Actually, it's not hard to distinguish piracy on the PS3. Seriously. Especially with their fancy new rootkit in 3.56 so they can remotely supply code to do the various checks.
There are two ways piracy on the PS3 is performed.
Less commonly, game executables are decrypted, cracked, and resigned. This should change any decent hash value of them. Simple check right there. This is the "uncommon" way to do PS3 piracy because, quite frankly, noone is all that good at cracking PS3 executables just yet.
The other more common approach, is so called "backup managers". Backup managers rip disc contents to the hard disk, then mount that folder in place of the bluray drive. Backup managers in order to function rely on LV2 syscall hacks, and detecting whether or not those are present isn't all that difficult.
What System Software License Agreement are you talking about? I certainly never saw one when I bought my PS3 over at a local pawn shop. Or amI bound to a contract that not only have I never agreed to, I have never actually *seen*?
That's one of the problems I have with this kind of agreement -- those in the second hand market never see them, never agree to them, and yet are somehow bound by them?!?
...and they could very easily do this. Release a "homebrew" SDK that signs with a separate signing key, and enable the feature to install from USB software signed to that key. Add a splash screen saying that it is not licensed by Sony, is not licensed for commercial sale, and may potentially damage your console, then let'er rip.
Honestly, it surprises me that they don't do that already -- it seems like an easy route to getting developers familiar with your console, which would seem a necessary step to getting them willing to develop for it.
More importantly, I assume Sony's ToS gives them the right to pull your licenses from any/all games you ay have bought from the PSN store, and to keep all funds transferred to your PSN wallet without compensation at any time they so choose?
Otherwise, there'll be some issues for them in the near future. Of the legal variety.
Of course, if they were really only concerned about cheaters and pirates, they would still allow store access even to banned consoles.
...but it does give Sony a reason that *sounds* like they're just going after cheaters and pirates to bring down the hammer on anyone who dares run anything not specifically authorized by Sony.
Which you do by ignoring a large chunk of one companies' employees while still counting all of their revenue? That just seems like a number intentionally biased in the other direction. If we discount all their retail employees, shouldn't we also be discounting all revenue from sales via Apple's first party retail outlets (read: Apple Stores),
I've bought one game under each of them, specifically due to not being available on Steam. Demigod from Impulse (which is kind of like "Steam done poorly", but Demigod = win) and Pathologic from Gamer's Gate (which is more or less a web storefront with download links to what you buy). I've also bought the first Penny Arcade game from Greenhouse (which is similar to Gamer's Gate as far as experience is concerned).
The daily sale popups from Impulse are annoying though -- they make me want to shut it down any time I'm not actually playing Demigod right that second.
I didn't think VAC (the thing in Steam that monitors cheating) pulled the license on your games whatsoever, but rather flagged you as a cheater on $GAME, which in turn caused servers for $GAME that cared to not permit you to play. In general (as in, it can trivially be done in most games that allow play on user-run servers), it's both possible to have servers that neither use nor check VAC, and it's possible to still play your game after VAC has blacklisted you -- you just can't play it multiplayer on VAC enabled servers.
It could be possible you are referring to something else though?
Eh, my nephew reminds me so much of me when I was his edge, just with cooler but easier video games (I occasionally point him at an emulator and put in one of the games I played when I was younger and talk him into playing it just to watch him rage at them =p). So, it's not like I'm suggesting he *should* make napalm, just that when he *does* do so, or something else equally crazy (like I know I did on more than one occasion, ranging from minor vandalism to theft of county property, to playing with some mild explosives/incendiaries), that he should know what he's doing, do his research, and for the love of all that is holy, be sure the dangerous/toxic/incendiary thing he concocts will actually be held by it's container!
You can't stop that kind of thing, the best you can do is make sure they know how not to ruin their lives when they try it -- same logic as applies to teenagers having sex.
You can say things like that, but the man in question was of all things an unemployed union ironworker (who felt that the unions were failing to find him work because of Obama taking away all the jobs) who on top of it was an immigrant (came to this country as an infant with his parents from Germany, so he's white and has no accent, but an immigrant and required to carry his paperwork all the same).
Always thought that was odd -- demographically he should probably be a Democrat, being an immigrant union employee and all, but he's a huge Glenn Beck fan and hardcore Republican, even when he's doing something that seems directly contradictory (as the example above). I'd call him out on it, but he's touchy wrt politics, and I deal with him frequently.
Then again, I'm from the state where a huge majority is registered Democrat, but the last few elections they've all voted Republican.
What you said cannot be emphasized enough. I have yet to see anything where Jon Stewart makes any claim that his is anything other than a comedy show.
