Why is Blizzard trying to shut down servers that emulate Battle.net?
Servers that emulate Battle.net facilitate software piracy of Blizzard products by circumventing Blizzard's authentication code. Blizzard products are intellectual property, and we are well within our legal rights to protect our products from software piracy.
We, at Blizzard couldn't figure out how to keep people from copying our software, so we decided to do authentication in the server, and hope no one figures out how to write their own server.
How do CD keys help reduce piracy?
Blizzard uses two main methods to combat piracy: disc-based copy protection and CD keys. As part of the login process, Battle.net authenticates the user's CD key and prevents people from logging in with the same key or an invalid key.
We realize that all attempts to combat piracy are futile. We put these schemes in place more to frustrate legitimate users than to stop determined people from copying our software.
Why doesn't Blizzard provide facilities that enable these emulators to authenticate CD keys through Battle.net?
In order for us to keep our proprietary CD-key algorithms secure, we cannot allow outside servers to query for the validity of CD keys.
We believe that keeping our CD-key algorithms secret makes our software look more secure.
What about software that hasn't been released yet? Wouldn't it be better to have as many people testing the beta version of Warcraft III as possible, even if they are playing on non-Battle.net servers?
The primary purposes of the Warcraft III Beta are to get play-balance feedback and to test our Battle.net servers. Our servers aren't tested if people are playing the Beta on rogue servers. Additionally, the Warcraft III Beta is not intended to be a product demo; when testing ends, we need the ability to terminate the Beta's functionality. Rogue servers eliminate our ability to expire beta versions of our products.
This is just the beginning. We need to be able to, on a whim, terminate your access to a game you rightfully bought. We are testing this scheme under the guise of a "time limited beta test". If we let others run servers, they could play the game they paid for whenever they want!
What about the hobbyists who are not pirating your software but just want to use these servers as an alternative to Battle.net?
Unfortunately, software pirates have spoiled this situation for hobbyists. We are constantly working to improve Battle.net, and we sincerely hope that one day, no one will see any reason to seek alternatives to Battle.net for playing Blizzard games.
We don't understand why someone else would want to use an alternative to Battle.net. Our software is close to perfect, and who cares about those strange Linux-using customers?
Your games sell millions of copies. Why do you care if a few people pirate your software?
The sales success of a product should not exclude it from laws intended to protect intellectual property. Software piracy needs to be combated at all levels, and at Blizzard we intend to do our part to fight illegal distribution of copyrighted media.
Business as usual... "War on Piracy..." News at eleven...
It is about having a -standardized- set of APIs that people can latch on to.
One API to bind them all...?
One of Linux's strengths is that there is always more than one way to do something. What if you (as a developer) don't like the way DirectX does something? Tough luck--wait for the next version.
Having only one way to do something is not an advantage, if that way sucks.
There is no difference between streaming and downloading. You're moving bits from one computer to another across a wire. It doesn't matter whether you watch the content AS it's downloading or AFTER it's done.
I'm not sure whether or not this is a troll. If so it was a damn good one!
If you honestly believe human beings aren't "struggling for existence" I invite you to crawl out of your easy chair and visit any third-world country out there for a month. Then let's see you come back and spout off that nonsense.
If you have enough money, you can cover the campus with wireless access. This would be good for schools that haven't already wired every dorm and every classroom with CAT5.
It's an OS bug if you think that the OS should be bright enough not to make AGP-touched memory cacheable (it wasn't intended to be).
I'm voting for option 3), myself.
I thought one of the main benefits of AGP was the ability to remap a bunch of non-contiguous physical blocks into one address space, so the entire bunch could be marked as cachable (for instance when DMA'ing a bunch of vertices across the bus).
One of the new restrictions will be that minors not accompanied by a parent or legal guardian may only stay at the cafes until 8 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays. Fridays and Saturdays they can stay unaccompanied until 10 p.m., city spokeswoman Kathy Moore said.
