I wonder if they were smart enough to use something like Truecrypt? That would be funny, put a false volume with loads of goatse images on there, hehehe. "But Mr judge, that IS the password *I think*"
You hit the nail on the head. It is now common business practice that if we don't always grow grow grow then for some reason it is horrible. If your company is making 50+ million net profit, you do not need to require +20% next quarter! Sustain what you have and refine practices and efficiency, fuck I hate lobbyists. I think they are one of the single most responsible entities for the current corruption of our governmental system, but I see no solutions that would be met with any kind of seriousness due to the lobbyist foothold with congress.
Your statement is not the same across all points. Your sentence should be either A) "I object to gambling for the same reason I object to alcohol." or B) "I object to allowing people who are addicted to gambling to gamble for the same reason I object to handing a beer to an alcoholic." You switch up the subject in the middle there, and make it sound like since some people are addicted, that nobody should have the priveledge. I think you mean the latter, but just because its legal and can be taxed doesn't make it any more or less accessible. If someone wants to kill themselves, gamble away their life, or drink till they are dead, there is nothing you can do to stop them. Also, I believe almost all radio and most other forms of gambling advertisement require them to add in a gambling addiction hotline. There are larger implications for this as well, lots of people don't realize that due to the nature of online gambling in the states, a lot of the time online gambling sites are used to launder all kinds of money, be it identity theft or drug or gang money, and putting them here in the states could at least let us regulate them to a certain extent. My two cents at least, but I've only been to vegas enough times it bores me now =)
From Skidrows latest crackfix:
Nukers Information:
We noticed our release was nuked a few places for using stolen
public available values.vb codes.
Let’s point out that, even if our dll has the very same
values, then anyone can get these values and the values are
still required to emulate the ubiorbit api calls. The data
values are transfered via IPC, as we didn’t use any kind of
server emulation at all and therefore can’t be compared to
the public server emulator out there.
It’s sad that there are people out there, who only focus on
make you look bad, when you actually have accomplished
something of a larger scale.
If the scene is based on finding holes in everything, then you
can start nuking Command and Conquer 4 Tiberian Twilight for
using exact same method as the public server emulation
release, SecuROM cracks with emulated vm calls, Steam function
emulation and RELOADED’s new Solidshield method.
We didn’t mention RELOADED, to make them look bad, but to give
people insight in, that alternative routes needs to be found
to get around the protections these days.
Things are not getting easier these days, as publishers like
EA and Ubisoft, have already begun to release games which
require you to be online when you play.
You can bet more will jump on that gameplay only online wagon.
Firms like Capcom, Square Enix Eidos, THQ, SEGA and Activision
has already shown interest in doing so.
Maybe the same people who bitch that we used the values.vb
codes from the public server release, should at least prove
their accusations. Keep in mind, the values are required for
the game to function properly and the values are always the
same, because they never change.
What reason will you use, when we pre the next Ubisoft game?
So buying a game and wanting to play it on a laptop without internet makes someone a "spoiled brat"? The point is that DRM is not meeting the customer needs and wants. And because of that I refuse to pay to get fucked in the ass, so yes, I'm going to fucking pirate a game, a game that deserves to get played, but that the company couldn't get their head out of their ass enough to make it worth paying for. Developers need to start standing up for their rights more, and not letting some penny pusher tell them "if we include DRM sales will increase X-fold!" It sucks, because the game itself is pretty damn awesome, but nobody wants to pay for draconian DRM. And for the people who did buy it, they deserve to be able to play the game when and where they please.
Totally agreed. One of the first things I do when I do a new install (for me personally) is to make sure in FF that either I have cookies turned off or to have FF ask me everytime. its just like noscript, where yes, it can get annoying for a while, but then once your whitelist is fairly complete it is very worth it. Or you can just always start FF in a private browsing session too.
