti-spyware programs, after word broke that this behavior was occurring. However, no word has been made by a similar spyware program developed by SpectreSoft that does similar damage."
I will fork out to see this, happily. Pingsmoth writes "It looks like the faithful fans of Peter Jackson and Tolkien will be able to catch a glimpse of The Two Towers this Saturday. Lordoftherings.net is reporting, through a video of Peter Jackson, that a preview (read: not a trailer) of The Two Towers will be shown in theatres this Saturday, presumably attached to The Fellowship of the Ring. Maybe at the end? At any rate, it looks like I'll be seeing the film at least seven times now, and it's a good thing I got a morning shift tomorrow." For a more colorful description of this 4-minute tease, check out Ain't it Cool News' version.
Just to clear things up:
Trailers used to be shown after a film, thus the name trailers they trail the film. But as you've I'm sure noticed most people leave the theatre well before the credits reach the top of the screen. So theatres started to show "previews" the exact same thing only before the movie. This had the added bonus of keeping people entertained. And in resent years earning ticket sales to movies people wouldn't other wise be cought dead in (wing commander anyone???)
I just had to point this out after the talk of a preview (not a trailer) but it would be after the movie.
-Mike
Arguably, the CD-Key is used to authenticate the client to allow them access to the battle.net servers, and their resources.
My server, my resources, my decision about who I let on it, and how I verify them.
The onus is on the player, imo, in a keygen situation. The player is the one infringing by using a keygen and infringing copyright - bnetd is simply reverse-engineering and providing a plug-compatible solution.
(that's one point of view, in any case)
I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is easily my favourite book. I vastly enjoyed BBC Radio 4's adaptation of it, and I quite enjoyed the animated film.
With that in mind, I can't understand why people loved Peter Jackson's film so much. I tried to remain open minded, but I found it incredibly hard not to just walk out in anger.
He completely ruined the spirit of the tale, and quite unecessarily at that. Most of his changes were totally not needed. Once he decided to remove Tom Bombadil/The Barrow Downs he easily had enough time to remain true to the story, and so many of his alterations took longer to correct later on in the story than he would have ever have saved if he'd just left it be.
That is one of the main problems with making alterations to a story as deep as The Lord of the Rings, if you remove one thing, all the other parts of the story connected to it have to be altered, which cause more alterations later on.
Plus since when has 4 Oscars been a "snub"?
It's not ok for hobbyists to write free software? It's free, uses none of blizzard's code, and it's primary purpose is undebatably legal. I have never used it to bypass copy controls, nor any of my friends... it just helps get around IPX only network play. Maybe vivendi plans on attacking the authors of IPXtunnel though.
Failure to include copyright controls in your own work is not the same as NOPing them out of someone elses software.
Did anyone notice how INCREDIBLY unprofessional the letter from Blizzard/Vivendi was? Seriously, it basically amounted to "nope, we're right, you're wrong, post the software and we'll send Blizzard cops to go arrest you!" Then, I cracked up when I saw the EFF letter, which politely begins "Um, I hope this is going to the right place, considering you didn't have a return address...."
Vivendi didn't address ANY of their claims, specifically the point that 1201(c) and 1201(f) clearly ALLOW software such as bnetd (they might as well have specifically given this as an example of what the DMCA does NOT prevent) - just saying "no, you suck, go away." They also misinterpreted 17 U.S.C. it looks like, thinking that bnetd only had 10 business days to respond or they can't file a counter notification, whereas the statute is saying that the offending material can't be redistributed in less than 10 days after sending a counter notification.
Vivendi's actions are going to look really bad from a court's perspective - they're being very aggressive and holding their cards all to their chest, so if they do sue, and try to pull some trick, a judge isn't going to be very lenient.
I am very glad that the EFF is handling this, though - it would've been very difficult, if not impossible, for bnetd to handle it themselves.
If this is the same Hon. Ronald M. Whyte of the many Scientology trials, then ElcomSoft, the EFF, and anyone else opposing the DMCA will likely be disappointed in his findings...
A quick search on Google is a good primer on his previous rulings, which generally favored Scientology rather than ISPs and individuals.
Somebody please correct me on this, but since XML is just text, and text is not compressed (usually) .. how can a XML based db even be plausible when compared to a 'standard' database that compresses date, indexes it, etc etc etc...