That solves it! So what do you think these youngsters are going to go do after they get booted out at 8/10 p.m.? I assure you, they won't be going home for bed-time. This just gives the kids a few extra hours to get even more bored--just think of all the stabbings they could accomplish with all this new free time.
Good to see government still knows how to protect the children.
that leaves TiVo and ReplayTV as the main standing competitors
Slap a MPEG2 encoder and a TV tuner onto the Xbox and call it Xbox-2, and they're right back in the market, with the bonus that the box also plays video games.
Meaningful conversations on ICQ/IM??
on
Browsing Alone
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I guess if you count as meaningful:
[MAnGeEK] A/S/L???
[HotBabe] What?????
[MAnGeEK] Uh hi.
[HotBabe] Hi.
[MAnGeEK] A/S/L???
[HotBabe] Huh?
[MAnGeEK] What's up?
[HotBabe] Nothin who r u?
[MAnGeEK] I'm MAnGeEK how old r u?
[HotBabe] 15
[MAnGeEK] U sound cute
[HotBabe] thx
[MAnGeEK] u like nsync?
[HotBabe] yah they are sooooooo hot
[MAnGeEK] cool
[HotBabe] coooooooooooool
[MAnGeEK] hold on
[HotBabe] what??????
MAnGeEK has signed off.
Ah yes... The Internet has surely brought about a nightly fountain of interesting conversation....
If this purchase goes through, you better stick to the distribution you used before Linux became 'fashionable'--unless you want to be forced to install AOL Instant Messenger everytime you run rpm.
Should Aunt Tillie Build Her Own Kernels?
Should Aunt Tillie Install Her Own OS?
Should Aunt Tillie Install Her Own Applications?
Should Aunt Tillie Run Her Own Applications?
Should Aunt Tillie Produce Her Own Documents?
Should Aunt Tillie Think Her Own Thoughts?
Find some small part of the kernel (like a serial port driver or something) and start fooling with it. Disect it and see how it works, maybe fix a bug or two.
If you're a Windows kernel guy wanting to break into the Linux kernel, thats even easier. Get a job doing a Windows driver for some device, then write a Linux driver for it in your spare time. That's what I did.
Exactly. The qualities you need now and in the future are different than what you needed before. Where "hard work" and "consistancy" were once needed, motivation and flexibility are now more important.
The people who will get ahead are those not satisfied with doing the same thing every day of their lives. The ability to travel to a new job or learn a new skill will be important. Those who hold themselves back for the sake of things like security and comfort may find themselves missing out in the long run.
It's not really much of a change when you think about it. Risk-takers and self-starters have always tended to end up higher up in the food chain.
It better check for exact duplicates only, down to the variable names. Many undergraduate CS assignments are programs so basic that there are really only a few ways to implement them. It would suck to be a student who from scratch used the same algorithm as another student, and have them both flagged as cheaters.
Also, again I don't know the situation in the states, but from the moment a patent has been filed - note: not granted - it is open to the public to examine. In fact a popular science programme on television here (Tomorrow's World) used to (may still) have a section called "Patent Pending" where they showcased interesting applications.
That's an excellent idea. How about a game show that allows contestants to win a prize if they can find prior art and invalidate a patent that has been applied for?
I'm having trouble following your statement, although I'll give you a break since English may be a second language for you.
From what I gather, your point is, GPL'ed code needs to be cloned and re-released under a BSD-style license in order to be used in non-GPL projects, so why not just release under BSD-style license in the first place?
Well, the argument is that there is a problem where public-funded code is taken proprietary and used in a way that doesn't benefit the people who foot the bill. BSD-style licenses do not prevent this.
Perhaps what's needed is a dual licence. Code is released under the GPL and BSD licenses, and you end up with one branch that is guaranteed free forever (the GPL'ed branch) and another branch that can be intermixed with proprietary code. That way, the fruits of a public-funded project are available to everyone, but those who want to take it proprietary may also do so.
Along that route, why clog up everyone's email servers with MP3's, when you can just upload it to a FTP server you and your friend have common access to?
