You can uninstall the plug-in, SOE Web Installer, by using the provided "Uninstaller" you get at the same webpage that installs it.
Or, you can do what I did. Manually uninstall the game then spend 2 hours scouring out the 67 registry entries the "uninstaller" left behind. (The game uninstaller didn't actually remove a single file...not a single one. The plug-in uninstaller simply appeared to remove the plug-in from the control panel--all of the registry entries remained. CCleaner only found four of the 67 I removed.)
That shit is pure rootkit. Considering you can't even firewall out the outbound data without also firewalling your browser, this one is worse then the Sony/BMG rootkit. I've had to remove both and this one was spread all over the damn place, with redundant registry entries everywhere.
Never again, Sony, will any of your products enter this household.
Verified that the SOE Web Installer plug-in for Firefox is installed by the Everquest 2 Updater (I'm guessing their other games will install it as well).
Verified by updating the game (my wife hadn't updater her machine yet) with Firefox open-- Game Updater hung until I closed down Firefox--Plug-in is installed once Game updater was finished. I made sure it was NOT installed before updating the game.
Much like the music CDs, I guess Sony cannot be trusted even after a class-action for doing the same sort of shit.
"friggin 3 movies? what's that, 9 hours and 2 years to release?"
I have the extended version CD set and it is almost 14 hours--perfect for a Holiday season movie marathon. The fact that it is broken up into three movies makes it that much easier to find our place the next day when we all sit down to continue the marathon.
Yeah, I am beginning to see that. Apparently, and 3rd party applications that have any disk write permissions can do so as the files that the plug-ins reside in are not write protected. This is a failure on the part of Mozilla--a big one.
Based on previous works, "Lord of the Rings" in particular, I'd say "as much as you can give us!". And by that I mean that they could cut The Hobbit into 10 pieces and I'd still be thrilled. Even with 3 movies, "Lord of the Rings" was missing too much.
I play Everquest 2 on this machine, and look what I just found (installed yesterday). Firefox never informed me that it was being installed.
FF - HKLM\Software\MozillaPlugins\@soe.sony.com/installer,version=1.0.3: C:\Documents and Settings\owner\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\5kpvldeq.default\extensions\{000F1EA4-5E08-4564-A29B-29076F63A37A}\plugins\npsoe.dll ()
In the Firefox browser Add-on pane it is listed as SOE Web Installer 1.0.3.171. It can be disabled, but I have not attempted to remove it yet. I want to keep it around while I figure out what it is doing. A web-search is inconclusive as it appears to have just been released, although I did find several links to a "test page" that belongs to Sony that instantly tries to install said plug-in. No-script blocked these attempts, so I have to assume it was served to me via the EQ2 GAME updating system. If so, complete bullshit.
Again, I never got any sort of plug-in install warning when running Firefox, and I have my browser warning settings at maximum verbosity. This plug-in was just "there".
To be totally honest, after reading Slashdot for years and seeing numerous legal cases where presumably inaccessible data is used as evidence, I assume that everything I do on any computer is backed up somewhere, including the one I am using in the privacy of my own home right now.
That being said, there are some things that should never be interfaced with electronics (matters of the heart being the first to come to mind).
I know, they're idiots, but eventually metal thieves will figure out just how much copper is in an electric motor. This technology, I presume, will add significantly to the amount of copper wire in an electric car, with copper being the most common metal used in coil windings. I'll not even go into the resell value of automotive battery packs, for which there is already a healthy black-market.
How much copper does it take to turn a metal thief into a car thief?
"It's not profitable (or at least it is not immediately obvious why doing so would be profitable)."
Only if you think the idea of "profit" is unique to money--it is not. One can profit from the kindness of others, one can profit from the understanding of others, one can profit from the respect of others, one can profit from the civility of others...Just as others can profit from the respect, kindness, understanding and civility that you might bestow upon them.
See that? None of those examples paid off in cash. In fact, they paid off in something money cannot buy, and for that reason alone the proceeds far exceed the value of any money that could have been derived.
"Hasn't Comcast been doing something similar [torrentfreak.com] for several years prior to that article being published?"
I should have mentioned this in my other response to your post, rather then posting again. Better late then never?...
I know for a fact that Comcast allowed seeding as recently as two months ago. How do I know this? Because I already received a "copyright infringement" warning for a previous torrent, before they even announced the "6 strikes" policy. If I wasn't sharing data in the form of uploads, that warning would never have been issued as only uploaded data is considered infringing.
"Hasn't Comcast been doing something similar [torrentfreak.com] for several years prior to that article being published?"
Not according to my own experiences with Comcast (I've been a customer for 10 years...Yeah, I know. No other choice unless I want a 10th of the bandwidth).
I've always been capped at 1.5MB/sec download speeds (P2P--I get advertised download rates for everything else). I still get that. What changed was the upload. In the past, what I found through some experimentation was that Comcast had an upload cap that changed based on the time of day--if you exceeded this cap your connections were reset, dropping both download and upload rates to zero, then they would slowly climb back up to normal until you exceeded the cap again. The ramp-up took long enough that it hurt your download rate enough to make it not worthwhile to exceed the upload cap. The cap varied from 65kb/sec (noon) to 200kb/sec(3 am). In response to this I simply changed my upload rates to prevent triggering the cap resets. I'm sure that was the whole idea. That being said, I was able to upload, just at very limited rates. Now, zero. Period.
There was one exception--If I was downloading on two machines locally (but NOT networked), they would hook up to each other via BitTorrent and pass data to each other with no limits to upload rates. I assume that was because both machines were using static IPs behind a single Comcast-issued dynamic IP and Comcast sees that as "OK", I guess. The only reason I ever even noticed this is because I often used two machines to effectively double my download rates (been awhile, and I haven't tried it since the uploads stopped altogether).
There might be another reason for this, but I am not sure exactly how this works, so I'll just throw it out there--Magnetic Links. If nobody is uploading anything but the overhead/requests, doesn't this break, eventually, magnetic links? Aren't the file information/hashes shared/managed by the peers now, instead of centralized trackers? Could they be trying to break that whole model?
The very next day after the article was published, I noticed something interesting when I was using BitTorrent--aside from request overhead, I was uploading zero data. I'm currently watching a 3.1GB torrent--1.79 GB downloaded and 0.0 uploaded. And no, it isn't my client settings. I have checked them several times, nor did I change them any from when I was uploading normally. Seeding a completed torrent does nothing--it just sits there with no activity.
To put it in simple terms, Comcast (my ISP) is throttling uploads by 100% but not touching download rates (at least mine). Are they, in essence, protecting their customers from the "6 strikes" policy they agreed to enforce? If so, I assume they are doing this to prevent losing customers that continue using P2P software.
I can't imagine the MPAA/RIAA will be very happy about this.
I'm not the guy that tried to get the story posted. I was just seeing if posts that linked to it were deleted as well. I put four links out there and none were deleted. Modded into the dirt, yes, but deleted...no.
Three of the four were modded -1 Offtopic, as they should have been. The other was ignored entirely as it was hidden as a response to a post already modded into the negative.
"I've plotted a graph of all the ox bow lake formations found using Google Maps, and guess what? Not one formed before 1993. What happened in 1993? That's right, CO2 levels hit 350ppm. Coincidence? I think not. We need to save our ox bows, donate today."
The Wikipedia entry for "The Dark Knight Rises" was updated with a section discussing the shooting shortly after it occured--that entry has now been removed entirely, as well as the citations for the information included.
This is another end-run around laws against calling people on telephones for political reasons.
If you do business with Facebook (you are by registering to vote through them), anyone that does business with Facebook (every SuperPAC out there) can now call you legally. The people calling now also have access to party affiliation information because many states require you to register under party affiliation.
I live in Washington state and can tell you that political phone solicitations are a big factor here--with our "Initiative" process it is far easier for corporations to directly introduce legislation and phone solicitation is the primary means by which they promote their "Initiatives". CostCo just spent over $25 million dollars getting an initiative passed that passed control of liquor sales from the state to the private sector--much of that money was spent on call-center services.
Anyone else find it interesting that Mark Zuckerberg was born in 1984?
Slashdot Mirror
Update, if anyone cares.
You can uninstall the plug-in, SOE Web Installer, by using the provided "Uninstaller" you get at the same webpage that installs it.
Or, you can do what I did. Manually uninstall the game then spend 2 hours scouring out the 67 registry entries the "uninstaller" left behind. (The game uninstaller didn't actually remove a single file...not a single one. The plug-in uninstaller simply appeared to remove the plug-in from the control panel--all of the registry entries remained. CCleaner only found four of the 67 I removed.)
That shit is pure rootkit. Considering you can't even firewall out the outbound data without also firewalling your browser, this one is worse then the Sony/BMG rootkit. I've had to remove both and this one was spread all over the damn place, with redundant registry entries everywhere.
Never again, Sony, will any of your products enter this household.
Verified that the SOE Web Installer plug-in for Firefox is installed by the Everquest 2 Updater (I'm guessing their other games will install it as well).
