There are almost NO details in the article. For all we know, the "mod" takes data from the leaked PS2 version and imports it into the PSP version. In fact, were I Rockstar, this is what I would say in my own defense. (Remember, they tried to "lie" by obfuscation the first time.)
Somebody stole the railing off a bridge that way (!). They set up traffic cones, acted like construction workers, and took down the whole railing across the entire length of the bridge (only on one side, I think). And they actually closed a lane of traffic! A hundred people easy must have seen them. Nobody called it in. Everybody assumed they were supposed to be there. The city (I tried to look it up, failed) said they'd have to close the whole bridge, since it was an unacceptable risk of loss of life.
Fortunately, Uwe Boll won't have anything to do with this picture. He gets things ruin--made by taking advantage of very significant tax breaks Germany offers to German filmmakers making films in Germany. A lot of places do this -- New Zealand offers something similarly tempting, which is why they're shooting there.
Since they're already interested in making the picture in New Zealand, there's no reason to involve Boll. Thank heavens.
In fact, one of the opinions said that it is an unconstitutional delegation of power for a state to give private bodies powers like this. Making ESRB ratings binding gives power to decide what is, and isn't, legal to a private body that isn't accountable to anybody. I mean, if the ESRB mislabels something and refuses to change it, nobody can sue them. Not the maker, not consumers, nobody. A state body can be sued, but the ESRB is just issuing an opinion. Supposing the ESRB decided they had a grudge, so anything with Rockstar's name on it was AO, no matter what? Should that be made legally binding?
Apparently in Thompsonland. Suing Best Buy for not enforcing something that courts have said *cannot* be made mandatory seems to me to be going nowhere fast. He's using tactics similar to the 65 million dollar pants lawsuit, too -- claiming that because Best Buy said they enforce the ratings, they can be sued into oblivion for not being perfect. (The pants man claimed a "satisfaction guaranteed" sign meant they had to give him anything he wanted. Literally.)
It doesn't. The one for keeps is in Florida right now (that was the grey prawn incident case). What happens is, when you want to represent a client in a state you're not licensed in, you apply for permission to the court, on the basis you're licensed in [state x]. That permission was revoked. In effect, he got booted off that one specific case. It makes it unlikely he would ever get that permission for another Alabama case, but he remains a lawyer in the state his license is actually in (Floriday) -- but probably not for long.
He actually tried to withdraw (from the Alabama case); the judge refused to accept the withdrawal, then revoked his temporary license!
Dear Sir/Madam,
Your name comes two me through mutual acquaintance. I am one son of Nigerian helicopter manufacturer. Due to various circumstances I have acquired plans for helicopter from late father. Can make killing off plans. Am needing only $20,000 (US TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLAR) for seed funds.
Not only that. If you listen to MS talk, RMS goes way back with the pirates. If the ninjas got too close, he'd just release the parrots. And (because this is according to MS), as everyone MS knows knows, anyone who gets hit by a parrot becomes one! It's a virus, just like the zombies!
1) Denied anyone could see the hole cards
2) Has debug accounts that can access production data specifically including these hole cards
3) Found no evidence of cheating while possessing logs indicating a debug account had watched one of the disputed hands.
That alone is reason to have nothing to do with them. Reason to shut them down, if anyone who will has jurisdiction. As many others have already said, you have to trust the house to run an honest game. Absolute Poker has just demonstrated that either they lied (they're not honest and don't want to be) or they are incompetent (they want to be honest, but are utterly incapable of it).
As I see it, there should be two types of "superuser" accounts:
1) Security accounts. These are ONLY used by the people who police production for cheaters. As such, they see everything and nobody knows they're there. You need these people, they can't do their job unless they see everything, no way around it.
2) Debugging accounts. For use by programmers, testers, etc. who somehow need to see production data. (Probably the 'what do you mean, it's not working in production? It works here!' bug variety.) When one of these accounts joins a table, an alert pops up that lets everyone involved know the hand is being x-rayed by an employee. Better would be give anyone who had already bet the option to void the hand midplay, but this would introduce a way to cheat (have such a debug hand show up when you're about to lose -- stupidly trackable, but still possible).
