They only removed Other OS because of (drumroll please) Geohotz found a viable crack in the hypervisor. You can blame its removal on him. Do you really think Sony would leave a relatively esoteric feature there and put hundreds of millions of dollars of game sales at risk? Of course not.
Not really. It's just laying out what should be obvious to everyone. Sony don't want pirates using PSN and if you try signing on from a modded box they will have ways of finding out, e.g. running an arbitrary challenge / response during signon. You could still run modded firmware and play pirate stuff and get away with it but it might be smart to stay well away from the online service. Of course it means no patches, DLC, multiplayer but that is rather the point. Microsoft does similar with XBL too.
Such torrents are commonplace so clearly any attempts to moderate / downvote aren't working. As for sharing the password, there is no password. It's a fake and the encrypted content is garbage anyway so bruteforcing the rar is a waste of time.
I strongly doubt anyone is getting rich from the trickle of people who actually go to the URLs found in torrent info files. They seem to be more for notoriety than profit.
People might not get rich from the genuine torrents. I bet people get rich from fake torrents where the download is a readme.txt and an encrypted rar and you're instructed to visit some url, sign up to a bunch of affiliate programs (and subjected to drive by attacks) to get the supposed password. Of course the password and the rar will be fakes.
It seems that the new system is running on Java, though, which is hardly an improvement in hard real-time department.
Well there are JVMs implemented in hardware and JVMs with real time RTSJ support (e.g. Websphere Realtime. I suppose it's also possible that some parts of the system are Java and some aren't and I wouldn't really know what the LSE does without looking.
I know when I worked for a financial house that it was a mix of code. C++ /.NET represented the thick client code. Java represented the web UI and middleware, in the back you might have mainframe views all tied together with b2b XML or webservices. So when you filled a trade ticket you might do it through C++ or Java, which would be sent as XML to middleware which would dump it in a mainframe view. Later on you might get a acknowledgement of the trade through a stream which would also supply streaming quote data and other realtime info.
Much of the infrastructure that did realtime quotes and research functionality for the consumer facing services was actually perl scripts running against a module in a web server. Sounds weird but the module kicked off a bunch of slave threads and a pile of shared memory and basically listened to a streaming service. The perl script was precompiled so it could be invoked rapidly and instantly spew out XML containing the latest quote data.
Yes it was messy but indicative of an organic growing system.
In summary trading systems are not easy. But moving to an open source OS at least opens up the choices you have for hardware and whatnot. What you run over the top is obviously going to have it's own performance impacts so the OS alone is not the only factor.
Perhaps it would be more correct to say people shouldn't have to trust Verisign. The public key crypto system is a racket. In order for my website or app to bestowed with "trust" I must to pay money to someone else to receive it. Not just once but repeatedly. And all that trust does is demonstrate that I'm the guy who runs the website, it doesn't say my website won't install malware on you, or steal credit card numbers.
It's too bad Mozilla / Google / Opera don't recognize the inequity of the situation and do something to rectify it, e.g. support an alternative model & secure protocol that uses PGP style web of trust or similar to sign content, or set themselves up as a root CA.
All of the above isn't Facebook's fault, or even the game makers. It is the users who allow all this, who send all the invites, who accept or tolerate those invites etc. Sadly, as most users aren't going to change, we are reliant on FB etc to implement changes to protect us.
Apportioning blame is a tricky one. Is it a user's fault for choosing a system that exposes their personal network of friends & info, or Facebook for facilitating & profiting from evil games that want to use the info, or the naked greed of game maker who are prepared to spam, run affiliate scams and set friends against each other by exploiting it.
At the end of the day I consider the whole system to be rotten and I kind of wonder what exactly people are deriving that makes them put up with such abuses. Is Facebook just a few years from becoming another Bebo or MySpace? If a viable alternative comes along, it may well end that way and I doubt many people would feel too sorry for Facebook if it happened.
There isn't much that the BBC can do to encrypt anything. They might be able to scramble the EPG but the variety of different data sources, e.g. DVB-T, DVB-T2, DVB-S2 means the data will leak out. BBC HD on satellite is going to be virtually identical to BBC HD on Freeview except for its program number. The crypto key would also have to be divulged to STBs anyway, probably in firmware so it's going to be there to find.
I doubt the BBC really cares much about doing it except to tick a box.
They might also be able to mandate crypto for HD broadcast over DVB-T2 but without a CAM or bidirectional comms between STB and network provider, the crypto WILL get broken. And there is no CAM and DVB-T2 is not bidirectional. Even if crypto were implemented correctly it is a big expense and particular problematic for PVRs since it can really screw with trickplay functionality (solving this is a huge topic in itself) which would hamper hardware development.
