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Slashback: Circumvention, AOLandfill, Scoffing
Excuse me, is this the service entrance? We just posted about Microsoft blocking gamers with mod-chipped X-boxes from the Microsoft-run online gaming service; now NiteStar writes "Xbox-Scene.com just reported that a group of Xbox hackers named Team Assembly managed to change the serial number and MAC address of the xbox. After the change they managed to get onto Xbox Live (with mod-chip disabled) with a previously banned xbox ..."
Not so fast, mister. The Raindog writes "Since NVIDIA announced its GeForce FX graphics chip, the web has been flooded with a slew of previews and articles that do little more than regurgitate what must have been NVIDIA's official press kit. Slashdot had coverage a few days ago, but since then, a new take on NVIDIA's latest chip has surfaced without all the PR-inspired hype. As it turns out, the GeForce FX's features aren't all that remarkable next to ATI's Radeon 9700 Pro, which has been available for months now."
I liked the old .sig about a black hole that would blot out the sun. Matthew Davis writes "CNN.com ran a story about Jim McKenna and John Lieberman back in October requesting everyone to send the CD mailers they receive to them. When they reach 1 million CDs they'll hand deliver them to AOL. In a recent article by SiliconValley.com they quote Nicholas Graham, a spokesman for AOL stating, "If they reach their goal ... I'd be happy to give them directions and greet them at the door ... We would make a contribution ourselves to put them over the top" Does that mean they're putting Jim and John's address on the top of the CD mailing list?"
Now if only these were CD-RWs ... and they can keep sending me the nice, reusable cases, just no more paper sleeves, thanks.
Still teasing, Stephen. foolish_child writes "Not sure if you noticed, but in the newest paperback pressing of Cryptonomicon (1 November 2002, I think) there is a chapter from Quicksilver at the back. I spotted it in the railway station in Amsterdam, so maybe it's a European edition. I have been checking to see if it was also online but have seen no sign of it - hence the heads up. I'm sure someone will scan it in soon - it is SUPERB! (read it waiting for a train) - Enoch the Red, emissary of the Royal Society, landing in 1700's Boston looking for . . someone. Scary thing is how good his research is as usual - I've just been reading up on Leibnitz and Newton and Co. and . . . you've probably seen it already but I wanted to share :)"
This new edition of Cryptonomicon is probably in a bookstore near you already, and the book proper is (only) several months away.
One small step for BanKind. An anonymous reader writes "It seems CapitalOne's website works with Mozilla, as of this November, 2002. This is good news because many people have CapitalOne credit cards, and previously the site required Microsoft's Intarweb Explorer. This just shows how simply speaking up by e-mailing large companies can evoke change. For more info see here ." Update: 12/03 22:00 GMT by T : Note that this information renders moot the question posed here about Cap One.
from the stupid-nitpics department
"managed to change the serial number and MAC address of the xbox. After the change they managed to get onto Xbox Live (with mod-chip disabled) with a previously banned xbox ..."
It's not really surprising that changing the only 2 identity-linked features on a piece of hardware would let you get past their blacklist.
What you should be asking yourself is: is it moral for you to go online, with your modchip, and screw over people who want to play online without dealing with cheaters? Is it? I don't think so.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Look out for MS's righteous rage when the forged MAC addresses start colliding with existing, non-hacker users and it disrupts the Live service they've paid for! Can anyone say "bolt the door, the wolf's outside" ?
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
You get a EULA that says that you can't access the online gaming forum with a modified X-Box. Then you go and circumvent that by putting a new serial number and MAC address on it, possibly depriving someone else down the line with the identical numbers of playing online.
You broke the licensing agreement in the first place by modding the box. Why do you think it's right to break it further by circumventing the agreed-upon penalty?
Everyone hates AOL CDs.
Even dogs.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
If you send your AOL CDs back to those guys, you get what you deserve...Them send right back to you.
The usual point of a petition is to demonstrate to people the mass rejection the public are showing their idea. Returning a million AOL CDs doesn't, IMHO, do this; it just tells AOL that their brand awareness campaign is working (and I dare say AOL know how many they have made).
If you want it stopped, hit them where it hurts - put a return-to-sender sticker on them, make AOL pay for the postage, or handle them one-by-one, or see if you can use that German law about making retailers pay the cost of removing and disposing of excess packaging... I'm not a genius (I used to be, but I'm told I'm not any more) but surely we can come up with something more persuasive than a one-off dump of a large single load of CDs.
