I too have noticed this but I couldn't get an 'official' reason explained to me. So if this potential was combined with the fact that the XBox is getting set for retooling due to removal of the HD drives (and the recalls due to heating problems) then these are a big reason behind why 2007 was such a crappy game year. If it wasn't for BioShock it would have been dismal. So far 2008 isn't shaping up much unless you're into Guitar Hero 3 or Rock Band...
Personally this all together just stuns me that anyone could accept ONE company screwing up an entire industry up because of it's incompetence. If it only affected them that would be fine, but it's really becoming detrimental. One reason I'm glad that I took the plunge to get a Wii and a PS3, as PC games become more 'windows' focused so shall my game collection move back to the console, and I can install linux on the PS3 if I wish, something that voids your warranty on the XBox.
I do believe the PC is the gaming champion choice, but the problems inherent in the 'OS' since you're stuck with one choice, is a real problem. I'm so happy I didn't get sucked into that DX10 money pit.
I think the GP is right on the money with this. I too bought my HD last December for $200 (went on sale) then in January I got $80 back, since the item was price protected. So it only cost me $120. I got 2 movies with it (compared to 0 with my BD) and 5 more a month and a half later due to a promotion. So 7 movies and a player all for $120 I couldn't buy those movies for that last December. Now, I'm looking for content and deciding between paying $30+ for BD or $10-20 for HD. Not much guessing here.
Oh, and the quality difference between BD and HD? None. It's all in the content and most are poor re-masters, so I'd say don't bother updating your DVD catalog since your HD/BD will upconvert most of your SD content fine enough (compared to the HD remasters). Some newer content is actually done in HD and will greatly benefit from the new format, but don't think that much of the current offering (especially movies done before HD filming was available) will greatly benefit your viewing pleasure to justify the expense of buying it again.
Well if you lose your flight, or can't get money from an ATM, or other such day to day activity stops, just think of all the good coming from these games.
I think y'all missing the point. Wikipedia succeeds too. Amazon succeeds too. What isn't news that seems to be the point here is that 'y'all need to think about the speaker and what motivates them' If you do that, then it's far easier to listen with some perspective. Obviously 1% handle the majority of the content, nobody's paying me to spend more!
If you're going to have a transparent society, and you don't want to be powerless, you need to bloody participate. You need to break down the ultra-specialization that has become so commonplace in modern society, educate yourself about the various sectors that sustain your life and your society, and participate in each of them actively.
That's impossible. To require people do the impossible in order to make a system work ensures the system won't work.
Agreed. It is beyond impossible because it's likely that in 'working' a system like this you will develop another system quite like the one you replaced. However an active popluation really makes the government weaker since more people are behaving like independant syndicates or mobs. (see below).
The example given was of cops. Well, in a transparent society, you don't want cops, because everyone is a cop. If you see someone doing something, and you know they shouldn't be doing it, you rally the people around and take action personally.
It's extremely disturbing that you think the best form of law enforcement is the lynch mob.
I think this is a bit harse, but is certainly the reality. However we really are not that far away from it now, except most people think they are 'unempowered' and do nothing, as opposed to 'doing something'. The real problem is this. It's more likely for a person to ignore the problem than do something. Besides it's fine to say 'you take action' if you're 6 foot 220 pounds and in good shape and can handle yourself. If you're not and you faint at the sight of blood how would you deal with it? We may not like the 'fact that cops have to exist', but without it we could not trust ourselves. I certainly wouldn't want a return to the way's of the 17th century when if the village decided you were a witch you died. This is the way of the mob, and mobs are untrustworthy and unreliable except in one regard; to become a riot.
Another example, government. Government isn't supposed to "serve" the people, it is supposed to "be" the people.
It's supposed to be both. "By, Of, and For, The People" is the quote.
No, government is to 'serve' the people. What other purpose is there? You need a military? For what? to serve the people's needs and safety. You need government watchdogs, to serve the people to protect them against fraudsters and other obscure criminals. I forgot, the USA has turned it's government into a self-serving interest, you can fix that. Instead the government has fabricated it's enemies to turn the people against their own interests. Now they've convinced everyone that the 'rights' they have can be abused by enemies of the state and that should change. Why? Oh right the invisible enemies need to be stopped and only by treating people as the enemy can we weed them out. It's like the Salem witch hunt trials just grew some technology and changed the theme to account for the times.