The other crypto found in Freesat/view compliant PVRs is they encrypt HD content as it's saved to disk. I imagine this is done with hardware AES and a unique key per box. Not much can be done about this except don't use logo compliant PVRs. I suppose someone might find a box which is sloppy with the way it saves content (e.g. prepending the key to the front of the content or in metadata or using the same key for every box) to enable a classbreak.
Steam isn't a virtual machine. To have games on Linux they need to be ported to it, and for that Steam is entirely unnecessary.
I never said Steam was a virtual machine. I said it works through WINE and when you launch a game that also works through WINE. i.e. you can install WINE, install Steam for Windows and run both Steam & downloaded games on Linux. The Steam client works pretty well, unfortunately games are hit and miss - some games work, some don't.
And no, games don't have to be ported to Linux and its unlikely that many ever would be. Not even OS X gets as many ports as people think - most of them are recompiled Win32 apps linked against Cider which is Transgaming's equivalent to winelib for OS X.
Realistically that's the only way you're ever going to ever see commercial games appear in any quantity on Linux - digital download platforms + games running over wine WINE or linked via winelib. If not Steam then Impulse or some other digital download infrastructure. Companies, e.g. Loki have already tried releasing native Linux ports and the venture failed miserably.
Is it a hoax? I don't see Beck strongly denying it. Shouldn't an innocent man be spending his every waking breath trying to prove his innocence. His silence on the matter speaks louder than words.
On the contrary, I for one quite enjoyed Postal 2. Yes it's just an excuse for committing mindless violence, but so what? So is just about every other FPS, MMO, etc when you get right down to it. There's something refreshingly honest about it.
I had no issue with the violence in Postal 2. I like games where enemies are reduced to giblets as much as the next person. But I had plenty of issue with the horrific loading times, the badly designed levels and the mindless repetitiveness of it. I still recall the nausea I felt after playing, wandering around maze after maze of boxy levels. I just thought it was a bad game.
Why would I want Steam on Linux? Hell will freeze over before I'll install that.
To play commercial games on Linux? Steam already works through WINE but the game support is pretty ropey - some games work others won't even start.
I'm surprised that Codeweavers or Transgaming hasn't approached Valve to produce a a free but supported version of Steam for Linux with games running under emulation. They'd get a % cut of the sales for supporting the product. Transgaming's Cider is the tech that most OS X game ports use anyway.
I didn't say cobble together. What I meant is Linux runs on big iron, it runs on PC architectures, it runs on racks. Multiple architectures, multiple roles, same OS. It makes it easier to put the system together when everything is running the same OS. I imagine that a system like a stock exchange would have embedded systems with honking amounts of memory for low latency streaming / quotes and large mainframe backends for recording trades. All tied together with the fastest network / backbone you could lay your hands on.
My understanding is the previous system was.NET over windows which raises large question marks over performance (e.g. unexpected garbage collections) and the sort of hardware that it could be run on.
I know it's not my most sophisticated comment, but I like open source so I am happy:)
The OS sitting at the bottom of the software stack is open source. The rest isn't. I imagine Linux is attractive because it supports a wider array of hardware than Windows would especially for a system which must guarantee low latency, high throughput.
I have an HP Mini 210 and the amount of crap preinstalled on it was unreal. The homegrown tools were the worst with an incredibly bloaty update center thing. I got rid of that but I must check since I think I may have left the wireless assistant there. I don't recall any issues with heat / CPU but it would be a gas if I got 10-20% performance boost by uninstalling it.
I have very mixed opinions about the connector. If it is (as some suggest) PDMI, an industry standard for connectors / docks then I understand the move. It means lots of choice of comparatively cheap cables, docks etc. to choose from. Place the PDMI compliant tablet into the dock and you get keyboard, HDD, charging etc. all from a single connector. I still think a device should still offer micro usb port in addition for simple charge / copy file actions.
If on the other hand this is Samsung playing a fast one and aping Apple with proprietary ports (or even a modded PDMI one) and expensive adapters then screw them, screw them all the way to hell. They're not the only tablet manufacturer in town and there will be other tablets which use standard connectors. Many of them will be cheaper too.
Did it never occur to him to just strap a camera to his head? Or just wear a hat with a camera on. Methinks that the main reason for having this implanted was to generate publicity for this project.
I think you nailed it. Only an attention whore would do this and it sounds like the bugger got his attention too. And a septic head.
Right, which is why there are so many competing tablets of equivalent featureset coming in under the iPad's price...
The Archos 101 costs 3/5 the price of an iPad and is a perfectly fine tablet with 10.1" capacitive screen, wifi, 10 hour battery life etc.. Of course you added the weasel phrase "same featureset" so you could say this is not so. After all the 8GB internal flash is less than the cheapest iPad's 16Gb and some stuff like rear camera, GPS isn't there. An the flip side it has HDMI out, micro sd, stand, USB slave / host for mass storage, greater multimedia support) that make it a wash IMO.