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
woohoo!
Now I can buy myself an Xbox on my CaptialOne card.
I just recently (a weeka ago?) purchased the book in the US, and the Quicksilver part is in the back. Can't say I've read it yet, tho.
Somehow, I hardly imagine that they're reached MAC address saturation by now. There are more that 4 possible MAC addresses for one to use :)
So they said they changed their serial number *and* MAC address to get back on. This is interesting and points back to something someone said in a previous thread. All you need to do is to make a program to burn through serial number space and get them marked invalid, and you've got a DoS of entertaining proportions.
The other evening (without an internet connection) I was trying to install the .Net framework (dotnetfx.exe) on my laptop and since I had installed windows 98 the version of Internet Explorer was 5.00.x but due to the dependencies of the .Net framework I needed to have 5.01 or later.
As an aside, when you don't have 5.01 or later it just kills the browser that you do have installed, so it kinda causes a really fun catch-22, no browser to surf the web to find a new browser..... Really sucked.
Anyway, back with my story.... I was on a frantic search for a copy of IE 5.01 or later when I remembered that I had a stockpile of those AOL Cd's in the garage... I grabbed myself one of them (yellow, no idea what version) and proceeded to find the IE directory on the disc.. Sure enough it was version 5.01.x so I installed it and everything went smoothly from there.
So, the moral of the story? Sometimes AOL disks do have a use other than coasters or frisbees....
Maybe they can be a bit less draconian with their schemes? Nobody's forcing them to lock people out at all, right?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
when you cook them in the microwave for 15 seconds. Just don't try this with anything you care about.
Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
Team Assembly managed to change the serial number and MAC address of the xbox. After the change they managed to get onto Xbox Live (with mod-chip disabled) with a previously banned xbox
Not only that, you can arrange for any arbitrary XBox to be permanently banned!
I wonder if there's a way to pollute their blacklist with so many bogus entries that they have to give up.
Remember ATI is the 500lb Gorilla here, not NVIDIA. ATI just woke up in time to see NVIDIA trying to sneak in on its graphics card market and put the smacketh down, respectfully.
Lets see NVIDIA wake up and charge a little less that the 1/2 a grand they seem to think their metal is worth...
You're right. Thanks. I should take up drinking coffee, I guess.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The Saturday night before Halloween I had a costume party to go to. I remembered this Saturday morning. Or rather, Saturday afternoon since that's when I actually woke up. I had no costume.
But I did have a bunch of crap CDs, some of which were AOL CDs. So I taped them together and went as AOLandfill. Had about strips of 6-7 down each a leg, a sort of vest and a couple on my forearms. Truth be told, it did look like some low-rent Power Ranger battle armour or something, but once I said the name, people thought it was funny.
I also got to use pickup lines like
Try me free for 1000 hours for your first month!
I'm so easy to use it's no wonder I'm number one!
The terrifying part of the costume may have been how well those lines worked.
Once they inspect the source IP and simply reverse the transactions that occured within the past few hours. You'll likely end up removing everyone who is on your local ISP from using Live! than anything else.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Couldn't you just change the MAC address to be identical to some other device you already own then? I'll bet if I used the MAC addy off one of my Javastations it'd be unique...
Yeah, the same features implemented under ATI are documented but guess what...They will WORK for Nvidia, and they DON'T NOW for ATI.....
ATI support is about the worst I've ever had the misfortune to need to deal with. The actually make M$ support look forthcoming and really eager to please. 4 rev's of ATI's so called catalyst drivers and things are actually sort of stable, but a slew of games won't run under the 9700pro, for example M$ CFS3 does not recognize the driver set up. If you are thinking about buying a video card I suggest as someone who has a Radeon 9700pro and a nvidia 460, I'd get a cheap GF3 or 4200 and wait and see the NV30. Unless you have money to just burn, ATI has dissapointed again, and they've not corrected any of this All in One Wonder driver issues either....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
You can't forge the IP address easily. Not unless you've already owned all the routers between you and their Live! servers. And if that was the case, why not just own the servers and be done with it?