People need MORE rights, not less. Don't let your hard earned rights be taken away by self-serving interests. Remind your Government why they exist.
The matters that government are concerned with should be the very first things that are made transparent, not the inside of your refrigerator.
That's quite true, but misses the point. Pretty much *every* aspect of the government should be immediately transparent, and there should be no part of the government that stays opaque longer than something like 50 years (although the argument for military secrets lasting at least as long as the thing they refer to is compelling, and I won't argue strongly one way or the other about that). But the contents of your refrigerator should only become transparent by your choice, and no one else's.
Privacy is one of the most fundamental things about being human. If privacy is to become null, the very definition of being human is going to hav
Um, Google doesn't own a satellite yet...they may have a lot of rights but I'm not speculating either way.
They do have some great software at mapping all the data the real imaging companies are collecting. This article is something completely different (tho related to) which is the act of 'photographing' a location so that you can move around the map using the photo. (FYI those copyrights at the bottom do mean something)
Agreed, I love how people think their priorities are correct and the rest of the planets are off base. The original Viking missions only spent about $40mil each if I remember.
BTW if it wasn't for 'collecting dust' we'd have no data.
Ah, well you forget that shortly therafter a fellow in Calgary was arrested and charged under this new improved law. Sorry the media hasn't been following it so I don't know what the status of this is, but I can imagine the penalties that could be handed out would be very substantial.
Contrary to the liberals in this thread, Stephen didn't 'sell out' he actually told Arnie that if the film industry would reduce it's spreading of misinformation of productions in Canada, he's review the bill in question. Since Stephen was already revamping many crimes as part of his 'tightening the laws against crime', this (as already stated) was not much of a 'selling out' to Arnie, as pandering to those interests.
The law still isn't any tougher, you are just more likely to get charged (increased manpower addressing this) and fined more (courts now have minimum penalties and mandates for trial).
...and it DID. How many managers had to pay additional fees to get their staff up to speed with 2007? Anyone who didn't lost 20% productivity and probably haven't recovered it.
I'm not against changing things, but the biggest load of crap we hear from ballmers gang is that TCO is the reason to buy MS, and this very example shows how out to lunch the ballmer gang really is. They'd rather skew the reality from their perspective. Just watching someone create a mail profile in Outlook can take an hour out of a workday, and that's a LOT of lost productivity, then they have to deal with the content filters, and learn how to print the emails. If something that used to take a minute now takes three minutes that's a 300% increase in labor-costs, exasperating that over a full work day, which may result in a improvement in performance would still double the time required. That's already 10x's too much to simply read your email.
No, your way off base. The FEEDBACK system is the problem, not the buyer/seller situation.
The feedback system is all about generating responses that really are meaningless. Back in the begininng feedback was given to show sellers how quickly buyers paid for items. Now that ebay own's paypal; and you're not considered a 'serious' seller UNLESS you accept paypal; payment times are trivial. Whats more important is 'do buyers pay?'. This does not make it to the feedback system.
The feedback does work ok for the seller, but the problem is that it works far too well. If your a power seller then you get all the benefit, if your a part time seller or a casual seller then it's meaningless since you cannot compete with the numbers.
Many so called retaliatory feedback attacks are not so one sided. Many buyers simply don't read the agreement, they don't bother to figure out what things are going to cost before bidding. Most 'auctions' that I belong to both the buyer and seller are tied to the process to eliminate abuse. There is no checks for 'buyers' on ebay short of the complaint process.
I think ebay is a horrible marketplace thanks to the feedback system. Besides buyers aren't always leaving 'honest' feedback either.
Well SMB is used quite extensively in linux and windows circles so your argument is pretty ignorant of the problem. Instead you chose to go off on a Anti-MS rant about file sharing. Whoopie.
When your head decides to reacquire air for your brain, you'll realize this affects linuxs guests just as easily as any others. The particular code has already been fixed except in the latest VW6 build, but the latest VW5 build is not affected, nor is ESX. The problem as well noted is in MB encoding practice and the methods used, not in 'file sharing', that just provided the framework to the exploit.