What's really interesting (and I'll admit freely that I *really* dislike Beck) is that Glenn Beck's fans can't tell the difference between what Glenn Beck does and what Jon Stewart does, other than Stewart being liberal and Beck being conservative -- you'd think that would be an enlightening point right there, when your "news" guy seems so similar to someone who's claiming that everything he does is merely comedy and not to take him seriously.
Even then, Jon Stewart occasionally has a good point or two, mostly when he's jabbing at the ridiculousness of American politics as a whole, or catching people in direct plain faced contradictions with themselves.
Heh, you just reminded me of someone I know who was actually arguing why all those "welfare government handouts" were so evil...while applying for medicare. As in literally giving a rant about the evils of "government handouts" and how "Obama wants to give us a socialist health care system" while the medicare forms were on a clipboard in front of him and he was filling them out.
The funny part being that it possible to get a significant part of the way through the game, if not complete it, without killing anyone. Which just shows you how bloodthirsty you really are. =p
Not meant to explode, I don't think. Now it will stick to anything and everything, and it will eat through plastics, and boy will it stain -- to the point that I once pointed at a splotch on a sidewalk and told my nephew, "That splotch was from a drip of some napalm that I had concocted when I was your age, a decade ago. It was dissolving my poor choice of a container for it. If you ever make napalm, store it in glass."
But that tax unfairly penalizes automated high volume traders, you know the guys who make the stock market slightly more liquid by guaranteeing themselves returns on stocks held for no more than minutes, and sure you and demand the trades reverted if you make money off of them instead? I mean think of them, why don't you?
So the internet is the dragon, and Google is the beast? At least I'm pretty sure we're all saying something to the effect of "Who can make war with Google?" and Google is given it's power and it's seat by the internet.
So, what you are saying is that you are perfectly OK with buying equipment that you are not allowed to work on, modify, or use for whatever purpose you desire. Doesn't sound like it's actually been "bought" at that point, does it?
Wasn't geohot's original hack to get at the video hardware that was explicitly disabled in OtherOS, which involved a hole that pirates could crawl through and geohot knew that?
As in, Sony inherently crippled homebrew, people developing homebrew punched a hole that pirates could crawl through, so Sony removed the ability for homebrewers to do anything by removing OtherOS entirely, causing new holes to be punched?
Then they should be checking for modified game executables and LV2 syscall hacks and little else. Checksum game data files as well if you want to check for cheats beyond piracy. Use one of those rootkit features supposedly added to 3.56 to do so, if you'd like.
Any pirate game is either going to have an LV2 syscall hack in place (to redirect/dev/bdvd to another folder, this is how backup managers work) or have a modified executable (to make it look at some other location in place of/dev/bdvd). Anything else isn't currently in use for piracy.
Ideally, they'd patch the system as hard as possible, release a "homebrew" signing key with minimal restrictions (runs at same privilege level as any other userland PS3 app with full access to anything that entails, maybe with an extra splash screen saying that this software is not licensed by Sony, is not licensed for commercial sale, and Sony is not responsible for yada yada yada on startup). Then go after anyone left, since there's not a legitimate reason to be hacking the machine left.
In reference to the discussion above about Nintendo just iterating the same handful of games over and over with only minor changes, I can see that having some validity with Mario Party. I prefer Dokapon Kingdom myself though -- it destroys friendships by being Mario Party with less minigames and more (and less friendly) backstabbing.
So you are implying that Super Mario Bros. = Super Mario World = Super Mario Galaxy except for using prettier graphics each time? Of course Metroid = Super Metroid = Metroid Prime = Metroid Other M (which was a step I wish they hadn't taken) are just minor graphical upgrades? And The Legend of Zelda = Spirit Tracks = Twilight Princess?
So, basically what you are saying is every game featuring the same characters (something I will freely admit Nintendo does a lot of, recycling characters while making significant changes to the underlying gameplay) is the same game and innately uninnovative?
My nephew could certainly use a spare PS3. He doesn't have a blu-ray player of any variety, and well, buying one used is less money in Sony's pocket. =p
I could see uses for things like a bugzapper lamp that "eats" the bugs to offset part of it's own power consumption (maybe all? how efficient are these insect-powered cells?).
I could also see uses for a mousetrap powered by digesting it's previous meal and storing it in a battery. Preferably one with less passive energy use than the ones we already use (y'know cats?), so it can lay in wait longer between meals. Something about a mousetrap that feeds on the lives of mice to power killing more mice amuses me, probably because mine likes to cuddle with me and purr.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's not hard to distinguish piracy on the PS3. Seriously. Especially with their fancy new rootkit in 3.56 so they can remotely supply code to do the various checks.