And you also assume that they won't take legal action against someone who is distrupting thousands or millions of people from enjoying a service they are paying for.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Excellent. Now keep speaking up and make sure they know that you are pleased to be able to continue giving them your business because they respect your personal choices.
My bank in canada always had a Mozilla friendly site and I made sure I sent them a nice e-mail thanking them ,describing exactly why I prefer to use their services as opposed to my previous bank.
Positive feedback is just as important as negative feedback!
Umm... no.
MACs are supposed to be unique. With most network devices (not just Xboxen) you can force the device to use a specific address that you make up (possibly causing a problem if the MAC is already in use in your broadcast domain) but real use of this ability is pretty rare.
In any event the first few bits or a MAC are assigned per manufacturer (many manufacturers have more than one) and then they are supposed to go through the rest of the bits assigning a unique set to each device they make.
At least that's how it is supposed to be.
So does Microsoft do 1 thing now, then when cheats available to they start banning? They're trying to keep a relatively simple thing like an online game service secured. If you bought your XBox for DiVX or ogg/vorbis play, you shouldn't care about the Live service.
Probably wouldn't work. A MAC address is made up of two parts - a manufacturer code (unique to a certain company) and a part code (unique to that particular card, for that manufacturer code).
I imagine Microsoft is smart enough to check that the Xbox trying to connect to their network is at least using a MAC address that belongs to a Microsoft NIC...
A pity you didn't read the original article.
It would have saved you from looking stupid, since it states that they will be scratching each CD so they can't be used again.
Cheating, on the software level, with Gamesharks and any in game memory editor, had been a serious problem with online game play on the Dreamcast in the past (it still is, actually, but who the hell still uses their dreamcast is beyond me). Good example, research player killing in the "no player killing allowed or even possible" game Phantasy Star Online.
Weird. A link in the story description to a reply to that same story...
Hmmm... But... but.... *head explodes*
Slashdot: Successfully colapsing the known universe since...
Going back to the bad old days while the Geforce FX was a bunch of unsubtantiated rumours, I remember the furore around the theory that the FX would only have a 128 bit memory interface.
Theory goes that by having a 128 bit interface the cards themselves are cheaper to produce. The fact that all bar one of the Radeon 9700 pro cards are using the ATI reference design is surely a testament to how much of a bitch it is to produce a 256 bit memory interface in the real world. But then they go and stick that f*cking vacuum cleaner thing on top. Are you expecting me to believe that a copper heat sink, heat pipes, and a rediculous vacuum cleaner thing is cheap to produce?
Nah, it's panic innit. NV30 is nowhere near as fast as it should have been and they're having to overclock it's tits off to get any reasonable headway over the R300.
Personally I blame specification overkill. Given that we won't be seeing DX9/GL2 based games for at least two years, what's the point of having 64k instruction long pipelines? Maybe nVidia are eyeing up the professional rendering market but... well... I dunno. It just seems a little over the top. The "ti200" version might be worth it, but then so is a Radeon 9700 (ordinary, not pro) and you can have that now.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Is it possible for someone to sufficiently pollute the MS online database that they will have to change their "lifetime ban" procedures? Or at least, to cause MS a severe case of trouble over it?
Nope - all they have to do is have it check by IP address, too. If the same IP address keeps getting banned on different MAC addresses, shut down that IP address. Problem solved.
You must be the tenth person to suggest such a scandalous act.
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
When we were looking at buying a new car a few months ago, toyota.ca told me that my browser was too old, and I should use IE5 or 'better.' I wrote to 'em and complained, pointing out that people who shop carefully online for cars are likely to shop carefully for browsers as well. :-)
A month later, there was a page up saying they were redesigning for Mozilla/Netscape7/Opera compliance.
Today Mozilla works flawlessly, on their remarkably well designed site.
Score one for the good guys! And I'm off to make sure Toyota knows I appreciate their effort.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
It said "Slashdot: bla"
Username taken, please choose another one.
I'm a happy owner of a 9700 pro. I'm sure future buyers will be happy with the NV30.
Despite all the puffery of the PR, they only claim about 40% increase over the 9700. 46 measly frames in Doom III with all the goods!!! Neither of these cards will run the Doom demo well! Hardly worthy of the claim creating a "new era of cinematic graphics". ATI started the new era, and NVIDIA is now matching ATI's offering with a slight increase in performance. Good job to both camps. We will all enjoy the benefits.