Besides, lots of email systems are already set up to filter out large attachments.
After all, when transferring files, it only seems logical to use the File Transfer Protocol.
I stopped trusting THG after reading a glowing review of an nVIDIA video card blowing away the competition, while the page itself had a big ol nVIDIA advertisement at the top.
Sure, nVIDIA's hardware truly does rock, but how do we know that the only thing paid for was the little banner ad?
Then again, many, many print magazines pull the exact same shenanigans...
Re:society for the preservation of geek genetics
on
I Want My MTV... PC?
·
· Score: 2
It's movie awards, while a comedy show, has really challanged the Oscars by giving awards to movies that the majority actually like.
The problem with that is, what the majority likes is usually crap. The idea of the Oscars is to leave popularity out and award movies based on actual merit. Sure, popularity often creeps in and rears its ugly head, but for the most part, awards go to (sometimes overlooked) quality movies.
I laugh at "award shows" that let the drooling masses vote, because the high-grossing films usually win. What's the point? The box office has already proven that XYZ movie was popular--why do we need an award show to nail the point in?
Secondly, the post napster world means that people won't buy albums anymore, and will eliminate the pressure for artists to put out albums full of worthless studio time and one or two hits. every song will be given the quality time it needs, and maybe even "albums" will begin to disappear as artists release singles and then eventually collections, giving every song it's fair shake.
Albums may not entirely go away, but we may see some bands going back to the notion of the album being a single cohesive piece of artwork (think Dark Side of the Moon), rather than just the medium they use to deliver a few singles.
In my bigoted opinion, any fool can engineer a 3-minute single to be a hit. It takes true talent to put together a 50-minute album that is a single quality piece of music throughout, and there are still a few people out there that appreciate this ability in a musician.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is Blizzard trying to shut down servers that emulate Battle.net?
Servers that emulate Battle.net facilitate software piracy of Blizzard products by circumventing Blizzard's authentication code. Blizzard products are intellectual property, and we are well within our legal rights to protect our products from software piracy.
We, at Blizzard couldn't figure out how to keep people from copying our software, so we decided to do authentication in the server, and hope no one figures out how to write their own server.
How do CD keys help reduce piracy?
Blizzard uses two main methods to combat piracy: disc-based copy protection and CD keys. As part of the login process, Battle.net authenticates the user's CD key and prevents people from logging in with the same key or an invalid key.
We realize that all attempts to combat piracy are futile. We put these schemes in place more to frustrate legitimate users than to stop determined people from copying our software.
Why doesn't Blizzard provide facilities that enable these emulators to authenticate CD keys through Battle.net?
In order for us to keep our proprietary CD-key algorithms secure, we cannot allow outside servers to query for the validity of CD keys.
We believe that keeping our CD-key algorithms secret makes our software look more secure.
What about software that hasn't been released yet? Wouldn't it be better to have as many people testing the beta version of Warcraft III as possible, even if they are playing on non-Battle.net servers?
The primary purposes of the Warcraft III Beta are to get play-balance feedback and to test our Battle.net servers. Our servers aren't tested if people are playing the Beta on rogue servers. Additionally, the Warcraft III Beta is not intended to be a product demo; when testing ends, we need the ability to terminate the Beta's functionality. Rogue servers eliminate our ability to expire beta versions of our products.
This is just the beginning. We need to be able to, on a whim, terminate your access to a game you rightfully bought. We are testing this scheme under the guise of a "time limited beta test". If we let others run servers, they could play the game they paid for whenever they want!
What about the hobbyists who are not pirating your software but just want to use these servers as an alternative to Battle.net?
Unfortunately, software pirates have spoiled this situation for hobbyists. We are constantly working to improve Battle.net, and we sincerely hope that one day, no one will see any reason to seek alternatives to Battle.net for playing Blizzard games.
We don't understand why someone else would want to use an alternative to Battle.net. Our software is close to perfect, and who cares about those strange Linux-using customers?