The biggest issue with the Archos is probably that it uses an uncertified version of Android 2.2. Even so It's a sign of things to come. When Google get their finger out and release Android 3.0 there will be numerous models to choose from and many will be perfectly functional and a great deal cheaper than the iPad.
I think webOS is a nice OS. I just don't see how a single model of phone and a single model of tablet is supposed to compete with a multitude of other devices all running more popular operating systems. It didn't happen with previous Palm devices, so what's going to change this time around.
I think the best thing HP could do is licence out webOS and grab itself a partner or two. Nokia might be a good choice simply because they're floundering too. Together they might be able to make enough of a splash to take out Windows Phone 7 or Blackberry as 3rd place behind Android and iOS.
Any attacker that has access to your hashed passwords will have access to your source code and the salt.
That's not necessarily true at all. For example a hacker might crack someone's web admin password, enough to see what's in the DB but not have file system access or knowledge of how the salt was produced. They may not have the source code either, especially if the site bothered to separate the authenticator and hasher into two separate machines.
There is nothing blatantly false about it. Do you think Sony would really give a shit if all that was stake was some box tinkerers? Of course not. What they DO give a shit about is their reputation going down the toilet if they allow piracy on their platform. It will mean less premium games and less revenues. Pirates might also try to compromise PSN, such as cheating in multiplayer games, hacking trophies and so forth.
So they are obviously going to to do everything they can to minimize piracy. If that means hurting the feelings of modders, so be it. The best thing modders can do for themselves is cut loose. Mod some other box, e.g. media boxes which are $100 these days, or develop XBMC for the PS3 or run CFW and forget about PSN and new games entirely because you're not going to be able to have it on a modded box. Period.
Files are fine assuming you can transfer them around and play them on any device you own regardless of a) where you purchased it, b) without registering the device, c) without caring who manufactured the player. Which rules out any video purchased on iTunes and most other stores for that matter. The best solution at the moment is to rip content.
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They only removed Other OS because of (drumroll please) Geohotz found a viable crack in the hypervisor. You can blame its removal on him. Do you really think Sony would leave a relatively esoteric feature there and put hundreds of millions of dollars of game sales at risk? Of course not.
Points finger and Sony customers and goes *Ha Ha*
Not really. It's just laying out what should be obvious to everyone. Sony don't want pirates using PSN and if you try signing on from a modded box they will have ways of finding out, e.g. running an arbitrary challenge / response during signon. You could still run modded firmware and play pirate stuff and get away with it but it might be smart to stay well away from the online service. Of course it means no patches, DLC, multiplayer but that is rather the point. Microsoft does similar with XBL too.
Such torrents are commonplace so clearly any attempts to moderate / downvote aren't working. As for sharing the password, there is no password. It's a fake and the encrypted content is garbage anyway so bruteforcing the rar is a waste of time.
I strongly doubt anyone is getting rich from the trickle of people who actually go to the URLs found in torrent info files. They seem to be more for notoriety than profit.
People might not get rich from the genuine torrents. I bet people get rich from fake torrents where the download is a readme.txt and an encrypted rar and you're instructed to visit some url, sign up to a bunch of affiliate programs (and subjected to drive by attacks) to get the supposed password. Of course the password and the rar will be fakes.
Well there are JVMs implemented in hardware and JVMs with real time RTSJ support (e.g. Websphere Realtime. I suppose it's also possible that some parts of the system are Java and some aren't and I wouldn't really know what the LSE does without looking.
I know when I worked for a financial house that it was a mix of code. C++ / .NET represented the thick client code. Java represented the web UI and middleware, in the back you might have mainframe views all tied together with b2b XML or webservices. So when you filled a trade ticket you might do it through C++ or Java, which would be sent as XML to middleware which would dump it in a mainframe view. Later on you might get a acknowledgement of the trade through a stream which would also supply streaming quote data and other realtime info.
Much of the infrastructure that did realtime quotes and research functionality for the consumer facing services was actually perl scripts running against a module in a web server. Sounds weird but the module kicked off a bunch of slave threads and a pile of shared memory and basically listened to a streaming service. The perl script was precompiled so it could be invoked rapidly and instantly spew out XML containing the latest quote data.
Yes it was messy but indicative of an organic growing system.
In summary trading systems are not easy. But moving to an open source OS at least opens up the choices you have for hardware and whatnot. What you run over the top is obviously going to have it's own performance impacts so the OS alone is not the only factor.
It's too bad Mozilla / Google / Opera don't recognize the inequity of the situation and do something to rectify it, e.g. support an alternative model & secure protocol that uses PGP style web of trust or similar to sign content, or set themselves up as a root CA.