Future NVIDIA purchasers will have ATI to thank for the NV30's clockspeed and required hoover for cooling. There is little doubt that if it were not for the 9700 NV30 would be delivered later or clocked lower. I think ATI really surprised NVIDIA. We shall see who has the next surprise.
I think the big lie is that cinematic effects only begin with their deeper 2.0+ shaders. If you look at the DX9 demos from ATI, you can see the stock 2.0 pixel and vertex shaders offer plenty of opportunity for cinematic effects.
The hoopla helps deflects attention away from NV30's lower bandwidth and poorer clockspeed-t/performace ratio compared to the 9700. I suspect the deeper shaders will not perform well for gaming and will only be used in near-real-time applications.
Both will be decent cards that adequately handle requirements (DX9) that may only start to matter for mainstream games by the time we're debating NV40 vs. R400.
"If you want it stopped, hit them where it hurts - put a return-to-sender sticker on them, make AOL pay for the postage"
As has been repeated ad nauseum both here and on their website, AOL CDs (like almost all other mailed advertisements) are sent via Standard Mail (not First Class). There is no Return to Sender bit in Standard Mail (unlike First Class).
Besides, if they were sent First Class, the return postage has already been paid in the price of the stamp. It wouldn't hurt their wallet one way or the other.
> Thanks to the AC who noticed the goofed headline
> ("this is only a test," remember), now amended.
Yet you never corrected the bogus "jumping genes" headline. Why is that?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
and there has been more than one MAC address collision with just the few hundred machines I've set up.
Did the mac address have DEADBEEF in it by any chance?
Just because Jonny Doe was given a PC so he can use it for school doesn't mean he's not going to use it for games.
Really, it's not black-and-white. What about the people who got an X-Box for the online games, then learned about modchips and running Linux? What about the people who got an X-Box to serve as a PVR, and decided that playing online games was also Cool?
What's this Submit thingy do?
To make the method most effective, its best to make sure the serial numbers/MAC are well spread through the valid number space.
The whole "web standards" debate is stupid, and most especially one sided sites like Zeldman's webstandards.org. All that Zeldman and his cronies are doing is try to push new standards ahead of sane development, probably just so that he won't have to deal with standards like HTML. He has a point, though, as the older standards are lame and the newer standards are better. But he lacks the ability to understand that browser development and deployment will always lag behind, and why. The sad thing is that his kind of suckered lots of web developers into believing that all they have to do is blame the user for having an old browser and all will become better because all users will upgrade. Truth is, that's not always possible or feasible.
A tour of web sites using the Zeldman style with an older browser will generally work, as he does not advocate breaking them. But what you do get is less than what that browser is capable of. For example, browsers have for ages supported setting a background color or even a background image in HTML. Zeldmanistas refuse to set the background color, or in some cases, intentionally set it to something different than what is set in CSS. So while the site looks fine with CSS, without CSS you get maybe stark gray, or worse, black with black text over it. So what's actually going on here is not a case of these developers adhering to web standards, but rather, they are picking and choosing the standards they want to use, such as by not making use of HTML completely and correctly. So why should he any right to expect that others will choose to use newer standards like CSS or XML or whatever.
There is also a very good reason to make a web site that works with older browsers. Many groups are now operating in lower income urban areas carrying out programs to get older computers donated to them from businesses that are doing the upgrading. Because of the economy, the number of businesses doing upgrades has dropped off and most donations are rather old. What this means is that most of the people receiving these computers are getting something in the late 486 or early Pentium range, and at best a copy of Windows 95, which is usually all (other than BSD or Linux, which hasn't made it to these programs that I've seen yet ... something for us to get more involved in I suppose) that these old machines with slow CPU, small memory, and limited hard drive capacity can handle. So they end up with usually an old Netscape version 3 browser (Java and Javascript are hopelessly broken, and CSS is non-existant). Newer browsers overwhelm the machine, if they even fit at all.
This "economic accessibility" isn't yet addressed by law, and may never be. Private business does not have to cater to them. So the banks and other financial institutions listed with specific browser requirements aren't in violation. And besides, we're talking about people who can't afford a computer and have to use limited time community access ISPs just to get online (if the phone and electric bill are paid up). I'm sure the financial institutions have no interest in extending them credit.