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
why is everyone is so hysterical about global warming? do they not know that this is part of the larger ice-age cycle that repeats about every 20k years? we're in the warming period. we go from nearly covered in ice to nearly devoid of ice (with huge sea-level fluctuations) and then back again. is there some kind of expectation that this change is linear? that there will be no bursts of exponential change followed by other plateaus? that these kinds of global changes will not create increased levels of extinction? hey, maybe humans are influencing the cycle. maybe we've shortened it a few thousand years. maybe nobody really knows jack shit but needs something to bitch about between commercials.
any politician that is not strongly in favor of alternate forms of energy is a dick. not because fossil fuels are inherently evil (ok, the corps behind them may be), but more importantly, they're never going to get us off this idiot-infested rock. oh, and they're not renewable. go nuclear! it's god's favorite power source. check out, oh, say, the rest of the universe if you're in doubt. hey, god can't be wrong.
um, that's about it.
http://boycottblizzard.org/
I also have a link from there to a petition that I would appreciate signatures by anyone against the use of the DMCA by
Blizzard (Vivendi Universal Games) in this case (even if you don't plan on boycotting).
As of a few days ago, the fan website has been banned any discussion of the legality of bnetd in their chatroom, #diabloii on irc.wiregrass.com. Furthermore, when many of the regular members protested this action by included [censored] or [oppressed] in their nicknames, they were banned. The nickname modifications that resulted in being banned include: [bnetd], [censored], [oppressed], and [not_battle_net] (there may have been others).
A posting to their forums mentioning the censorship was deleted, and the account of the poster (myself) is no longer allowed to post (not a big deal, I created the account specifically for that purpose). Don't petty tyrants surpress news of censorship, too?
As it stands, discussing bnetd is forbidden in the chat room. Protesting the censorship in any way is forbidden. Discussing bnetd or the censorship in the forums is forbidden.
Under a different account, I posted a rebuttal to their recent anti-bnetd article. I wonder if they will censor that as well?
-- Will program for bandwidth
Sorry, but IPX REALLY sucks. Network performance is terrible if you're on a local LAN and want to connect to someone across the Internet (with Kali, let's say), especially if that person is on a slow modem. Under IPX, everyone's performance is synced to the person with the slowest network connection. Battle.Net is also pretty bad -- laggy as hell, unstable, and filled with people where the average maturity seems to be that of a 12-year old. Setting up a bnetd server on my box was the best way for myself and a small circle of friends to connect together, have our own ladder games, and play in our own private environment. It probably wouldn't have been necessary if Starcraft came with a TCP/IP option, but it doesn't. (for that matter, why doesn't the TCP/IP option in Diablo2 accept hostnames instead of IP addresses?)
You're right, he's not. He's a willfully miscievous disgruntled employee who persistently sent email to ALL of Intel's employees at work. He wasn't content to do this once, but repeated his spamming. All intel did was get an injunction against the guy to stop him sending emails to 30,000 employees at a time. He is not being convicted, he's being told to stop pestering the company. The guy had his say at least 3 times but just wouldn't stop. What do you do with a nut like this?
Are we supposed to just let individuals repeatedly send one sided biased screeds to tens of thousands of employees at their old place of work and keep doing it without the company being able to do anything about it? It is abusing the company's email system in the worst way.
I would think this would be so obvious as to hardly be worth noting. In economic terms, look at it this way: Every time you see LOTR (unless you are an addict), your marginal utility drops. Eventually it falls below the unit price, at which point you are no longer willing to spend the money to see the film. If prices could fluctuate, the ticket price might fall to entice you back in. But movie tickets are essentially fixed. So it seems like they could never make more money off this from you.
But lo! They add some teaser material. Now, assuming you want to see the teaser, they've added marginal utility back to the experience. Your ticket, at say $8, buys more and, if they're right, this raises your satisfaction to the level where you're willing to shell it out.
But that isn't to say that the new material need be worth $8. It might only be worth $0.40 to you. But if you value seeing LOTR again at $7.60 -- if that were the price you'd have been willing to pay to see it -- then, with the additional material, your utility is $8 and you're willing to go back. So that little bit of value, small in itself, might still justify the trip.
Gotta love Econ 101.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach