Now, the industry wants to hit the problem at its source -- Internet service providers.
Ha! I think they've got the wrong target. At first, they thought it was Napster and they blew it into a dozen different clones, each learning from the mistakes of the past. Then they thought it was the users and started poisoning their machines through the services. Now they think it's the ISP and they'll probably get slapped back from that. They also went after the technology companies, looking for harsh DRM, and have been rebuffed (the recent MS anti-copy CD thing, notwithstanding). What we all know, of course, is that it's the POWER COMPANY that is the real culprit. After all, they're the ones supplying the electricity that runs the computer that runs the ripper that feeds data to the compressor that creates the MP3 that causes all the grief. They just haven't gone far enough up the chain yet!
there is no cause to suspect that a purpose to evade the "limited Times" prescription prompted Congress to adopt the CTEA
Now, from a Lessig interview:
when Mary Bono introduced the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, she said we should perhaps consider -- because her lawyers told her perpetual terms would be illegal under the Constitution -- we should consider forever minus a day.
They accuse Microsoft of blocking the progress to move to an 'open standard' (MPEG 4), posing unfair competition and threatening consumer choice.
Most open standards cost nothing right? I mean, that's what I thought TCP/IP, XML, C/C++, and so forth were all about. So what's with calling something that requires a license fee to use an open standard?
If they were really open, at least in the sense that I have come to expect, then MS couldn't possibly undercut them.
Well, the user agent for Safari includes "Mozilla", "Netscape", and "like Gecko". None of this indicates anything to do with KHTML. I think that's my point...if they're using KHTML then their user agent string seems odd.
AFAICT, it is not added by the counter. For example, Konqueror is just "Konqueror Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3; Linux)". Then again, maybe it knows enough about Konqueror or they do some funny post-processing as you suggest.
Sure, they're giving back source improvements for things they're getting from the free software world, but how about giving something we've been asking for nicely for years...a native Linux QuickTime player and plugin? I don't really think most people will care that it's not free; I'm fairly hardcore about free software, but will admit right here for all to see that I'd use a non-free, Linux native QuickTime player/plugin from Apple.
Steering of the topic or not, thanks for the reply. I wonder how much the burden of PS2 programming will affect the uptake of the new system when it's launched, regardless of its ease-of-use...
...is if the PS3 will be easier to program than the PS2? My impression of the PSX history was that it did well because it was the 3dfx of consoles. That is, like Glide on PCs, the PSX development tools made tossing 3D games together fairly easy, relative to the Saturn and possibly even the N64. Naturally, those that wanted to squeeze the very most out of the system found the tricks (by getting "down to the metal", so to speak) that would pull off things that weren't necessarily possible through the standard dev tools. This satisfied a great number of developers, as they could get be as deep or as shallow with the graphics as they wanted.
Now, the PS2 comes out and everyone talks about how difficult it is to program for. Sure, we may be past that, but some devs definitely gave the impression of being turned off by Sony's new system and thought Sony had done a poor job the second time around in providing good dev tools. Naturally, the ability to get down and dirty with the hardware is still there, but perhaps those that didn't want to get too deep into the programming couldn't toss off games quite as easily as they had with the PSX. (Aside: Less shovelware might be a good thing for a console, come to think of it. But I digress...) I'd be interested to know if people still consider the PS2 to be a difficult system to work with.
Now, the PS3 is in the works and has this nebulous "cell" technology. If two processors were hard to work with in the PS2 (and Saturn and Jaguar) then how the hell can adding more be better, right? What I'd like to be hearing, if I were a game dev, is not that the system is going to be the most powerful thing to hit the industry but rather that it's powerful and easy to start programming for as soon as the dev kit arrives. If there is a high level system that allows you to just toss jobs as this group of cells and get them to do lots of dirty work for you without a lot of hand-holding, then that might very well be cool. But if every game programmer has to learn to corral a horde or CPUs into doing things in parallel, then it sounds like a losing prospect.
Ok, that's enough. Just wanted to get that out there.:^) Possibly off-topic, but this is a story about the PS3 tech...
I use GameSpot a lot and paid for a subscription to their "Complete" service. Another poster mentioned GameSpot, but didn't point out that IGN and GameSpot have a somewhat different model for subscriptions.
At IGN, you have to pay for the new stuff and eventually it ages into the free section. (Some stuff may always remain pay-only. I don't know.) At GameSpot, most everything is free for a limited time, but then ages into the pay-only archive.
Of the coverage I've read, I prefer GameSpot, and so chose to pay for that service.
Because I enjoy playing games on older systems and games that have been out for a while on newer systems (see my site), the pay-only archive at GameSpot is useful to me. They go back to the Saturn and PSX with their reviews, and these have made for some reasonably good reading and research of games to try out. Also, if I'm considering a game in Sony's cheapo Greatest Hits lineup, then the full review is probably in the pay-only archive.
The GameSpot model is friendly to the daily reader (free access, albeit with adverts) and the long-time reader (no adverts, old content) who doesn't mind paying. I'm not sure who likes IGN's model. It's worth noting that IGN's reviews are often posted to USENET by a subscriber when they're initially published online and only accessible to subscribers.
Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. Different models, and a distinction that I think is worth looking at, especially in the long term.
It's easy to see what they're trying. They're going to come up with a draconian, unworkable model that everyone hates. Then they back off to something that we (that being the technically savvy users) still find offensive but that the normal schmoe thinks is a good deal.
After the media companies spin it into Hollywood backing off because they're good Americans and want people to have the right to watch TV (just like it says in the Constitution) the average guy is going to say "Hey, this is a reasonable tradeoff to get The Sopranos in high definition goodness! I sure am glad they didn't stick with that first plan. It would have been awful! Sure, I can't record it, but that would be piracy!"
Time and again, the informed people screwed by the ignorant ones. Same story here.
Not that anyone gives a rip what a schmoe thinks, but I played a right decent number of games this year and wrote up a summary of what I thought were my games of the year. The catch is that I'm playing games not just for the PS2, but also for platforms that are no longer supported and games that have been out for years, but are new to me. So my games of the year included GTA3 and Vice City, but also Monster Rancher 2 for the PSX and Donkey Kong for the GameBoy and Necronomicon Pinball (import) for the Saturn.
I'd love to hear from gamers that keep similar websites about their gaming habits.
So we've got non-free software built on top of free software in order to serve up non-free software from a company that wishes to destroy free software.
I'm so confused. Can't they all just wear black hats or white hats so I know which ones are the bad guys and which are the good guys?
Five years of Windows 2000? Let's see, if Windows 2000 came out in 1999, then it's been out for 2000, 2001, 2002...that's only three years. So there must be some extrapolation going on here, even if we allow that some of these shops were using a beta version of Win2k a year ahead of release. Then there is the question of hardware costs, since Linux potentially needs less hardware to perform the same jobs. And finally, it'd be nice to know how the 104 shops were picked.
Insert standard Mark Twain "statistics" comment here.
After downloading the files I could not get any of them to play.... For some time this confused me, then I tried clicking on a link provided in an e-mail that was sent to me to confirm my order. Well, they did not tell me this on the website, but clicking that link authenticated me to listen to the tracks.... Whenever I'd try to burn a track, the Roxio software would die.... So if you give the music to anyone else, they (UMG) are supposed to be able to know it was you who violated their copyright.... So overall it was pretty frustrating making my first CD with this service
Holy cow!!! That's way too easy! At this rate, it sounds like they're going to have Kazaa and all the other P2P file sharing programs on the run in just a couple of months.
I guess that when we threw down the gauntlet and said "Ok, Music Companies, let's see some real innovation and get an easy to use, cheap, my-mom-could-use-it service for music" they went and did their homework. I bet my mom's already signed up, downloaded lots of tracks (on 56k), failed to burn copies, downloaded all the different players (again 56k), tried burning her music with them and failed, called support, copied the tracks to her other computer, failed to burn again, contacted support again, redownloaded the tracks again (56k, remember), and finally got them to burn so she could listen to them in her car.
Friends and I have been complaining about GameSpot's reviews recently (see here) but they still cover a lot of video game news and provide a lot of reading that at least has some facts in it, and occasionally good opinions. As a content provider, their value to me is in older stuff. I like going back and reading old reviews of games that are now on the used games bargain rack. To get to that stuff, however, you have to have a subscription. That's what I think is the interesting idea in GameSpot's model: you can have everything (mostly) that we publish for free as long as you come often to the site and read it within a week or two of the publish date. To read older stuff, you have to pony up. Thus, people who just want free news suffer the banner ads and GameSpot makes money. The people who want more (myself included) will pony up and as a bonus not ever worry about banner ads or being locked out of something.
During E3, their bandwidth was excellent. I got some huge movies during peak hours as fast as my netpipe could pull it. The reviews go back to the Saturn days, which fits my interests just fine. I do wish they had more GameBoy reviews and more detail in the older reviews in general.
Running a tiny little gaming site with a friend in my spare time, I can see why having a catalog of old content is valuable...I just have to look at the Google searches that lead people to my site. People stop in to see all kinds of stuff on my site, from months ago to yesterday. (Whether it's worth their visit, I have no idea.;^D) This is precisely the observation on which I think GameSpot is betting their farm: people who want an extensive library of content will pay for it, even if the content is dated somewhat.
Allow me to introduce you to my friend. His name's Bob, but many call him Smiley. Here's a digital photo I took of him: ;^D I append this digital photo to the end of all messages in which I'm using humour for effect. One look at Bob's face and you'll understand why. If you now reread my comment all the way to the end, the meaning should become clear.
"Showing people how to automatically format hard disks from a Web page isn't 'full disclosure,'" Smith said. "It is malicious code writing."
Now all we need is a way to embed an ISO image of a Linux system into the web page and use the same exploit to install an alternative operating system. Just think of the banner ads! "Click here to Install Linux!" and "Get That Windows Monkey Off Your Back! Hit the Monkey to Try!" and "Eliminate Windows Instabilities Forever. Click Now!". Then it won't be malicious. It'll be setting all those people FREE!;^D
77% of consumers believe they should be allowed to copy CD's for personal use in another device. 82% believe they should be allowed to make personal backup copies of CD's
Honestly, I've never met anyone that felt that they shouldn't be able to copy their music to another format. I realize I'm just a sheltered GNU/Linux geek and all that, but really...what did the other 23% or 18% (resp.) of people mean when they said they shouldn't copy music to other formats or make backups? Were they just ignorant that such things could be done? Were they really so afraid of some boogeyman of copyright enforcement that they think exists to track down and kill so-called pirates? Or do the RIAA and MPAA really account for that large of a chunk of our population?;^)
Has anyone on/. ever met someone that said "Truly, we should not copy CD music to MP3 players" or "I won't make a backup of a CD for my car because it's a crime"? Other than a member of the copyright cartels, that is.
Sony may not have much to do with development directly, but I'm willing to bet good money that if Sony offered the right incentives, development equipment, etc. that Rockstar could have done a lot more than they're doing with GTA:VC. I'm saying that it was in Sony's best interest to push the network adaptor this holiday season, while they still have an edge over the competitors, and that the best vehicle for doing that was a game like GTA:VC. It's in Rockstar's interest because they need to continue to innovate and ensure that people don't see VC as "just another GTA3". And if Rockstar doesn't think they have the inclination to do so, then Sony can exert some pressure to make it seem like it's in Rockstar's interests.
Since we've known about Vice City for months now, that probably means that Sony and Rockstar have known about it for over a year. With that kind of lead time, Sony could very well have had the killer app for their network adaptor and left the Microsoft and Nintendo online plans looking anemic by comparison.
Again, I know Sony doesn't have that much of a hand in the development of VC. What they do have is a network strategy that looks weak and an opportunity that's passed them by to make it much, much stronger.
Still!?! YOU STILL DON'T HAVE IT?! Jeez it's been out since next Tuesday and you're just sitting around talking about getting it instead of doing something about it. What a maroon!
Just from the bit posted here (too sleepy now to go read much more) the Abi folks aren't claiming that PayPal is ducking their responsibilities, right? Just that they complained to PayPal and hadn't gotten a positive response. For all we know, PayPal isn't obligated (by contract) to do anything if your account is hacked. After all, if the "hack" is "I left my password out in the open and someone took it", then that's not PayPal's fault, now is it? I'm sure they've spelled out the conditions, if any, under which they'd cover theft and it isn't clear (from what I've seen here) that PayPal owes the Abi folks a dime.
Suppose the weakness in the security here is that one of the Abi people used a weak password or left it out for someone else to see? Or that a vindictive former Abi team member decided to wreak havoc on his former colleagues? Suppose (against all hope) that it really isn't that PayPal has some latent insecurity in their system that was exploited. Then it's just tough cookies for the Abi people.
The Abi folks might be victims of a crime, but until someone makes clear that PayPal has broken a contractual agreement with the Abi people, I can't fault them.
Boycotting Paypal because of these reasons, and the fact that their system is notoriously insecure, and encouraging others to do the same.
One has to wonder if the Abi folks knew about PayPal's failings ahead of time. If so, then had they looked into other ways of obtaining donations? That is to say, if the Abi folks are saying "Look, we knew that PayPal sucked and was insecure, but we used them anyway, so please write them to tell them how much they suck" then it's a little harder to take their complaint seriously.
I've used PayPal for auction stuff. I was fortunate enough to get payments mostly through PayPal from a large USENET auction I held a while ago. But once that big chuck of money was in there (we're talking less than $1k) I had them cut me a check and send it to me so I could put the money somewhere I trusted...a real bank! Even now, I never keep more in the account than I could bear to lose, should something go wrong.
That the Abi folks weren't taking better care of their money hardly seems like PayPal's fault. Many people know PayPal has been difficult to deal with...it's no big secret and it's even been talked about on/. lots of times. Many people are wary of the fact that PayPal wants all of the benefits of being a bank without the responsibility...again it's no big secret. And the ability to use PayPal to get contributions while still holding onto your money (by asking them to cut you a check every month, say) isn't hard to do.
I don't want to defend PayPal too much here. They're clearly sleazy sometimes (if not all the time). But that doesn't absolve the Abi folks from being more careful with their benefactors' cash.
...is Craig Pell's Indenture. Copies can be found around the 'net, but I found one here on RetroRemakes which has similar recreations for other games. Indenture is different from Adventure in that it includes an extended game mode that involves tokens and has some secrets that I'm not sure I've ever seen explained outright, although several people have claimed to have figured it out. Interview with Pell is here.
IIRC, Indenture was written in assembly and it requires a DOS-like system to run. Not sure if it'll work correctly on newer Microsoft systems, like WinXP, but you might get lucky.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, from a Lessig interview:
Most open standards cost nothing right? I mean, that's what I thought TCP/IP, XML, C/C++, and so forth were all about. So what's with calling something that requires a license fee to use an open standard?
If they were really open, at least in the sense that I have come to expect, then MS couldn't possibly undercut them.
Well, the user agent for Safari includes "Mozilla", "Netscape", and "like Gecko". None of this indicates anything to do with KHTML. I think that's my point...if they're using KHTML then their user agent string seems odd.
AFAICT, it is not added by the counter. For example, Konqueror is just "Konqueror Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3; Linux)". Then again, maybe it knows enough about Konqueror or they do some funny post-processing as you suggest.
Sure, they're giving back source improvements for things they're getting from the free software world, but how about giving something we've been asking for nicely for years...a native Linux QuickTime player and plugin? I don't really think most people will care that it's not free; I'm fairly hardcore about free software, but will admit right here for all to see that I'd use a non-free, Linux native QuickTime player/plugin from Apple.
Yes, I know about CrossOver. Thanks anyway.
Looks strange to me. Is this really the KDE HTML rendering engine or is it Gecko? It certainly identifies itself as Netscape 5...
Steering of the topic or not, thanks for the reply. I wonder how much the burden of PS2 programming will affect the uptake of the new system when it's launched, regardless of its ease-of-use...
...is if the PS3 will be easier to program than the PS2? My impression of the PSX history was that it did well because it was the 3dfx of consoles. That is, like Glide on PCs, the PSX development tools made tossing 3D games together fairly easy, relative to the Saturn and possibly even the N64. Naturally, those that wanted to squeeze the very most out of the system found the tricks (by getting "down to the metal", so to speak) that would pull off things that weren't necessarily possible through the standard dev tools. This satisfied a great number of developers, as they could get be as deep or as shallow with the graphics as they wanted.
:^) Possibly off-topic, but this is a story about the PS3 tech...
Now, the PS2 comes out and everyone talks about how difficult it is to program for. Sure, we may be past that, but some devs definitely gave the impression of being turned off by Sony's new system and thought Sony had done a poor job the second time around in providing good dev tools. Naturally, the ability to get down and dirty with the hardware is still there, but perhaps those that didn't want to get too deep into the programming couldn't toss off games quite as easily as they had with the PSX. (Aside: Less shovelware might be a good thing for a console, come to think of it. But I digress...) I'd be interested to know if people still consider the PS2 to be a difficult system to work with.
Now, the PS3 is in the works and has this nebulous "cell" technology. If two processors were hard to work with in the PS2 (and Saturn and Jaguar) then how the hell can adding more be better, right? What I'd like to be hearing, if I were a game dev, is not that the system is going to be the most powerful thing to hit the industry but rather that it's powerful and easy to start programming for as soon as the dev kit arrives. If there is a high level system that allows you to just toss jobs as this group of cells and get them to do lots of dirty work for you without a lot of hand-holding, then that might very well be cool. But if every game programmer has to learn to corral a horde or CPUs into doing things in parallel, then it sounds like a losing prospect.
Ok, that's enough. Just wanted to get that out there.
I use GameSpot a lot and paid for a subscription to their "Complete" service. Another poster mentioned GameSpot, but didn't point out that IGN and GameSpot have a somewhat different model for subscriptions.
At IGN, you have to pay for the new stuff and eventually it ages into the free section. (Some stuff may always remain pay-only. I don't know.) At GameSpot, most everything is free for a limited time, but then ages into the pay-only archive.
Of the coverage I've read, I prefer GameSpot, and so chose to pay for that service.
Because I enjoy playing games on older systems and games that have been out for a while on newer systems (see my site), the pay-only archive at GameSpot is useful to me. They go back to the Saturn and PSX with their reviews, and these have made for some reasonably good reading and research of games to try out. Also, if I'm considering a game in Sony's cheapo Greatest Hits lineup, then the full review is probably in the pay-only archive.
The GameSpot model is friendly to the daily reader (free access, albeit with adverts) and the long-time reader (no adverts, old content) who doesn't mind paying. I'm not sure who likes IGN's model. It's worth noting that IGN's reviews are often posted to USENET by a subscriber when they're initially published online and only accessible to subscribers.
Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. Different models, and a distinction that I think is worth looking at, especially in the long term.
Ergo, it will work.
Sorry, feeling a little cynical this morning.
It's easy to see what they're trying. They're going to come up with a draconian, unworkable model that everyone hates. Then they back off to something that we (that being the technically savvy users) still find offensive but that the normal schmoe thinks is a good deal.
After the media companies spin it into Hollywood backing off because they're good Americans and want people to have the right to watch TV (just like it says in the Constitution) the average guy is going to say "Hey, this is a reasonable tradeoff to get The Sopranos in high definition goodness! I sure am glad they didn't stick with that first plan. It would have been awful! Sure, I can't record it, but that would be piracy!"
Time and again, the informed people screwed by the ignorant ones. Same story here.
Not that anyone gives a rip what a schmoe thinks, but I played a right decent number of games this year and wrote up a summary of what I thought were my games of the year. The catch is that I'm playing games not just for the PS2, but also for platforms that are no longer supported and games that have been out for years, but are new to me. So my games of the year included GTA3 and Vice City, but also Monster Rancher 2 for the PSX and Donkey Kong for the GameBoy and Necronomicon Pinball (import) for the Saturn.
I'd love to hear from gamers that keep similar websites about their gaming habits.
So we've got non-free software built on top of free software in order to serve up non-free software from a company that wishes to destroy free software.
I'm so confused. Can't they all just wear black hats or white hats so I know which ones are the bad guys and which are the good guys?
Five years of Windows 2000? Let's see, if Windows 2000 came out in 1999, then it's been out for 2000, 2001, 2002...that's only three years. So there must be some extrapolation going on here, even if we allow that some of these shops were using a beta version of Win2k a year ahead of release. Then there is the question of hardware costs, since Linux potentially needs less hardware to perform the same jobs. And finally, it'd be nice to know how the 104 shops were picked.
Insert standard Mark Twain "statistics" comment here.
Holy cow!!! That's way too easy! At this rate, it sounds like they're going to have Kazaa and all the other P2P file sharing programs on the run in just a couple of months.
I guess that when we threw down the gauntlet and said "Ok, Music Companies, let's see some real innovation and get an easy to use, cheap, my-mom-could-use-it service for music" they went and did their homework. I bet my mom's already signed up, downloaded lots of tracks (on 56k), failed to burn copies, downloaded all the different players (again 56k), tried burning her music with them and failed, called support, copied the tracks to her other computer, failed to burn again, contacted support again, redownloaded the tracks again (56k, remember), and finally got them to burn so she could listen to them in her car.
It's that easy. Wow.
Friends and I have been complaining about GameSpot's reviews recently (see here) but they still cover a lot of video game news and provide a lot of reading that at least has some facts in it, and occasionally good opinions. As a content provider, their value to me is in older stuff. I like going back and reading old reviews of games that are now on the used games bargain rack. To get to that stuff, however, you have to have a subscription. That's what I think is the interesting idea in GameSpot's model: you can have everything (mostly) that we publish for free as long as you come often to the site and read it within a week or two of the publish date. To read older stuff, you have to pony up. Thus, people who just want free news suffer the banner ads and GameSpot makes money. The people who want more (myself included) will pony up and as a bonus not ever worry about banner ads or being locked out of something.
;^D) This is precisely the observation on which I think GameSpot is betting their farm: people who want an extensive library of content will pay for it, even if the content is dated somewhat.
During E3, their bandwidth was excellent. I got some huge movies during peak hours as fast as my netpipe could pull it. The reviews go back to the Saturn days, which fits my interests just fine. I do wish they had more GameBoy reviews and more detail in the older reviews in general.
Running a tiny little gaming site with a friend in my spare time, I can see why having a catalog of old content is valuable...I just have to look at the Google searches that lead people to my site. People stop in to see all kinds of stuff on my site, from months ago to yesterday. (Whether it's worth their visit, I have no idea.
Allow me to introduce you to my friend. His name's Bob, but many call him Smiley. Here's a digital photo I took of him:
;^D
I append this digital photo to the end of all messages in which I'm using humour for effect. One look at Bob's face and you'll understand why. If you now reread my comment all the way to the end, the meaning should become clear.
Hope that helps.
Now all we need is a way to embed an ISO image of a Linux system into the web page and use the same exploit to install an alternative operating system. Just think of the banner ads! "Click here to Install Linux!" and "Get That Windows Monkey Off Your Back! Hit the Monkey to Try!" and "Eliminate Windows Instabilities Forever. Click Now!". Then it won't be malicious. It'll be setting all those people FREE!