While businesses probably should have a free choice in what, and who, they support, governments OTOH should not. People should have a right to expect their government internet based services to be accessible to all, not just those who can afford a bigger faster computer that can handle the latest obese and overloaded software. And since it is possible to make web sites that not only work well with new standards, but also work well (as well as those standards allow) with older standards that the smaller browsers support, governments should be required to do this in all citizen-facing web sites. In other words, if it can be made to work in a minimal set of standards, it must be made to work that well when that's what's available. Then if it works even better in newer standards in ways that the older standards could never do, that's fine, too.
What I think might be a better approach to this would be to support the development of a not-so-obese web browser, as well as programs to get systems like Linux deployed onto more of the computers being donated to the economically disadvantaged (aside: why are politically correct words so long?).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I have news for you.
ATI's CATALYST 2.3 and 2.4 drivers will work on every ATI Radeon chipset from the R100 all the way to the R300 used on the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro board. This is pretty much a de facto "unified" driver in my view.
Besides, there is no such thing as a stable driver. I've read on the alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia newsgroup that many high-end games still have trouble with the latest nVidia Detonator 40.72 driver (shrug).
At least ATI is getting their act together with the latest CATALYST drivers.
cynical about ATI at the moment so it tends to skew my perspective. I'd hardly consider this one "long time dream of software developers" likely to toppple the video card industry. Even if ATI hardware supports every single bloody DX9 feature, if their LOUSY drivers won't run it is a glorified heater. Here's to ATI getting their shit together and driving Nvidia and the market to really put out some high class video cards.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
They decided to mod their Xbox, now they are upset that breaking the EULA makes their box incompatible with Xbox Live.
......SKILL!!!!!
BooHoo.
If I were to somehow get OS X running on an AMD chip and iTools no longer worked, the last thing I would do would be to cry to Apple.
Xbox Live is a little oasis of online gaming where cheating, drastic connection differences and hardware differences are currently nonexistant. It is EXACTLY what legit Counterstrike players have been begging for since the late '90s. Now, a bunch of assholes out to get around their own inability to deal with the consequences their actions have bestowed upon them, are out to ruin it for everyone else.
XBL is something we've all wanted for years. Now, we can likely expect to see legit users permabanned from XBL because some 1337 hAx0r cannot possibly deal with the fact he can only get ahead in online Xbox games by using
So he uses their serial/MAC.
Others do the same.
They also cheat.
XBL is ruined.
I know a lot of people think it is cool to fuck over Microsoft at every oppertunity and feel that they should give up on the banning, but if this were anyone else, there would be a lot more outrage than there is now. Something good is on the verge of being destroyed. Too bad no one wants to own up to their own hypocrisy.
Online: Technical support
/ download/
Q: What should I do if I get the following message: ''The Internet site you are trying to view uses a security certificate that was signed by an unknown authority''?
A: This message indicates that you must upgrade your browser. To protect the privacy of your personal information, we require your Internet browser supports 128-bit encryption to access our Online Account Services (OAS).
We suggest you download Netscape version 4.08 or higher or Internet Explorer version 4.0 or higher. For Macintosh users, we suggest Internet Explorer version 4.5 or higher.
Netscape: Click the link below to download Netscape Navigator or Netscape Communicator:
http://home.netscape.com/computing
Internet Explorer (PC): Click the link below to download the latest browser version:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/
Internet Explorer (Macintosh): Click the link below to download the latest browser version:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/download/
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
It seems the GeforceFx previews made some mistakes when comparing the relative merits of the NV30 and 9700.
For a good read check out this comparison of the new chips. Even this gets a few things wrong
The vertex shader 1024 instructions limit of the 9700 is mostly misreported.
The Geforce vertex shader is more powerful, supporting dynamic branching, but the 9700 can do a static branching per primitive with instruction lengths of 65,026. I'm sure such shaders will be equally unwieldy for gaming on both cards.
It seems some of the reviewers only looked only at what NVidia told them and what DX9 exposes and not what the 9700's actual silicon supports.
The reviewers barely understand the full capabilities of the 9700 months after its release. I'm sure the FX will provide similar surprises (good and bad) when they actually get their hands on one.