Verified by updating the game (my wife hadn't updater her machine yet) with Firefox open-- Game Updater hung until I closed down Firefox--Plug-in is installed once Game updater was finished. I made sure it was NOT installed before updating the game.
Much like the music CDs, I guess Sony cannot be trusted even after a class-action for doing the same sort of shit.
"friggin 3 movies? what's that, 9 hours and 2 years to release?"
I have the extended version CD set and it is almost 14 hours--perfect for a Holiday season movie marathon. The fact that it is broken up into three movies makes it that much easier to find our place the next day when we all sit down to continue the marathon.
"That's pretty status quo for plugins."
Yeah, I am beginning to see that. Apparently, and 3rd party applications that have any disk write permissions can do so as the files that the plug-ins reside in are not write protected. This is a failure on the part of Mozilla--a big one.
Based on previous works, "Lord of the Rings" in particular, I'd say "as much as you can give us!". And by that I mean that they could cut The Hobbit into 10 pieces and I'd still be thrilled. Even with 3 movies, "Lord of the Rings" was missing too much.
Maybe they'll actually get sued this time...
I play Everquest 2 on this machine, and look what I just found (installed yesterday). Firefox never informed me that it was being installed.
FF - HKLM\Software\MozillaPlugins\@soe.sony.com/installer,version=1.0.3: C:\Documents and Settings\owner\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\5kpvldeq.default\extensions\{000F1EA4-5E08-4564-A29B-29076F63A37A}\plugins\npsoe.dll ()
In the Firefox browser Add-on pane it is listed as SOE Web Installer 1.0.3.171. It can be disabled, but I have not attempted to remove it yet. I want to keep it around while I figure out what it is doing. A web-search is inconclusive as it appears to have just been released, although I did find several links to a "test page" that belongs to Sony that instantly tries to install said plug-in. No-script blocked these attempts, so I have to assume it was served to me via the EQ2 GAME updating system. If so, complete bullshit.
Again, I never got any sort of plug-in install warning when running Firefox, and I have my browser warning settings at maximum verbosity. This plug-in was just "there".
"What an immense waste of a sub-200 UID."
I think you need a new star on your belly.
They were operating reactors there as late as 1980.
And the mess never went away...
"I don't have any Facebook stock because I AM NOT AN IDIOT..."
"Man, jokers like you are a pain in the ass. How am I supposed to build a mansion when there are only 52 cards in the deck?"
Mark Zuckerberg
"Don't worry they have already copied it..."
To be totally honest, after reading Slashdot for years and seeing numerous legal cases where presumably inaccessible data is used as evidence, I assume that everything I do on any computer is backed up somewhere, including the one I am using in the privacy of my own home right now.
That being said, there are some things that should never be interfaced with electronics (matters of the heart being the first to come to mind).
I know, they're idiots, but eventually metal thieves will figure out just how much copper is in an electric motor. This technology, I presume, will add significantly to the amount of copper wire in an electric car, with copper being the most common metal used in coil windings. I'll not even go into the resell value of automotive battery packs, for which there is already a healthy black-market.
How much copper does it take to turn a metal thief into a car thief?
I don't trust the guys running the damn things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory
Do you?
"It's not profitable (or at least it is not immediately obvious why doing so would be profitable)."
Only if you think the idea of "profit" is unique to money--it is not. One can profit from the kindness of others, one can profit from the understanding of others, one can profit from the respect of others, one can profit from the civility of others...Just as others can profit from the respect, kindness, understanding and civility that you might bestow upon them.
See that? None of those examples paid off in cash. In fact, they paid off in something money cannot buy, and for that reason alone the proceeds far exceed the value of any money that could have been derived.
"Hasn't Comcast been doing something similar [torrentfreak.com] for several years prior to that article being published?"
I should have mentioned this in my other response to your post, rather then posting again. Better late then never?...
I know for a fact that Comcast allowed seeding as recently as two months ago. How do I know this? Because I already received a "copyright infringement" warning for a previous torrent, before they even announced the "6 strikes" policy. If I wasn't sharing data in the form of uploads, that warning would never have been issued as only uploaded data is considered infringing.
Their upload caps applied though.
"Hasn't Comcast been doing something similar [torrentfreak.com] for several years prior to that article being published?"
Not according to my own experiences with Comcast (I've been a customer for 10 years...Yeah, I know. No other choice unless I want a 10th of the bandwidth).