There are two ways piracy on the PS3 is performed.
Less commonly, game executables are decrypted, cracked, and resigned. This should change any decent hash value of them. Simple check right there. This is the "uncommon" way to do PS3 piracy because, quite frankly, noone is all that good at cracking PS3 executables just yet.
The other more common approach, is so called "backup managers". Backup managers rip disc contents to the hard disk, then mount that folder in place of the bluray drive. Backup managers in order to function rely on LV2 syscall hacks, and detecting whether or not those are present isn't all that difficult.
What System Software License Agreement are you talking about? I certainly never saw one when I bought my PS3 over at a local pawn shop. Or amI bound to a contract that not only have I never agreed to, I have never actually *seen*?
That's one of the problems I have with this kind of agreement -- those in the second hand market never see them, never agree to them, and yet are somehow bound by them?!?
...and they could very easily do this. Release a "homebrew" SDK that signs with a separate signing key, and enable the feature to install from USB software signed to that key. Add a splash screen saying that it is not licensed by Sony, is not licensed for commercial sale, and may potentially damage your console, then let'er rip.
Honestly, it surprises me that they don't do that already -- it seems like an easy route to getting developers familiar with your console, which would seem a necessary step to getting them willing to develop for it.
More importantly, I assume Sony's ToS gives them the right to pull your licenses from any/all games you ay have bought from the PSN store, and to keep all funds transferred to your PSN wallet without compensation at any time they so choose?
Otherwise, there'll be some issues for them in the near future. Of the legal variety.
Of course, if they were really only concerned about cheaters and pirates, they would still allow store access even to banned consoles.
...but it does give Sony a reason that *sounds* like they're just going after cheaters and pirates to bring down the hammer on anyone who dares run anything not specifically authorized by Sony.
...or Blur. Blur is bad about continuous nag screens.
Demon's Souls also has the nag screens, but only when you load your game.
Which you do by ignoring a large chunk of one companies' employees while still counting all of their revenue? That just seems like a number intentionally biased in the other direction. If we discount all their retail employees, shouldn't we also be discounting all revenue from sales via Apple's first party retail outlets (read: Apple Stores),
I've bought one game under each of them, specifically due to not being available on Steam. Demigod from Impulse (which is kind of like "Steam done poorly", but Demigod = win) and Pathologic from Gamer's Gate (which is more or less a web storefront with download links to what you buy). I've also bought the first Penny Arcade game from Greenhouse (which is similar to Gamer's Gate as far as experience is concerned).
The daily sale popups from Impulse are annoying though -- they make me want to shut it down any time I'm not actually playing Demigod right that second.
I didn't think VAC (the thing in Steam that monitors cheating) pulled the license on your games whatsoever, but rather flagged you as a cheater on $GAME, which in turn caused servers for $GAME that cared to not permit you to play. In general (as in, it can trivially be done in most games that allow play on user-run servers), it's both possible to have servers that neither use nor check VAC, and it's possible to still play your game after VAC has blacklisted you -- you just can't play it multiplayer on VAC enabled servers.
It could be possible you are referring to something else though?
Eh, my nephew reminds me so much of me when I was his edge, just with cooler but easier video games (I occasionally point him at an emulator and put in one of the games I played when I was younger and talk him into playing it just to watch him rage at them =p). So, it's not like I'm suggesting he *should* make napalm, just that when he *does* do so, or something else equally crazy (like I know I did on more than one occasion, ranging from minor vandalism to theft of county property, to playing with some mild explosives/incendiaries), that he should know what he's doing, do his research, and for the love of all that is holy, be sure the dangerous/toxic/incendiary thing he concocts will actually be held by it's container!
You can't stop that kind of thing, the best you can do is make sure they know how not to ruin their lives when they try it -- same logic as applies to teenagers having sex.
You can say things like that, but the man in question was of all things an unemployed union ironworker (who felt that the unions were failing to find him work because of Obama taking away all the jobs) who on top of it was an immigrant (came to this country as an infant with his parents from Germany, so he's white and has no accent, but an immigrant and required to carry his paperwork all the same).
Always thought that was odd -- demographically he should probably be a Democrat, being an immigrant union employee and all, but he's a huge Glenn Beck fan and hardcore Republican, even when he's doing something that seems directly contradictory (as the example above). I'd call him out on it, but he's touchy wrt politics, and I deal with him frequently.
Then again, I'm from the state where a huge majority is registered Democrat, but the last few elections they've all voted Republican.
What you said cannot be emphasized enough. I have yet to see anything where Jon Stewart makes any claim that his is anything other than a comedy show.