Your games sell millions of copies. Why do you care if a few people pirate your software?
The sales success of a product should not exclude it from laws intended to protect intellectual property. Software piracy needs to be combated at all levels, and at Blizzard we intend to do our part to fight illegal distribution of copyrighted media.
Business as usual... "War on Piracy..." News at eleven...
It is about having a -standardized- set of APIs that people can latch on to.
One API to bind them all...?
One of Linux's strengths is that there is always more than one way to do something. What if you (as a developer) don't like the way DirectX does something? Tough luck--wait for the next version.
Having only one way to do something is not an advantage, if that way sucks.
Perhaps if these companies want to change the world they could give these kids what more children in the world need besides PDA's:
FOOD
There is no difference between streaming and downloading. You're moving bits from one computer to another across a wire. It doesn't matter whether you watch the content AS it's downloading or AFTER it's done.
I'm not sure whether or not this is a troll. If so it was a damn good one!
If you honestly believe human beings aren't "struggling for existence" I invite you to crawl out of your easy chair and visit any third-world country out there for a month. Then let's see you come back and spout off that nonsense.
If you have enough money, you can cover the campus with wireless access. This would be good for schools that haven't already wired every dorm and every classroom with CAT5.
I don't understand why anyone else didn't make a machine that could compete with theirs?
You clearly did not read the comment to which you are replying.
No one else _could_ make a competing machine and succeed, because the other company's contract prohibited people from buying a competing machine.
This is (drum roll) against the law!
It's an OS bug if you think that the OS should be bright enough not to make AGP-touched memory cacheable (it wasn't intended to be).
I'm voting for option 3), myself.
I thought one of the main benefits of AGP was the ability to remap a bunch of non-contiguous physical blocks into one address space, so the entire bunch could be marked as cachable (for instance when DMA'ing a bunch of vertices across the bus).
One of the new restrictions will be that minors not accompanied by a parent or legal guardian may only stay at the cafes until 8 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays. Fridays and Saturdays they can stay unaccompanied until 10 p.m., city spokeswoman Kathy Moore said.
That solves it! So what do you think these youngsters are going to go do after they get booted out at 8/10 p.m.? I assure you, they won't be going home for bed-time. This just gives the kids a few extra hours to get even more bored--just think of all the stabbings they could accomplish with all this new free time.
Good to see government still knows how to protect the children.
that leaves TiVo and ReplayTV as the main standing competitors
Slap a MPEG2 encoder and a TV tuner onto the Xbox and call it Xbox-2, and they're right back in the market, with the bonus that the box also plays video games.
I guess if you count as meaningful:
[MAnGeEK] A/S/L???
[HotBabe] What?????
[MAnGeEK] Uh hi.
[HotBabe] Hi.
[MAnGeEK] A/S/L???
[HotBabe] Huh?
[MAnGeEK] What's up?
[HotBabe] Nothin who r u?
[MAnGeEK] I'm MAnGeEK how old r u?
[HotBabe] 15
[MAnGeEK] U sound cute
[HotBabe] thx
[MAnGeEK] u like nsync?
[HotBabe] yah they are sooooooo hot
[MAnGeEK] cool
[HotBabe] coooooooooooool
[MAnGeEK] hold on
[HotBabe] what??????
MAnGeEK has signed off.
Ah yes... The Internet has surely brought about a nightly fountain of interesting conversation....
Good point. I stand corrected...
If this purchase goes through, you better stick to the distribution you used before Linux became 'fashionable'--unless you want to be forced to install AOL Instant Messenger everytime you run rpm.
Ponder:
Should Aunt Tillie Build Her Own Kernels?
Should Aunt Tillie Install Her Own OS?
Should Aunt Tillie Install Her Own Applications?
Should Aunt Tillie Run Her Own Applications?
Should Aunt Tillie Produce Her Own Documents?
Should Aunt Tillie Think Her Own Thoughts?
Find some small part of the kernel (like a serial port driver or something) and start fooling with it. Disect it and see how it works, maybe fix a bug or two.