Just as I saw GFP and was so aghast that someone who more than likely is a/. regular could even be so naive, I started figuring out how to refute him/her. Thanks for doing such a good job for me. I, being former military, and having plenty of contacts in DIA, State Department, Interpol and other intel agencies have been the guy crying wolf to my family and friends about facebook. Who really doesn't think that something so popular (usage of facebook surpassed usage of google recently) is going to get jumped on by at least a couple of agencies? It is quite sad that even people on/. fall for this. I recently had a similar argument with a friend. She asked, "I don't do anything bad over the phone, and though I might have personal conversations there really isn't anything you could find out about me that would be worth it.", I replied, assuming I have the ability to tap all your phone calls for a month, I probably have the following information, where and who you call, and how often, would probably also tell me the places you do business and where you are at certain times of the day. What kind of travel and what airlines you use. Called your bank? I know you last 4 and your credit card number, and its security code and expiration date. Starting to get the picture? I call it the google effect, where one little piece of information seems innocuous, so people keep throwing it out there, but it all adds up into one giant pile of knowledge about you, and anybody who values privacy should run, not walk, away from at least two services, google and facebook.
Seriously, just because the stereotype of usenet is "dark alley hackerspace" anyoen who has ever even semi-used it knows thats not true. A friend of mine uses usenet combined with RSS feeds to get all kinds of information (IT Stuff) that you just don't get anywhere else. I bet the GP has never even used usenet. and yes, we should be upset that ISP's drop a service without at least a gesture of reconciliation, like a coupon for $7 off giga or something. As a matter of fact, I have a strange feeling giga dealt with cox in some closed doors meetings and said," look, you drop costs by dropping usenet, and we get customers, win win, now go screw your users over" and cox, being your classic greedy corporation jumped.
Since the majority of us have very little control over this, for various reasons, if this is going to pass or not is mostly up to those negotiating it, not our public uproar. That being said, I'm at the point where I think that the future of the net will be a very divisive one, where most of the sheeple are herded around to only a few pastures, but the hackers among us will find increasingly clever and more numerous ways to farther decentralize, encrypt, and generally help privacy. I'm not for ACTA, but I'm all about new technology that can end up protecting netizens. Cecked out wikipedia, anything that has listed as concerns the following should be extremely closely looked at, Secrecy of negotiations, threats to freedom, legal scope, practicality, privacy.
From the Wikipedia article on art. Art is, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others." Video games seem to fall squarely in that category. Also, I have played many games that seemed very very artful to me, often indie games, often some games are inspiration for movies. Did yall know that the latest Alice in Wonderland movie's "environment" was loosely based on the video game American McGee's Alice (which I loved, and was disjointed that the movie wasn't as macabre)? They even bought the copyright to it I believe. Some artists such as Clive Barker work very interactively in game development. These are just a few of the many examples, so in this case, Mr. Ebert, though often he can have good insights, is quite wrong on this matter.
The problem is that yes, they are committing fraud, but since they are in Russia he has effectively nothing that he can do with regards to it. His only option is to find an alternative way to take control back, like I said, the best option being to somehow get the domain back. If they were doing this from the US, it would be much more simple.
Check out Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution. It is often overturned in court, and isn't always effective, but taking back control of the domain in whatever way possible is more than likely the only way you will fully recover from this. Otherwise you are simply on a damage mitigation mission.
I bet half of the congressmen on the IOC have been bought bribed or payed for in some other way that prevents them from actually doing anything useful. If a real whistle-blower actually brought something bad to them, they still probably roast him at the stake. Security through obscurity is not. Also, [citation needed].
For anyone truly interested in the behind the scene workings and higher level motivations for companies to do these sorts of things I highly encourage reading John Perkins second book "The Secret History of the American Empire", and maybe even his first book "Economic Hit Men". It really does a good job explaining this and how often even in places that are technically following the laws, they often use so many legal loopholes that it still amounts to slave labor, doing things like subtracting uniform costs or even everyday business costs from the laborers paychecks. To put it mildly, many of our beloved US companies (and other major allies) are raping and pillaging third world countries in every legal way they can figure out.
Anyone who uses the word piracy (as in IP) in the same sentence as terrorism, murder, or tragedy should be kicked off the interwebz. Oh crap, guess I have to go now, noooo{#`%${%&`+'${`%&NO CARRIER")
You are correct, but they key here is that EMAIL is not effective for this purpose. Things such as group IM, whiteboards, and Google Wave are very good at this. My new company uses (I know its nasty) Yahoo Messenger (obviously I just use pidgin to tie in) but it really does up productivity when you can have a quick IM (which if you are out of the office gets forwarded to your phone) or a conference chat or call. I'm currently having the lawyers take a look at using google products (wave, gtalk etc) and its privacy implications. Email is the modern equivalent of snail mail, and has its uses, but not in this situation.
If you don't consider getting some important then you really need to reduce masturbation frequency. Try going a month or two, and then tell me getting laid isn't important.
They key is in the press release. When they talk about how many users reuse password across systems. A large database with passwords and emails will have (yes i'm making it up) probably at least 25% of them using the same password for their email, and then once you have access to email, often that is the key to the kingdom so to speak.
I would have to agree with you that they definitely have a bias here, and really showed it with the short video, and they should have released just a completely unedited version. That being said, I think they do a good job, but as most people know they are having a hard time financially. It seems to me they wanted to use this as a stepping stone for media attention so they could get more of the funding they need. Not saying its right, but that seems to be their logic, the bias is not so much to affect public view (though it does) but to help gain them donations. I also commend you for suspending judgment, something done far too rarely these days, as neither do I judge them, but I can with an educated guess say that there needs to be a third party investigation into the matter. Previously wikileaks has release material with almost no explanation, this is the exception rather than the rule, so please don't dismiss them too quickly, as I find they provide an important service in a modern society.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if they were smart enough to use something like Truecrypt? That would be funny, put a false volume with loads of goatse images on there, hehehe. "But Mr judge, that IS the password *I think*"
You hit the nail on the head. It is now common business practice that if we don't always grow grow grow then for some reason it is horrible. If your company is making 50+ million net profit, you do not need to require +20% next quarter! Sustain what you have and refine practices and efficiency, fuck I hate lobbyists. I think they are one of the single most responsible entities for the current corruption of our governmental system, but I see no solutions that would be met with any kind of seriousness due to the lobbyist foothold with congress.
I've been posting regularly for quite a while now, and haven't gotten mod points in over a friggin month, WTF. Mod this man up.
Your statement is not the same across all points. Your sentence should be either A) "I object to gambling for the same reason I object to alcohol." or B) "I object to allowing people who are addicted to gambling to gamble for the same reason I object to handing a beer to an alcoholic." You switch up the subject in the middle there, and make it sound like since some people are addicted, that nobody should have the priveledge. I think you mean the latter, but just because its legal and can be taxed doesn't make it any more or less accessible. If someone wants to kill themselves, gamble away their life, or drink till they are dead, there is nothing you can do to stop them. Also, I believe almost all radio and most other forms of gambling advertisement require them to add in a gambling addiction hotline. There are larger implications for this as well, lots of people don't realize that due to the nature of online gambling in the states, a lot of the time online gambling sites are used to launder all kinds of money, be it identity theft or drug or gang money, and putting them here in the states could at least let us regulate them to a certain extent. My two cents at least, but I've only been to vegas enough times it bores me now =)
The scene world is very high-schoolish like that.
From Skidrows latest crackfix: Nukers Information: We noticed our release was nuked a few places for using stolen public available values.vb codes. Let’s point out that, even if our dll has the very same values, then anyone can get these values and the values are still required to emulate the ubiorbit api calls. The data values are transfered via IPC, as we didn’t use any kind of server emulation at all and therefore can’t be compared to the public server emulator out there. It’s sad that there are people out there, who only focus on make you look bad, when you actually have accomplished something of a larger scale. If the scene is based on finding holes in everything, then you can start nuking Command and Conquer 4 Tiberian Twilight for using exact same method as the public server emulation release, SecuROM cracks with emulated vm calls, Steam function emulation and RELOADED’s new Solidshield method. We didn’t mention RELOADED, to make them look bad, but to give people insight in, that alternative routes needs to be found to get around the protections these days. Things are not getting easier these days, as publishers like EA and Ubisoft, have already begun to release games which require you to be online when you play. You can bet more will jump on that gameplay only online wagon. Firms like Capcom, Square Enix Eidos, THQ, SEGA and Activision has already shown interest in doing so. Maybe the same people who bitch that we used the values.vb codes from the public server release, should at least prove their accusations. Keep in mind, the values are required for the game to function properly and the values are always the same, because they never change. What reason will you use, when we pre the next Ubisoft game?
So buying a game and wanting to play it on a laptop without internet makes someone a "spoiled brat"? The point is that DRM is not meeting the customer needs and wants. And because of that I refuse to pay to get fucked in the ass, so yes, I'm going to fucking pirate a game, a game that deserves to get played, but that the company couldn't get their head out of their ass enough to make it worth paying for. Developers need to start standing up for their rights more, and not letting some penny pusher tell them "if we include DRM sales will increase X-fold!" It sucks, because the game itself is pretty damn awesome, but nobody wants to pay for draconian DRM. And for the people who did buy it, they deserve to be able to play the game when and where they please.
Totally agreed. One of the first things I do when I do a new install (for me personally) is to make sure in FF that either I have cookies turned off or to have FF ask me everytime. its just like noscript, where yes, it can get annoying for a while, but then once your whitelist is fairly complete it is very worth it. Or you can just always start FF in a private browsing session too.
Ok after reviewing your links, your claims seem to be a bit over the top, but the idea behind your post still stands.
Just as I saw GFP and was so aghast that someone who more than likely is a /. regular could even be so naive, I started figuring out how to refute him/her. Thanks for doing such a good job for me. I, being former military, and having plenty of contacts in DIA, State Department, Interpol and other intel agencies have been the guy crying wolf to my family and friends about facebook. Who really doesn't think that something so popular (usage of facebook surpassed usage of google recently) is going to get jumped on by at least a couple of agencies? It is quite sad that even people on /. fall for this. I recently had a similar argument with a friend. She asked, "I don't do anything bad over the phone, and though I might have personal conversations there really isn't anything you could find out about me that would be worth it.", I replied, assuming I have the ability to tap all your phone calls for a month, I probably have the following information, where and who you call, and how often, would probably also tell me the places you do business and where you are at certain times of the day. What kind of travel and what airlines you use. Called your bank? I know you last 4 and your credit card number, and its security code and expiration date. Starting to get the picture? I call it the google effect, where one little piece of information seems innocuous, so people keep throwing it out there, but it all adds up into one giant pile of knowledge about you, and anybody who values privacy should run, not walk, away from at least two services, google and facebook.
Preferably the second option.
Cognitive Dissonance: A powerful thing.
Seriously, just because the stereotype of usenet is "dark alley hackerspace" anyoen who has ever even semi-used it knows thats not true. A friend of mine uses usenet combined with RSS feeds to get all kinds of information (IT Stuff) that you just don't get anywhere else. I bet the GP has never even used usenet. and yes, we should be upset that ISP's drop a service without at least a gesture of reconciliation, like a coupon for $7 off giga or something. As a matter of fact, I have a strange feeling giga dealt with cox in some closed doors meetings and said," look, you drop costs by dropping usenet, and we get customers, win win, now go screw your users over" and cox, being your classic greedy corporation jumped.