But for God's sake. Whenever anyone complains about cheating, THE FIRST place to look is whether any privileged account watched any of the hands in question. They're the obvious prime suspects. That this apparently did not occur to Absolute Poker is absolutely damning.
I can do one worse. There are direct applications of this vulnerability to cover up criminal activity. For starters, there is the signal-to-noise ratio problem: DOS the system with an avalanche of bogus reports, then commit [crime] on the theory that there are so many invalid reports, the odds are real good there won't be any response to your legitimate report.
If you have something specific in mind, you can use this scenario:
1. WHILE (police_responded EQUALS true) DO: Trick the 911 system into saying "home invasion in progress at [location]".
2. ???
3. Profit!
So it plays out something like this.
1. You trick the 911 system like this dumbass, and report [crime] at [location]. 2. The police respond to an apparently legitimate call (false positive). 3. You trick the 911 system again, to give exactly the same reading as before. (Better would be slightly different calls at the same address, but let's keep it simple.) 4. The police suspect something, but respond anyway (false positive).
This proceeds, until eventually the police begin ignoring the false alarms (true negative). Now you have a location and a crime that you are absolutely sure the police are going to ignore. If this doesn't strike you as sinister, you have too much faith in humanity. So eventually, you arrive at:
5. You commit [crime] at [location]. 6. The police ignore the call, because they've been getting nonsense calls all week at this place (false negative).
It is a matter of fairness. The law must be equally applied. Since the First Amendment is implicated, a law of this nature will only be upheld if it is the least intrustive and most reasonable way of accomplishing the goal. The part that proves problematic is "most reasonable": laws have been held unconstitutional because they were underinclusive -- that is, the regulations had gaping holes, only regulating SOME activity that the state claimed to want to regulate.
Under this proposed law, you can get jailtime for M-rated games, but not CDs, or movies, or books, or inappropriate internet content. But nobody wants to talk about making possessing certain books illegal, or certain movies. Is that fair? To date every federal judge to weigh in has said no, it isn't.
If you go to Amazon and look it up, you will find them selling Mein Kampf (Adolf Hitler's rambling manifesto) and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a forgery, debunked dozens of times, detailing the 'Jewish conspiracy' controlling the world). They even have a note saying they believe such things should be freely available not because they agree with the content, but precisely because it is controvertial.
And we know what harm has been done by the ideas contained in those books. We've seen the bodies. Despite the fact the Protocols have been exposed as a fraud time and time again, anti semitic types swear by it. Polls have shown huge swathes of the public in the middle east honestly *believe* they're real.
When was the last time a video game inspired some assh0le to chain a guy to the back of a pickup truck and drag him down a gravel road until he stopped moving? To hang nooses by a tree when they felt some of their fellow classmates were getting 'uppity' in Jena? Yet people are permitted to continue spewing such bile, because either there is such a thing as a thought crime -- or there isn't.
All anyone has been able to prove about games is they can excite someone over the short term. Well, so does getting cut off in traffic. Should we ban cars to people under 21?
(As a side note, is it possible to Godwin the thread when it's actually *relevant*?)
Jury nullification turns courts into a popularity contest. I maintain the term is somewhat of a misnomer. They aren't nullifying a particular law (refusing to enforce it), they're nullifying the rule of law altogether.
Jury nullification is essentially the idea that the jury can ignore the entire proceeding, and just do whatever it wants. That's what the term *actually means*; it doesn't refer to only what you are saying (that it is a check to refuse to convict only). The jury is perfectly able to "nullify" the defense as well. All 'jury nullification' means is that while there are all sorts of complicated rules about what a jury is supposed to do... they're impossible to enforce (can't punish a juror, can't inquire how they decided, can't do much at all), so juries can do as they damn well please -- and nobody will even know.