I've always been capped at 1.5MB/sec download speeds (P2P--I get advertised download rates for everything else). I still get that. What changed was the upload. In the past, what I found through some experimentation was that Comcast had an upload cap that changed based on the time of day--if you exceeded this cap your connections were reset, dropping both download and upload rates to zero, then they would slowly climb back up to normal until you exceeded the cap again. The ramp-up took long enough that it hurt your download rate enough to make it not worthwhile to exceed the upload cap. The cap varied from 65kb/sec (noon) to 200kb/sec(3 am). In response to this I simply changed my upload rates to prevent triggering the cap resets. I'm sure that was the whole idea. That being said, I was able to upload, just at very limited rates. Now, zero. Period.
There was one exception--If I was downloading on two machines locally (but NOT networked), they would hook up to each other via BitTorrent and pass data to each other with no limits to upload rates. I assume that was because both machines were using static IPs behind a single Comcast-issued dynamic IP and Comcast sees that as "OK", I guess. The only reason I ever even noticed this is because I often used two machines to effectively double my download rates (been awhile, and I haven't tried it since the uploads stopped altogether).
There might be another reason for this, but I am not sure exactly how this works, so I'll just throw it out there--Magnetic Links. If nobody is uploading anything but the overhead/requests, doesn't this break, eventually, magnetic links? Aren't the file information/hashes shared/managed by the peers now, instead of centralized trackers? Could they be trying to break that whole model?
This is getting interesting.
Earlier this month ISPs came to an agreement with the recording/movie industry to enact a "6 strikes" policy to punish copyright infringement. (see ArsTechnica article, as previously discussed on /. -- http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/major-isps-agree-to-six-strikes-copyright-enforcement-plan/ )
The very next day after the article was published, I noticed something interesting when I was using BitTorrent--aside from request overhead, I was uploading zero data. I'm currently watching a 3.1GB torrent--1.79 GB downloaded and 0.0 uploaded. And no, it isn't my client settings. I have checked them several times, nor did I change them any from when I was uploading normally. Seeding a completed torrent does nothing--it just sits there with no activity.
To put it in simple terms, Comcast (my ISP) is throttling uploads by 100% but not touching download rates (at least mine). Are they, in essence, protecting their customers from the "6 strikes" policy they agreed to enforce? If so, I assume they are doing this to prevent losing customers that continue using P2P software.
I can't imagine the MPAA/RIAA will be very happy about this.
I'm not the guy that tried to get the story posted. I was just seeing if posts that linked to it were deleted as well. I put four links out there and none were deleted. Modded into the dirt, yes, but deleted...no.
Three of the four were modded -1 Offtopic, as they should have been. The other was ignored entirely as it was hidden as a response to a post already modded into the negative.
So, in short, nothing amiss.
Just testing this out...Test #4 (parent post/catchy title)
http://cryptome.org/2012/07/censored-slashdot-post.htm [cryptome.org]
" How did they ever manage to run with so little?"
Just testing this out...Test #3 (responding to +5 post/no title mod)
http://cryptome.org/2012/07/censored-slashdot-post.htm [cryptome.org]
"Android is the OS, not Linux. Linux is just the current kernel, and has absolutely no bearing on Android as a platform."
Just testing this out... Test #2 (hiding in a negatively modded post/no title mod)
http://cryptome.org/2012/07/censored-slashdot-post.htm [cryptome.org]
"I've plotted a graph of all the ox bow lake formations found using Google Maps, and guess what? Not one formed before 1993. What happened in 1993? That's right, CO2 levels hit 350ppm. Coincidence? I think not. We need to save our ox bows, donate today."
Just testing this out... (Ack! Periods!)
http://cryptome.org/2012/07/censored-slashdot-post.htm
...and replaced with a section about the release in the time it took me to post here.
The Wikipedia entry for "The Dark Knight Rises" was updated with a section discussing the shooting shortly after it occured--that entry has now been removed entirely, as well as the citations for the information included.
"At the moment, 3D Printing tends to be focusing on "cool trinkets", but I'm seeing a gradual shift to practical items too. "
How about making 3D printer parts?
This is another end-run around laws against calling people on telephones for political reasons.
If you do business with Facebook (you are by registering to vote through them), anyone that does business with Facebook (every SuperPAC out there) can now call you legally. The people calling now also have access to party affiliation information because many states require you to register under party affiliation.
I live in Washington state and can tell you that political phone solicitations are a big factor here--with our "Initiative" process it is far easier for corporations to directly introduce legislation and phone solicitation is the primary means by which they promote their "Initiatives". CostCo just spent over $25 million dollars getting an initiative passed that passed control of liquor sales from the state to the private sector--much of that money was spent on call-center services.
Anyone else find it interesting that Mark Zuckerberg was born in 1984?