This is partly right, but it highlights the ignorance rampant about 'fair use'. If I 'cover' your song, then the song is now MINE at least from this perspective. Someone else could 'cover' the same song either from my 'cover' or from the original, does not matter, it's now the artist who covered it 'right'.
There is no 'payment' to anyone for 'covering' a song. But if you pass the 'cover' as an 'original' ok, now there's a problem.
Give me a break, what does a SPOOK know about ethics or morals? Nothing! The internet was meant to provide FREEDOM.
The problem is, SPOOK's don't understand freedom. Heck most ppl don't understand freedom. When freedom exists you have a HAVEN for criminal activity, but this is BETTER than living in a society where you're afraid to speak your mind. What people don't understand is that capitalist society is a criminal haven, so it would make more sense to remove capitalist practises to eliminate crime (Isn't this what the USSR and Yugoslavia were bragging about 20 year ago?) but how would this make the world a better place. It wouldn't.
So instead of RESTRICTING or ELIMINATING FREEDOM because some degenerates become criminals, DEAL with the judicial systems to make them more effective at dealing with criminals. Besides I'm not convinced that the judicial system is the fault here, I think it's more of international cooperation than anything else, and never in history has this been better or closer to that than today.
Most of the spam I receive is from drugs. The pharmaceuticals are directly to blame for this by turning a blind eye to 'mail order companies'. If they simply DID something to 'not sell' to these types of companies, there would be no spam since there would be no profit. Many big corporations have taken marketing out of their day to day operations and turned these over to contracts, simply so they can take the moral high ground when complaints arise, and still benefit from the rewards of those methods that generate those complaints. If someone held Phizer reponsible for all the viagra spam out there then something would be done. I used to think you had to be a recognized professional to sell drugs, but I see now that they are little different from the dealers selling narcotics on the street, mainly they have a legal agreement allowing them to sell, but they still use unethical practices to sell it, and do not care whom they sell to (they don't check your medical history to ensure your money is buying a drug that will help you rather than kill you).
For the record, crime and enforcement have NEVER been on equal footing, it's an arms race and one or the other always has the upper hand, but there is NO REASON to remove the freedoms we worked for thousands of years to attain just to arrest some spammer!
But if you watched Pirates of the Caribbean, you'd note that society feels justified to go to ANY LENGTHS to catch the bad guy. Sorry I'm not willing to give up my freedoms to make it easier for a SPOOK to catch a crook.
It is possible to lose your freedoms, but its impossible to eliminate crime.
"-Requires extra strength for keypresses, so unsuitable for typing more than a few minutes."
This is factually incorrect, it may actually reduce typing stress and allow you to type longer.
I think this is the relative point between "theft" and "unauthorized use". But how can you say it's theft, if a) nothing is actually stolen (there is no crime...) and b) the person would not have 'bought' the intangible in the first place, so 0/0 is still imaginary.
Most IP owners have keywords they look for, in some cases (due to frequency) some IP owners have been giving the ability to pull ads they deem infringing. Ebay will typically take a blind eye, but if you feel mistreated you certainly can appeal. However just because one time they caught on to the action and another time they missed it, doesn't give you any 'defense'.
Remember the rule of stolen goods; the person who's caught with the goods is the one who loses. Since the goods typically are confiscated and/or returned/auctioned, and you don't get your money back unless you can successfully sue against the entity you purchased the stolen goods from. Most cases this has to be done in a civil proceeding, but IANAL. Also remember that many auctions on eBay violate the terms and conditions of the site, most ppl just don't care about all the rules. In many cases eBay simply 'arbitrates' its decision and that's that. Don't like it, too bad it's there site. As we can see, some people do care about those rules and use them. I'm not agreeing with this decision of eBay's, but it's not an uncommon outcome either.
If you don't like this, then you need to tell eBay about it and then shop with your feet/mouse, don't visit eBay or eBay supporting stores/sites.
Remember, this is NOT the system, this is the COMMUNITY's perception of the process. And people are never biased or wrong ever...
The system isn't perfect but if people would remember that your innocent UNTIL tried and convicted, you'd be better off. Law-enforcement isn't a part of this, their job is to find all the reasons to bring charges against you and to provide evidence of said. Not to proceed that he's innocent. If they thought he was innocent, they wouldn't have charged him.