I'm honestly surprised. Didn't anyone ever have to read To Kill a Mockingbird in school? If that isn't a textbook example of jury nullification, then the term doesn't mean anything. The idea that a jury can just toss everything out -- bill of rights, checks and balances, a fair trial, all of it -- and do whatever it wants?
But even if it were restricted only to refusing to convict... There's a firestorm going on down South (I'd look it up, but it's late) where some white students were offended by some black students, so they hung up nooses. Now as I call it, that's a death threat. What happened to these white students? The principal 'jury nullified' the rule against making threats, calling it a "prank" and reducing the school board-recommended expulsion to a few days' suspension.
Does THAT seem like a good idea? How about juries who convict black people for even minor infractions, but steadfastly refuse to convict anyone white for crimes committed against blacks? Or jews? Mexicans? Do I need to go on?
Personally, I thought the whole idea of a justice system was justice, and a kangaroo court is no court at all, whether the kangaroos are in the judge's seat or in the jury box.
Al Qaeda was convinced, after our disastrous operations in Somalia, that after 9/11 we would turn tail and hide. Essentially they thought we were weak, and that we would cave at the first sight of American blood. They were, by and large, wrong in this.
Which is why, as much as I loathe Bush and all his policies, we cannot afford to fail in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
Memory card ports are hardware. Since the PS3 has a hard drive as standard equipment, the memory card ports' only real use is to let people use old PS1/2 game saves. They are essentially a required component for backwards compatibility only.
So the new model got rid of them. They're a superfluous cost.
Besides, it lets them engage in price discrimination. They have to have enough differences in the product to make it a real choice, otherwise everyone will go for the cheaper model, and there's only so many features that are optional available to be cut.
Only if you... well, you know. Is that an audio jack in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
I mean, seriously -- just because there's a hole there doesn't mean it's a good idea.
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There are almost NO details in the article. For all we know, the "mod" takes data from the leaked PS2 version and imports it into the PSP version. In fact, were I Rockstar, this is what I would say in my own defense. (Remember, they tried to "lie" by obfuscation the first time.)
Somebody stole the railing off a bridge that way (!). They set up traffic cones, acted like construction workers, and took down the whole railing across the entire length of the bridge (only on one side, I think). And they actually closed a lane of traffic! A hundred people easy must have seen them. Nobody called it in. Everybody assumed they were supposed to be there. The city (I tried to look it up, failed) said they'd have to close the whole bridge, since it was an unacceptable risk of loss of life.
Fortunately, Uwe Boll won't have anything to do with this picture. He gets things ruin--made by taking advantage of very significant tax breaks Germany offers to German filmmakers making films in Germany. A lot of places do this -- New Zealand offers something similarly tempting, which is why they're shooting there.
Since they're already interested in making the picture in New Zealand, there's no reason to involve Boll. Thank heavens.
This is an ex-production! ... I swear, the production is just resting for awhile, really it's --
In fact, one of the opinions said that it is an unconstitutional delegation of power for a state to give private bodies powers like this. Making ESRB ratings binding gives power to decide what is, and isn't, legal to a private body that isn't accountable to anybody. I mean, if the ESRB mislabels something and refuses to change it, nobody can sue them. Not the maker, not consumers, nobody. A state body can be sued, but the ESRB is just issuing an opinion. Supposing the ESRB decided they had a grudge, so anything with Rockstar's name on it was AO, no matter what? Should that be made legally binding?
Apparently in Thompsonland. Suing Best Buy for not enforcing something that courts have said *cannot* be made mandatory seems to me to be going nowhere fast. He's using tactics similar to the 65 million dollar pants lawsuit, too -- claiming that because Best Buy said they enforce the ratings, they can be sued into oblivion for not being perfect. (The pants man claimed a "satisfaction guaranteed" sign meant they had to give him anything he wanted. Literally.)