Honestly, I've never met anyone that felt that they shouldn't be able to copy their music to another format. I realize I'm just a sheltered GNU/Linux geek and all that, but really...what did the other 23% or 18% (resp.) of people mean when they said they shouldn't copy music to other formats or make backups? Were they just ignorant that such things could be done? Were they really so afraid of some boogeyman of copyright enforcement that they think exists to track down and kill so-called pirates? Or do the RIAA and MPAA really account for that large of a chunk of our population?
Has anyone on
Sony may not have much to do with development directly, but I'm willing to bet good money that if Sony offered the right incentives, development equipment, etc. that Rockstar could have done a lot more than they're doing with GTA:VC. I'm saying that it was in Sony's best interest to push the network adaptor this holiday season, while they still have an edge over the competitors, and that the best vehicle for doing that was a game like GTA:VC. It's in Rockstar's interest because they need to continue to innovate and ensure that people don't see VC as "just another GTA3". And if Rockstar doesn't think they have the inclination to do so, then Sony can exert some pressure to make it seem like it's in Rockstar's interests.
Since we've known about Vice City for months now, that probably means that Sony and Rockstar have known about it for over a year. With that kind of lead time, Sony could very well have had the killer app for their network adaptor and left the Microsoft and Nintendo online plans looking anemic by comparison.
Again, I know Sony doesn't have that much of a hand in the development of VC. What they do have is a network strategy that looks weak and an opportunity that's passed them by to make it much, much stronger.
Still!?! YOU STILL DON'T HAVE IT?! Jeez it's been out since next Tuesday and you're just sitting around talking about getting it instead of doing something about it. What a maroon!
Meanwhile, my GTA:VC complaints and I don't have it either!
Just from the bit posted here (too sleepy now to go read much more) the Abi folks aren't claiming that PayPal is ducking their responsibilities, right? Just that they complained to PayPal and hadn't gotten a positive response. For all we know, PayPal isn't obligated (by contract) to do anything if your account is hacked. After all, if the "hack" is "I left my password out in the open and someone took it", then that's not PayPal's fault, now is it? I'm sure they've spelled out the conditions, if any, under which they'd cover theft and it isn't clear (from what I've seen here) that PayPal owes the Abi folks a dime.
Suppose the weakness in the security here is that one of the Abi people used a weak password or left it out for someone else to see? Or that a vindictive former Abi team member decided to wreak havoc on his former colleagues? Suppose (against all hope) that it really isn't that PayPal has some latent insecurity in their system that was exploited. Then it's just tough cookies for the Abi people.
The Abi folks might be victims of a crime, but until someone makes clear that PayPal has broken a contractual agreement with the Abi people, I can't fault them.
One has to wonder if the Abi folks knew about PayPal's failings ahead of time. If so, then had they looked into other ways of obtaining donations? That is to say, if the Abi folks are saying "Look, we knew that PayPal sucked and was insecure, but we used them anyway, so please write them to tell them how much they suck" then it's a little harder to take their complaint seriously.
I've used PayPal for auction stuff. I was fortunate enough to get payments mostly through PayPal from a large USENET auction I held a while ago. But once that big chuck of money was in there (we're talking less than $1k) I had them cut me a check and send it to me so I could put the money somewhere I trusted...a real bank! Even now, I never keep more in the account than I could bear to lose, should something go wrong.
That the Abi folks weren't taking better care of their money hardly seems like PayPal's fault. Many people know PayPal has been difficult to deal with...it's no big secret and it's even been talked about on
I don't want to defend PayPal too much here. They're clearly sleazy sometimes (if not all the time). But that doesn't absolve the Abi folks from being more careful with their benefactors' cash.
...is Craig Pell's Indenture. Copies can be found around the 'net, but I found one here on RetroRemakes which has similar recreations for other games. Indenture is different from Adventure in that it includes an extended game mode that involves tokens and has some secrets that I'm not sure I've ever seen explained outright, although several people have claimed to have figured it out. Interview with Pell is here.
IIRC, Indenture was written in assembly and it requires a DOS-like system to run. Not sure if it'll work correctly on newer Microsoft systems, like WinXP, but you might get lucky.