Now whether or not you think there is any abuse of process in this case is another question, but just reading the media feedback on this shows that like any other murder trial, the community has already made their minds up one way or the other instead of trying to look at this open minded and awaiting it's outcome.
Really this comment isn't insightful unless you think that everyone is out to get you and you can't trust anyone.
I know how to break into your house, most people know how to break into a house, it's really quite simple. You kick the door in, or break a window and crawl in, or you grab the key hiding under the door mat and open the door. I know how to pick locks, and anyone could learn with a set of picks and a lock in no time. Neither are difficult to come by.
What you offer is security through obscurity, which if you look at this REAL problem, you would realize is just this. Except this time instead of REAL hiding the details, or the AV firms hiding the details, the researcher is hiding the details, and probably won't have any issues giving the details to those who wish to pay for them.
I say who cares, REAL is a antique product that has never done anything good except create vulnerabilities for it's users. Nobody uses these formats these days as most folks are into flash video and mp4. These formats make much more sense.
So protect yourself against all security risks inherent in REAL, REMOVE IT FROM YOUR PC's.
Now I do concur with your comment about calling this guy a grey hat, since they have no ethical resolve to your 'community' perspective. Let me see, someone spends time researching something, gives it to CERT, they publish the details. REAL gets it and in typical fashion DOES NOT release the details UNTIL they get a patch out. History shows this could take months with them. You never get the exact nature of the details released regardless. However I can get the details from the researcher for buying the details directly from him.
I'm a full-disclosure advocate so this doesn't appeal to me, since I'd call this partial-disclosure or select-disclosure, but this isn't different from what many companies do. Many refuse to post any disclosure. This is wrong for all the normal full-disclosure reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
I too have noticed this but I couldn't get an 'official' reason explained to me. So if this potential was combined with the fact that the XBox is getting set for retooling due to removal of the HD drives (and the recalls due to heating problems) then these are a big reason behind why 2007 was such a crappy game year. If it wasn't for BioShock it would have been dismal. So far 2008 isn't shaping up much unless you're into Guitar Hero 3 or Rock Band...
Personally this all together just stuns me that anyone could accept ONE company screwing up an entire industry up because of it's incompetence. If it only affected them that would be fine, but it's really becoming detrimental. One reason I'm glad that I took the plunge to get a Wii and a PS3, as PC games become more 'windows' focused so shall my game collection move back to the console, and I can install linux on the PS3 if I wish, something that voids your warranty on the XBox.
I do believe the PC is the gaming champion choice, but the problems inherent in the 'OS' since you're stuck with one choice, is a real problem. I'm so happy I didn't get sucked into that DX10 money pit.
I'm sure arresting fair exhibitors (guilty or not...) will encourage more next year.
I guess Vegas just got more attractive after all....
I'd really like some reality to back up this claim?
I doubt I'm ever to see 15/15. Right now I can get 25/1. At that level anyone in the biz would consider your a 'commercial' client.
I think the GP is right on the money with this. I too bought my HD last December for $200 (went on sale) then in January I got $80 back, since the item was price protected. So it only cost me $120. I got 2 movies with it (compared to 0 with my BD) and 5 more a month and a half later due to a promotion. So 7 movies and a player all for $120 I couldn't buy those movies for that last December. Now, I'm looking for content and deciding between paying $30+ for BD or $10-20 for HD. Not much guessing here.
Oh, and the quality difference between BD and HD? None. It's all in the content and most are poor re-masters, so I'd say don't bother updating your DVD catalog since your HD/BD will upconvert most of your SD content fine enough (compared to the HD remasters). Some newer content is actually done in HD and will greatly benefit from the new format, but don't think that much of the current offering (especially movies done before HD filming was available) will greatly benefit your viewing pleasure to justify the expense of buying it again.
Well if you lose your flight, or can't get money from an ATM, or other such day to day activity stops, just think of all the good coming from these games.
Where can I get rose colored glasses?
I think y'all missing the point. Wikipedia succeeds too. Amazon succeeds too. What isn't news that seems to be the point here is that 'y'all need to think about the speaker and what motivates them' If you do that, then it's far easier to listen with some perspective. Obviously 1% handle the majority of the content, nobody's paying me to spend more!
No news here...move on.