What's really interesting (and I'll admit freely that I *really* dislike Beck) is that Glenn Beck's fans can't tell the difference between what Glenn Beck does and what Jon Stewart does, other than Stewart being liberal and Beck being conservative -- you'd think that would be an enlightening point right there, when your "news" guy seems so similar to someone who's claiming that everything he does is merely comedy and not to take him seriously.
Even then, Jon Stewart occasionally has a good point or two, mostly when he's jabbing at the ridiculousness of American politics as a whole, or catching people in direct plain faced contradictions with themselves.
Heh, you just reminded me of someone I know who was actually arguing why all those "welfare government handouts" were so evil...while applying for medicare. As in literally giving a rant about the evils of "government handouts" and how "Obama wants to give us a socialist health care system" while the medicare forms were on a clipboard in front of him and he was filling them out.
The funny part being that it possible to get a significant part of the way through the game, if not complete it, without killing anyone. Which just shows you how bloodthirsty you really are. =p
Not meant to explode, I don't think. Now it will stick to anything and everything, and it will eat through plastics, and boy will it stain -- to the point that I once pointed at a splotch on a sidewalk and told my nephew, "That splotch was from a drip of some napalm that I had concocted when I was your age, a decade ago. It was dissolving my poor choice of a container for it. If you ever make napalm, store it in glass."
But that tax unfairly penalizes automated high volume traders, you know the guys who make the stock market slightly more liquid by guaranteeing themselves returns on stocks held for no more than minutes, and sure you and demand the trades reverted if you make money off of them instead? I mean think of them, why don't you?
If they could afford to invest, they wouldn't be "poor" for some arbitrary definition of "poor".
REV 13:4
So the internet is the dragon, and Google is the beast? At least I'm pretty sure we're all saying something to the effect of "Who can make war with Google?" and Google is given it's power and it's seat by the internet.
So, what you are saying is that you are perfectly OK with buying equipment that you are not allowed to work on, modify, or use for whatever purpose you desire. Doesn't sound like it's actually been "bought" at that point, does it?
Wasn't geohot's original hack to get at the video hardware that was explicitly disabled in OtherOS, which involved a hole that pirates could crawl through and geohot knew that?
As in, Sony inherently crippled homebrew, people developing homebrew punched a hole that pirates could crawl through, so Sony removed the ability for homebrewers to do anything by removing OtherOS entirely, causing new holes to be punched?
Then they should be checking for modified game executables and LV2 syscall hacks and little else. Checksum game data files as well if you want to check for cheats beyond piracy. Use one of those rootkit features supposedly added to 3.56 to do so, if you'd like.
Any pirate game is either going to have an LV2 syscall hack in place (to redirect /dev/bdvd to another folder, this is how backup managers work) or have a modified executable (to make it look at some other location in place of /dev/bdvd). Anything else isn't currently in use for piracy.
Ideally, they'd patch the system as hard as possible, release a "homebrew" signing key with minimal restrictions (runs at same privilege level as any other userland PS3 app with full access to anything that entails, maybe with an extra splash screen saying that this software is not licensed by Sony, is not licensed for commercial sale, and Sony is not responsible for yada yada yada on startup). Then go after anyone left, since there's not a legitimate reason to be hacking the machine left.
In reference to the discussion above about Nintendo just iterating the same handful of games over and over with only minor changes, I can see that having some validity with Mario Party. I prefer Dokapon Kingdom myself though -- it destroys friendships by being Mario Party with less minigames and more (and less friendly) backstabbing.
So you are implying that Super Mario Bros. = Super Mario World = Super Mario Galaxy except for using prettier graphics each time?
Of course Metroid = Super Metroid = Metroid Prime = Metroid Other M (which was a step I wish they hadn't taken) are just minor graphical upgrades?
And The Legend of Zelda = Spirit Tracks = Twilight Princess?
So, basically what you are saying is every game featuring the same characters (something I will freely admit Nintendo does a lot of, recycling characters while making significant changes to the underlying gameplay) is the same game and innately uninnovative?
You running 3.55 or lower, and how much?
My nephew could certainly use a spare PS3. He doesn't have a blu-ray player of any variety, and well, buying one used is less money in Sony's pocket. =p
I could see uses for things like a bugzapper lamp that "eats" the bugs to offset part of it's own power consumption (maybe all? how efficient are these insect-powered cells?).
I could also see uses for a mousetrap powered by digesting it's previous meal and storing it in a battery. Preferably one with less passive energy use than the ones we already use (y'know cats?), so it can lay in wait longer between meals. Something about a mousetrap that feeds on the lives of mice to power killing more mice amuses me, probably because mine likes to cuddle with me and purr.