Since the majority of us have very little control over this, for various reasons, if this is going to pass or not is mostly up to those negotiating it, not our public uproar. That being said, I'm at the point where I think that the future of the net will be a very divisive one, where most of the sheeple are herded around to only a few pastures, but the hackers among us will find increasingly clever and more numerous ways to farther decentralize, encrypt, and generally help privacy. I'm not for ACTA, but I'm all about new technology that can end up protecting netizens. Cecked out wikipedia, anything that has listed as concerns the following should be extremely closely looked at, Secrecy of negotiations, threats to freedom, legal scope, practicality, privacy.
From the Wikipedia article on art. Art is, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others." Video games seem to fall squarely in that category. Also, I have played many games that seemed very very artful to me, often indie games, often some games are inspiration for movies. Did yall know that the latest Alice in Wonderland movie's "environment" was loosely based on the video game American McGee's Alice (which I loved, and was disjointed that the movie wasn't as macabre)? They even bought the copyright to it I believe. Some artists such as Clive Barker work very interactively in game development. These are just a few of the many examples, so in this case, Mr. Ebert, though often he can have good insights, is quite wrong on this matter.
The problem is that yes, they are committing fraud, but since they are in Russia he has effectively nothing that he can do with regards to it. His only option is to find an alternative way to take control back, like I said, the best option being to somehow get the domain back. If they were doing this from the US, it would be much more simple.
Check out Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution. It is often overturned in court, and isn't always effective, but taking back control of the domain in whatever way possible is more than likely the only way you will fully recover from this. Otherwise you are simply on a damage mitigation mission.
I bet half of the congressmen on the IOC have been bought bribed or payed for in some other way that prevents them from actually doing anything useful. If a real whistle-blower actually brought something bad to them, they still probably roast him at the stake. Security through obscurity is not. Also, [citation needed].
For anyone truly interested in the behind the scene workings and higher level motivations for companies to do these sorts of things I highly encourage reading John Perkins second book "The Secret History of the American Empire", and maybe even his first book "Economic Hit Men". It really does a good job explaining this and how often even in places that are technically following the laws, they often use so many legal loopholes that it still amounts to slave labor, doing things like subtracting uniform costs or even everyday business costs from the laborers paychecks. To put it mildly, many of our beloved US companies (and other major allies) are raping and pillaging third world countries in every legal way they can figure out.
Well I played the devil and won a golden fiddle and got to keep mine so who's better now =P
Anyone who uses the word piracy (as in IP) in the same sentence as terrorism, murder, or tragedy should be kicked off the interwebz. Oh crap, guess I have to go now, noooo{#`%${%&`+'${`%&NO CARRIER")
You are correct, but they key here is that EMAIL is not effective for this purpose. Things such as group IM, whiteboards, and Google Wave are very good at this. My new company uses (I know its nasty) Yahoo Messenger (obviously I just use pidgin to tie in) but it really does up productivity when you can have a quick IM (which if you are out of the office gets forwarded to your phone) or a conference chat or call. I'm currently having the lawyers take a look at using google products (wave, gtalk etc) and its privacy implications. Email is the modern equivalent of snail mail, and has its uses, but not in this situation.
If you don't consider getting some important then you really need to reduce masturbation frequency. Try going a month or two, and then tell me getting laid isn't important.
They key is in the press release. When they talk about how many users reuse password across systems. A large database with passwords and emails will have (yes i'm making it up) probably at least 25% of them using the same password for their email, and then once you have access to email, often that is the key to the kingdom so to speak.
I would have to agree with you that they definitely have a bias here, and really showed it with the short video, and they should have released just a completely unedited version. That being said, I think they do a good job, but as most people know they are having a hard time financially. It seems to me they wanted to use this as a stepping stone for media attention so they could get more of the funding they need. Not saying its right, but that seems to be their logic, the bias is not so much to affect public view (though it does) but to help gain them donations. I also commend you for suspending judgment, something done far too rarely these days, as neither do I judge them, but I can with an educated guess say that there needs to be a third party investigation into the matter. Previously wikileaks has release material with almost no explanation, this is the exception rather than the rule, so please don't dismiss them too quickly, as I find they provide an important service in a modern society.