Just a snippet of info for those that don't know. Spoofing the MAC address of an Xbox is trivial, since as soon as the Xbox Live software is installed, an option is available for manually inputting a new MAC address. Right now I am spoofing my laptop NIC MAC so that I don't need to restart my cable modem every time I go online with the Xbox.
Tell that to RCN who charges me $5 a month for my cable modem. I wonder if MS would attach a EULA to the xbox and consider the purchase fee a one time hardware "licensing fee". maybe I shouldn't give people ideas...
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Are you trying to say that they send a variable number of bits for the serial number and that it is not simply a fixed-width field (32 bit, 64 bit, 128 bit, etc)? And that you think that is likely? It is far more likely that they use a fixed width number. So maybe it's 2**128 combinations, but it's not even close to infinite.
My other first post is car post.
I just heard on Car Talk that they decided to send 3.1 yogurt lids to AOL. Essentially, they were going to run a promotional campaign for some cause by printing a message on yogurt lids. The problem was that they put NPR on the lids(since they air on NPR) without clearing it with NPR. When NPR found out they said that the lids couldn't be distributed because NPR didn't want to be seen associated with a commercial product. So Click and Clack were stuck with 3.1 million lids that they didn't have anything to with. They had a contest to come up with the best use for them and the winning entry was "Send them to AOL and see how they feel".
(many manufacturers have more than one)
I remember Apple having 2, they flipped the bytes wrongly when they sent it on the wire, then they corrected it. So instead of recalling all those NICs, they just assigned Apple both permutations.
Pncbank has support mozilla for a while now, after reading the quickie about captial one, I sent them a nice email.
"I just wanted to write you guys to say thank you for supporting the Mozilla web browser. I appricate a company that recognizes and encourages my right to choose a different web browser other then Internet Explorer.
Keep up the good work, and please continue to support our right to choose. As long as you continue doing what you are doing I will continue to be your customer!
You guys are awesome."
Maybe if anyone else uses Pncbank you can send them an email too.
I just can't see a card that takes two slots and has that huge fan going mainstream. That's just too much.
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In my opinion, sending all the CDs to two guys and counting on them to ship a million is kind of stupid. Instead, whenever you receive an AOL CD, use a hammer and a nail to place a few holes in recorded portions of the data track, such that the CD becomes useless. Write profanity on it with permanent ink. Then, mail it back to AOL. The advantages of this method are:
You know all those junk mailers you receive that offer you junk you don't need? Many of them come with postage-paid envelopes. Simply rip up the materials they sent you, stick them in the postage-paid envelope, and send them back. They will have to pay postage, and it will waste their time. If enough people do this, it may cause a reduction in junk mail.
I'd like to see you do it.
I know that on my end, all my machines have very strict rules about packets and IPs, as well as verification of them (as well as syn cookies).
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Woukdn't this the perfect use for AOL accounts. I don't think MS would want to exclude so many users.
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Ya know, I have no problem with pissing off Microsoft, but how about sticking to methods that are not grossly illegal and likely to get you a heavy fine and/or prison time.
Doing this is abusing Microsoft's systems, it's about the same magnitude as hacking into their web server and taking it down. If you manage to actually accomplish anything, you will not get away with it, and Microsoft will have more ammo in the "all those evil hackers are hurting our business" play.
So yeah, it's amusing that you can do this, but don't make a serious attempt.
Now if only these were CD-RWs ... and they can keep sending me the nice, reusable cases, just no more paper sleeves, thanks.
A friend of mine was actually asked "Buy blank CDs? Why not just use the free ones from AOL?"
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happy to give them directions and greet them at the door ... We would make a contribution ourselves to put them over the top
Very good on AOL's part - they have CoOpted what is a PROTEST AGAINST THEM into a positive PR spin. I fucking love it.
How disappointing, now when people hear about this, they will think these people were Beanie-baby-style impulse collectors of modern-consumer fare.. nothing radical, nice, warm, cozy farmiliar... how sad.
Are you sure about that?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
You're getting wishy-washy.
First it's "hardly a challenge to a reasonably competent programmer.," then it's "a sophisticated attack, but not an impossible one." Excuse my while I throw an InconsistencyException about your argument!
I really, really doubt the login service uses UDP, unless they've put something on top that will manually do retransmission and acknowledgemeng. The Xbox Live! service does require that TCP port 3074 be used on the Xbox, so I'm guessing they just went the way of using TCP.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
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