Hmm I had a whitty gamer joke involving the use of 'pwned', but decided against it.
I guess this idea explains why there are so many 'save the president' games.
If you're going to have a transparent society, and you don't want to be powerless, you need to bloody participate. You need to break down the ultra-specialization that has become so commonplace in modern society, educate yourself about the various sectors that sustain your life and your society, and participate in each of them actively.
That's impossible. To require people do the impossible in order to make a system work ensures the system won't work.
Agreed. It is beyond impossible because it's likely that in 'working' a system like this you will develop another system quite like the one you replaced. However an active popluation really makes the government weaker since more people are behaving like independant syndicates or mobs. (see below).
The example given was of cops. Well, in a transparent society, you don't want cops, because everyone is a cop. If you see someone doing something, and you know they shouldn't be doing it, you rally the people around and take action personally.
It's extremely disturbing that you think the best form of law enforcement is the lynch mob.
I think this is a bit harse, but is certainly the reality. However we really are not that far away from it now, except most people think they are 'unempowered' and do nothing, as opposed to 'doing something'. The real problem is this. It's more likely for a person to ignore the problem than do something. Besides it's fine to say 'you take action' if you're 6 foot 220 pounds and in good shape and can handle yourself. If you're not and you faint at the sight of blood how would you deal with it? We may not like the 'fact that cops have to exist', but without it we could not trust ourselves. I certainly wouldn't want a return to the way's of the 17th century when if the village decided you were a witch you died. This is the way of the mob, and mobs are untrustworthy and unreliable except in one regard; to become a riot.
Another example, government. Government isn't supposed to "serve" the people, it is supposed to "be" the people.
It's supposed to be both. "By, Of, and For, The People" is the quote.
No, government is to 'serve' the people. What other purpose is there? You need a military? For what? to serve the people's needs and safety. You need government watchdogs, to serve the people to protect them against fraudsters and other obscure criminals. I forgot, the USA has turned it's government into a self-serving interest, you can fix that. Instead the government has fabricated it's enemies to turn the people against their own interests. Now they've convinced everyone that the 'rights' they have can be abused by enemies of the state and that should change. Why? Oh right the invisible enemies need to be stopped and only by treating people as the enemy can we weed them out. It's like the Salem witch hunt trials just grew some technology and changed the theme to account for the times.
People need MORE rights, not less. Don't let your hard earned rights be taken away by self-serving interests. Remind your Government why they exist.
The matters that government are concerned with should be the very first things that are made transparent, not the inside of your refrigerator.
That's quite true, but misses the point. Pretty much *every* aspect of the government should be immediately transparent, and there should be no part of the government that stays opaque longer than something like 50 years (although the argument for military secrets lasting at least as long as the thing they refer to is compelling, and I won't argue strongly one way or the other about that). But the contents of your refrigerator should only become transparent by your choice, and no one else's.
Privacy is one of the most fundamental things about being human. If privacy is to become null, the very definition of being human is going to hav
Um, Google doesn't own a satellite yet...they may have a lot of rights but I'm not speculating either way.
They do have some great software at mapping all the data the real imaging companies are collecting. This article is something completely different (tho related to) which is the act of 'photographing' a location so that you can move around the map using the photo. (FYI those copyrights at the bottom do mean something)
No kidding they removed this.
Agreed, I love how people think their priorities are correct and the rest of the planets are off base. The original Viking missions only spent about $40mil each if I remember.
BTW if it wasn't for 'collecting dust' we'd have no data.
Ah, well you forget that shortly therafter a fellow in Calgary was arrested and charged under this new improved law. Sorry the media hasn't been following it so I don't know what the status of this is, but I can imagine the penalties that could be handed out would be very substantial.
Contrary to the liberals in this thread, Stephen didn't 'sell out' he actually told Arnie that if the film industry would reduce it's spreading of misinformation of productions in Canada, he's review the bill in question. Since Stephen was already revamping many crimes as part of his 'tightening the laws against crime', this (as already stated) was not much of a 'selling out' to Arnie, as pandering to those interests.
The law still isn't any tougher, you are just more likely to get charged (increased manpower addressing this) and fined more (courts now have minimum penalties and mandates for trial).