It doesn't. The one for keeps is in Florida right now (that was the grey prawn incident case). What happens is, when you want to represent a client in a state you're not licensed in, you apply for permission to the court, on the basis you're licensed in [state x]. That permission was revoked. In effect, he got booted off that one specific case. It makes it unlikely he would ever get that permission for another Alabama case, but he remains a lawyer in the state his license is actually in (Floriday) -- but probably not for long. He actually tried to withdraw (from the Alabama case); the judge refused to accept the withdrawal, then revoked his temporary license!
Wouldn't they just be giving themselves the prize?
Dear Sir/Madam, Your name comes two me through mutual acquaintance. I am one son of Nigerian helicopter manufacturer. Due to various circumstances I have acquired plans for helicopter from late father. Can make killing off plans. Am needing only $20,000 (US TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLAR) for seed funds.
Not only that. If you listen to MS talk, RMS goes way back with the pirates. If the ninjas got too close, he'd just release the parrots. And (because this is according to MS), as everyone MS knows knows, anyone who gets hit by a parrot becomes one! It's a virus, just like the zombies!
So ... According to this, the company in question
1) Denied anyone could see the hole cards
2) Has debug accounts that can access production data specifically including these hole cards
3) Found no evidence of cheating while possessing logs indicating a debug account had watched one of the disputed hands.
That alone is reason to have nothing to do with them. Reason to shut them down, if anyone who will has jurisdiction. As many others have already said, you have to trust the house to run an honest game. Absolute Poker has just demonstrated that either they lied (they're not honest and don't want to be) or they are incompetent (they want to be honest, but are utterly incapable of it).
As I see it, there should be two types of "superuser" accounts:
1) Security accounts. These are ONLY used by the people who police production for cheaters. As such, they see everything and nobody knows they're there. You need these people, they can't do their job unless they see everything, no way around it.
2) Debugging accounts. For use by programmers, testers, etc. who somehow need to see production data. (Probably the 'what do you mean, it's not working in production? It works here!' bug variety.) When one of these accounts joins a table, an alert pops up that lets everyone involved know the hand is being x-rayed by an employee. Better would be give anyone who had already bet the option to void the hand midplay, but this would introduce a way to cheat (have such a debug hand show up when you're about to lose -- stupidly trackable, but still possible).
But for God's sake. Whenever anyone complains about cheating, THE FIRST place to look is whether any privileged account watched any of the hands in question. They're the obvious prime suspects. That this apparently did not occur to Absolute Poker is absolutely damning.
Is this, like, a different Roland than the one everyone complains about to me? Because the summary seems to be a load of fearmongering to me.
I can do one worse. There are direct applications of this vulnerability to cover up criminal activity. For starters, there is the signal-to-noise ratio problem: DOS the system with an avalanche of bogus reports, then commit [crime] on the theory that there are so many invalid reports, the odds are real good there won't be any response to your legitimate report.
If you have something specific in mind, you can use this scenario:
1. WHILE (police_responded EQUALS true) DO:
Trick the 911 system into saying "home invasion in progress at [location]".
2. ???
3. Profit!
So it plays out something like this.
1. You trick the 911 system like this dumbass, and report [crime] at [location].
2. The police respond to an apparently legitimate call (false positive).
3. You trick the 911 system again, to give exactly the same reading as before. (Better would be slightly different calls at the same address, but let's keep it simple.)
4. The police suspect something, but respond anyway (false positive).
This proceeds, until eventually the police begin ignoring the false alarms (true negative). Now you have a location and a crime that you are absolutely sure the police are going to ignore. If this doesn't strike you as sinister, you have too much faith in humanity. So eventually, you arrive at:
5. You commit [crime] at [location].
6. The police ignore the call, because they've been getting nonsense calls all week at this place (false negative).
So then the JavaBeans are ... eeeeeeeeew
I'm dead, you insensitive clod!
It is a matter of fairness. The law must be equally applied. Since the First Amendment is implicated, a law of this nature will only be upheld if it is the least intrustive and most reasonable way of accomplishing the goal. The part that proves problematic is "most reasonable": laws have been held unconstitutional because they were underinclusive -- that is, the regulations had gaping holes, only regulating SOME activity that the state claimed to want to regulate.