If you're a Windows kernel guy wanting to break into the Linux kernel, thats even easier. Get a job doing a Windows driver for some device, then write a Linux driver for it in your spare time. That's what I did.
Exactly. The qualities you need now and in the future are different than what you needed before. Where "hard work" and "consistancy" were once needed, motivation and flexibility are now more important.
The people who will get ahead are those not satisfied with doing the same thing every day of their lives. The ability to travel to a new job or learn a new skill will be important. Those who hold themselves back for the sake of things like security and comfort may find themselves missing out in the long run.
It's not really much of a change when you think about it. Risk-takers and self-starters have always tended to end up higher up in the food chain.
It better check for exact duplicates only, down to the variable names. Many undergraduate CS assignments are programs so basic that there are really only a few ways to implement them. It would suck to be a student who from scratch used the same algorithm as another student, and have them both flagged as cheaters.
Also, again I don't know the situation in the states, but from the moment a patent has been filed - note: not granted - it is open to the public to examine. In fact a popular science programme on television here (Tomorrow's World) used to (may still) have a section called "Patent Pending" where they showcased interesting applications.
/.??
That's an excellent idea. How about a game show that allows contestants to win a prize if they can find prior art and invalidate a patent that has been applied for?
Any producers out there reading
I'm having trouble following your statement, although I'll give you a break since English may be a second language for you.
From what I gather, your point is, GPL'ed code needs to be cloned and re-released under a BSD-style license in order to be used in non-GPL projects, so why not just release under BSD-style license in the first place?
Well, the argument is that there is a problem where public-funded code is taken proprietary and used in a way that doesn't benefit the people who foot the bill. BSD-style licenses do not prevent this.
Perhaps what's needed is a dual licence. Code is released under the GPL and BSD licenses, and you end up with one branch that is guaranteed free forever (the GPL'ed branch) and another branch that can be intermixed with proprietary code. That way, the fruits of a public-funded project are available to everyone, but those who want to take it proprietary may also do so.
Along that route, why clog up everyone's email servers with MP3's, when you can just upload it to a FTP server you and your friend have common access to?
Besides, lots of email systems are already set up to filter out large attachments.
After all, when transferring files, it only seems logical to use the File Transfer Protocol.
I stopped trusting THG after reading a glowing review of an nVIDIA video card blowing away the competition, while the page itself had a big ol nVIDIA advertisement at the top.
Sure, nVIDIA's hardware truly does rock, but how do we know that the only thing paid for was the little banner ad?
Then again, many, many print magazines pull the exact same shenanigans...
I'm pretty much LMAO right about now.
Oh a breading, breading, breading we will go...
It's movie awards, while a comedy show, has really challanged the Oscars by giving awards to movies that the majority actually like.
The problem with that is, what the majority likes is usually crap. The idea of the Oscars is to leave popularity out and award movies based on actual merit. Sure, popularity often creeps in and rears its ugly head, but for the most part, awards go to (sometimes overlooked) quality movies.
I laugh at "award shows" that let the drooling masses vote, because the high-grossing films usually win. What's the point? The box office has already proven that XYZ movie was popular--why do we need an award show to nail the point in?
Secondly, the post napster world means that people won't buy albums anymore, and will eliminate the pressure for artists to put out albums full of worthless studio time and one or two hits. every song will be given the quality time it needs, and maybe even "albums" will begin to disappear as artists release singles and then eventually collections, giving every song it's fair shake.
Albums may not entirely go away, but we may see some bands going back to the notion of the album being a single cohesive piece of artwork (think Dark Side of the Moon), rather than just the medium they use to deliver a few singles.
In my bigoted opinion, any fool can engineer a 3-minute single to be a hit. It takes true talent to put together a 50-minute album that is a single quality piece of music throughout, and there are still a few people out there that appreciate this ability in a musician.
At the risk of blatantly and shamelessly plugging my employer's product: Moxi has some competition.