...and it DID. How many managers had to pay additional fees to get their staff up to speed with 2007? Anyone who didn't lost 20% productivity and probably haven't recovered it.
I'm not against changing things, but the biggest load of crap we hear from ballmers gang is that TCO is the reason to buy MS, and this very example shows how out to lunch the ballmer gang really is. They'd rather skew the reality from their perspective. Just watching someone create a mail profile in Outlook can take an hour out of a workday, and that's a LOT of lost productivity, then they have to deal with the content filters, and learn how to print the emails. If something that used to take a minute now takes three minutes that's a 300% increase in labor-costs, exasperating that over a full work day, which may result in a improvement in performance would still double the time required. That's already 10x's too much to simply read your email.
No, your way off base. The FEEDBACK system is the problem, not the buyer/seller situation.
The feedback system is all about generating responses that really are meaningless. Back in the begininng feedback was given to show sellers how quickly buyers paid for items. Now that ebay own's paypal; and you're not considered a 'serious' seller UNLESS you accept paypal; payment times are trivial. Whats more important is 'do buyers pay?'. This does not make it to the feedback system.
The feedback does work ok for the seller, but the problem is that it works far too well. If your a power seller then you get all the benefit, if your a part time seller or a casual seller then it's meaningless since you cannot compete with the numbers.
Many so called retaliatory feedback attacks are not so one sided. Many buyers simply don't read the agreement, they don't bother to figure out what things are going to cost before bidding. Most 'auctions' that I belong to both the buyer and seller are tied to the process to eliminate abuse. There is no checks for 'buyers' on ebay short of the complaint process.
I think ebay is a horrible marketplace thanks to the feedback system. Besides buyers aren't always leaving 'honest' feedback either.
Well SMB is used quite extensively in linux and windows circles so your argument is pretty ignorant of the problem. Instead you chose to go off on a Anti-MS rant about file sharing. Whoopie.
When your head decides to reacquire air for your brain, you'll realize this affects linuxs guests just as easily as any others. The particular code has already been fixed except in the latest VW6 build, but the latest VW5 build is not affected, nor is ESX. The problem as well noted is in MB encoding practice and the methods used, not in 'file sharing', that just provided the framework to the exploit.
This is partly right, but it highlights the ignorance rampant about 'fair use'. If I 'cover' your song, then the song is now MINE at least from this perspective. Someone else could 'cover' the same song either from my 'cover' or from the original, does not matter, it's now the artist who covered it 'right'.
There is no 'payment' to anyone for 'covering' a song. But if you pass the 'cover' as an 'original' ok, now there's a problem.
Give me a break, what does a SPOOK know about ethics or morals? Nothing! The internet was meant to provide FREEDOM.
The problem is, SPOOK's don't understand freedom. Heck most ppl don't understand freedom. When freedom exists you have a HAVEN for criminal activity, but this is BETTER than living in a society where you're afraid to speak your mind. What people don't understand is that capitalist society is a criminal haven, so it would make more sense to remove capitalist practises to eliminate crime (Isn't this what the USSR and Yugoslavia were bragging about 20 year ago?) but how would this make the world a better place. It wouldn't.
So instead of RESTRICTING or ELIMINATING FREEDOM because some degenerates become criminals, DEAL with the judicial systems to make them more effective at dealing with criminals. Besides I'm not convinced that the judicial system is the fault here, I think it's more of international cooperation than anything else, and never in history has this been better or closer to that than today.
Most of the spam I receive is from drugs. The pharmaceuticals are directly to blame for this by turning a blind eye to 'mail order companies'. If they simply DID something to 'not sell' to these types of companies, there would be no spam since there would be no profit. Many big corporations have taken marketing out of their day to day operations and turned these over to contracts, simply so they can take the moral high ground when complaints arise, and still benefit from the rewards of those methods that generate those complaints. If someone held Phizer reponsible for all the viagra spam out there then something would be done. I used to think you had to be a recognized professional to sell drugs, but I see now that they are little different from the dealers selling narcotics on the street, mainly they have a legal agreement allowing them to sell, but they still use unethical practices to sell it, and do not care whom they sell to (they don't check your medical history to ensure your money is buying a drug that will help you rather than kill you).