Under this proposed law, you can get jailtime for M-rated games, but not CDs, or movies, or books, or inappropriate internet content. But nobody wants to talk about making possessing certain books illegal, or certain movies. Is that fair? To date every federal judge to weigh in has said no, it isn't.
If you go to Amazon and look it up, you will find them selling Mein Kampf (Adolf Hitler's rambling manifesto) and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a forgery, debunked dozens of times, detailing the 'Jewish conspiracy' controlling the world). They even have a note saying they believe such things should be freely available not because they agree with the content, but precisely because it is controvertial.
And we know what harm has been done by the ideas contained in those books. We've seen the bodies. Despite the fact the Protocols have been exposed as a fraud time and time again, anti semitic types swear by it. Polls have shown huge swathes of the public in the middle east honestly *believe* they're real.
When was the last time a video game inspired some assh0le to chain a guy to the back of a pickup truck and drag him down a gravel road until he stopped moving? To hang nooses by a tree when they felt some of their fellow classmates were getting 'uppity' in Jena? Yet people are permitted to continue spewing such bile, because either there is such a thing as a thought crime -- or there isn't.
All anyone has been able to prove about games is they can excite someone over the short term. Well, so does getting cut off in traffic. Should we ban cars to people under 21?
(As a side note, is it possible to Godwin the thread when it's actually *relevant*?)
Jury nullification turns courts into a popularity contest. I maintain the term is somewhat of a misnomer. They aren't nullifying a particular law (refusing to enforce it), they're nullifying the rule of law altogether.
... they're impossible to enforce (can't punish a juror, can't inquire how they decided, can't do much at all), so juries can do as they damn well please -- and nobody will even know.
... There's a firestorm going on down South (I'd look it up, but it's late) where some white students were offended by some black students, so they hung up nooses. Now as I call it, that's a death threat. What happened to these white students? The principal 'jury nullified' the rule against making threats, calling it a "prank" and reducing the school board-recommended expulsion to a few days' suspension.
Jury nullification is essentially the idea that the jury can ignore the entire proceeding, and just do whatever it wants. That's what the term *actually means*; it doesn't refer to only what you are saying (that it is a check to refuse to convict only). The jury is perfectly able to "nullify" the defense as well. All 'jury nullification' means is that while there are all sorts of complicated rules about what a jury is supposed to do
I'm honestly surprised. Didn't anyone ever have to read To Kill a Mockingbird in school? If that isn't a textbook example of jury nullification, then the term doesn't mean anything. The idea that a jury can just toss everything out -- bill of rights, checks and balances, a fair trial, all of it -- and do whatever it wants?
But even if it were restricted only to refusing to convict
Does THAT seem like a good idea? How about juries who convict black people for even minor infractions, but steadfastly refuse to convict anyone white for crimes committed against blacks? Or jews? Mexicans? Do I need to go on?
Personally, I thought the whole idea of a justice system was justice, and a kangaroo court is no court at all, whether the kangaroos are in the judge's seat or in the jury box.
Yes.
Al Qaeda was convinced, after our disastrous operations in Somalia, that after 9/11 we would turn tail and hide. Essentially they thought we were weak, and that we would cave at the first sight of American blood. They were, by and large, wrong in this. Which is why, as much as I loathe Bush and all his policies, we cannot afford to fail in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
Memory card ports are hardware. Since the PS3 has a hard drive as standard equipment, the memory card ports' only real use is to let people use old PS1/2 game saves. They are essentially a required component for backwards compatibility only.
So the new model got rid of them. They're a superfluous cost.
Besides, it lets them engage in price discrimination. They have to have enough differences in the product to make it a real choice, otherwise everyone will go for the cheaper model, and there's only so many features that are optional available to be cut.
I don't know about you, but I do most of my learning at three AM in the evening.
Only if you ... well, you know. Is that an audio jack in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
I mean, seriously -- just because there's a hole there doesn't mean it's a good idea.