For the record, crime and enforcement have NEVER been on equal footing, it's an arms race and one or the other always has the upper hand, but there is NO REASON to remove the freedoms we worked for thousands of years to attain just to arrest some spammer!
But if you watched Pirates of the Caribbean, you'd note that society feels justified to go to ANY LENGTHS to catch the bad guy. Sorry I'm not willing to give up my freedoms to make it easier for a SPOOK to catch a crook.
It is possible to lose your freedoms, but its impossible to eliminate crime.
So this is just FUD.
You lie.
Neither Vista or XP do so without 3rd party software.
"-Requires extra strength for keypresses, so unsuitable for typing more than a few minutes." This is factually incorrect, it may actually reduce typing stress and allow you to type longer.
I think this is the relative point between "theft" and "unauthorized use". But how can you say it's theft, if a) nothing is actually stolen (there is no crime...) and b) the person would not have 'bought' the intangible in the first place, so 0/0 is still imaginary.
Most IP owners have keywords they look for, in some cases (due to frequency) some IP owners have been giving the ability to pull ads they deem infringing. Ebay will typically take a blind eye, but if you feel mistreated you certainly can appeal. However just because one time they caught on to the action and another time they missed it, doesn't give you any 'defense'.
Remember the rule of stolen goods; the person who's caught with the goods is the one who loses. Since the goods typically are confiscated and/or returned/auctioned, and you don't get your money back unless you can successfully sue against the entity you purchased the stolen goods from. Most cases this has to be done in a civil proceeding, but IANAL. Also remember that many auctions on eBay violate the terms and conditions of the site, most ppl just don't care about all the rules. In many cases eBay simply 'arbitrates' its decision and that's that. Don't like it, too bad it's there site. As we can see, some people do care about those rules and use them. I'm not agreeing with this decision of eBay's, but it's not an uncommon outcome either.
If you don't like this, then you need to tell eBay about it and then shop with your feet/mouse, don't visit eBay or eBay supporting stores/sites.
Remember, this is NOT the system, this is the COMMUNITY's perception of the process. And people are never biased or wrong ever...
The system isn't perfect but if people would remember that your innocent UNTIL tried and convicted, you'd be better off. Law-enforcement isn't a part of this, their job is to find all the reasons to bring charges against you and to provide evidence of said. Not to proceed that he's innocent. If they thought he was innocent, they wouldn't have charged him.
Now whether or not you think there is any abuse of process in this case is another question, but just reading the media feedback on this shows that like any other murder trial, the community has already made their minds up one way or the other instead of trying to look at this open minded and awaiting it's outcome.
Sure, steal my comment...to add I don't think the guy who posted the question actually has a clue what a vulnerability is. To MS this is big.
Really this comment isn't insightful unless you think that everyone is out to get you and you can't trust anyone.
I know how to break into your house, most people know how to break into a house, it's really quite simple. You kick the door in, or break a window and crawl in, or you grab the key hiding under the door mat and open the door. I know how to pick locks, and anyone could learn with a set of picks and a lock in no time. Neither are difficult to come by.
What you offer is security through obscurity, which if you look at this REAL problem, you would realize is just this. Except this time instead of REAL hiding the details, or the AV firms hiding the details, the researcher is hiding the details, and probably won't have any issues giving the details to those who wish to pay for them.
I say who cares, REAL is a antique product that has never done anything good except create vulnerabilities for it's users. Nobody uses these formats these days as most folks are into flash video and mp4. These formats make much more sense.
So protect yourself against all security risks inherent in REAL, REMOVE IT FROM YOUR PC's.
Now I do concur with your comment about calling this guy a grey hat, since they have no ethical resolve to your 'community' perspective. Let me see, someone spends time researching something, gives it to CERT, they publish the details. REAL gets it and in typical fashion DOES NOT release the details UNTIL they get a patch out. History shows this could take months with them. You never get the exact nature of the details released regardless. However I can get the details from the researcher for buying the details directly from him.
I'm a full-disclosure advocate so this doesn't appeal to me, since I'd call this partial-disclosure or select-disclosure, but this isn't different from what many companies do. Many refuse to post any disclosure. This is wrong for all the normal full-disclosure reasons.
Why don't you go fuck off you little dickless wonder. And take your grammar with you nazi!
What do you bet? I got 500 bucks say's your wrong.