All of the above isn't Facebook's fault, or even the game makers. It is the users who allow all this, who send all the invites, who accept or tolerate those invites etc. Sadly, as most users aren't going to change, we are reliant on FB etc to implement changes to protect us.
Apportioning blame is a tricky one. Is it a user's fault for choosing a system that exposes their personal network of friends & info, or Facebook for facilitating & profiting from evil games that want to use the info, or the naked greed of game maker who are prepared to spam, run affiliate scams and set friends against each other by exploiting it.
At the end of the day I consider the whole system to be rotten and I kind of wonder what exactly people are deriving that makes them put up with such abuses. Is Facebook just a few years from becoming another Bebo or MySpace? If a viable alternative comes along, it may well end that way and I doubt many people would feel too sorry for Facebook if it happened.
There isn't much that the BBC can do to encrypt anything. They might be able to scramble the EPG but the variety of different data sources, e.g. DVB-T, DVB-T2, DVB-S2 means the data will leak out. BBC HD on satellite is going to be virtually identical to BBC HD on Freeview except for its program number. The crypto key would also have to be divulged to STBs anyway, probably in firmware so it's going to be there to find. I doubt the BBC really cares much about doing it except to tick a box. They might also be able to mandate crypto for HD broadcast over DVB-T2 but without a CAM or bidirectional comms between STB and network provider, the crypto WILL get broken. And there is no CAM and DVB-T2 is not bidirectional. Even if crypto were implemented correctly it is a big expense and particular problematic for PVRs since it can really screw with trickplay functionality (solving this is a huge topic in itself) which would hamper hardware development. The other crypto found in Freesat/view compliant PVRs is they encrypt HD content as it's saved to disk. I imagine this is done with hardware AES and a unique key per box. Not much can be done about this except don't use logo compliant PVRs. I suppose someone might find a box which is sloppy with the way it saves content (e.g. prepending the key to the front of the content or in metadata or using the same key for every box) to enable a classbreak.
Steam isn't a virtual machine. To have games on Linux they need to be ported to it, and for that Steam is entirely unnecessary.
I never said Steam was a virtual machine. I said it works through WINE and when you launch a game that also works through WINE. i.e. you can install WINE, install Steam for Windows and run both Steam & downloaded games on Linux. The Steam client works pretty well, unfortunately games are hit and miss - some games work, some don't.
And no, games don't have to be ported to Linux and its unlikely that many ever would be. Not even OS X gets as many ports as people think - most of them are recompiled Win32 apps linked against Cider which is Transgaming's equivalent to winelib for OS X.
Realistically that's the only way you're ever going to ever see commercial games appear in any quantity on Linux - digital download platforms + games running over wine WINE or linked via winelib. If not Steam then Impulse or some other digital download infrastructure. Companies, e.g. Loki have already tried releasing native Linux ports and the venture failed miserably.
Wow, really? A hoax? Who knew?
Is it a hoax? I don't see Beck strongly denying it. Shouldn't an innocent man be spending his every waking breath trying to prove his innocence. His silence on the matter speaks louder than words.
etc.
On the contrary, I for one quite enjoyed Postal 2. Yes it's just an excuse for committing mindless violence, but so what? So is just about every other FPS, MMO, etc when you get right down to it. There's something refreshingly honest about it.
I had no issue with the violence in Postal 2. I like games where enemies are reduced to giblets as much as the next person. But I had plenty of issue with the horrific loading times, the badly designed levels and the mindless repetitiveness of it. I still recall the nausea I felt after playing, wandering around maze after maze of boxy levels. I just thought it was a bad game.
Why would I want Steam on Linux? Hell will freeze over before I'll install that.
To play commercial games on Linux? Steam already works through WINE but the game support is pretty ropey - some games work others won't even start.
I'm surprised that Codeweavers or Transgaming hasn't approached Valve to produce a a free but supported version of Steam for Linux with games running under emulation. They'd get a % cut of the sales for supporting the product. Transgaming's Cider is the tech that most OS X game ports use anyway.
We don't know if Postal III is any good yet....
Anyone who has suffered through the previous Postal titles would be surprised if it was.
My understanding is the previous system was .NET over windows which raises large question marks over performance (e.g. unexpected garbage collections) and the sort of hardware that it could be run on.
I know it's not my most sophisticated comment, but I like open source so I am happy :)
The OS sitting at the bottom of the software stack is open source. The rest isn't. I imagine Linux is attractive because it supports a wider array of hardware than Windows would especially for a system which must guarantee low latency, high throughput.
I have an HP Mini 210 and the amount of crap preinstalled on it was unreal. The homegrown tools were the worst with an incredibly bloaty update center thing. I got rid of that but I must check since I think I may have left the wireless assistant there. I don't recall any issues with heat / CPU but it would be a gas if I got 10-20% performance boost by uninstalling it.
If on the other hand this is Samsung playing a fast one and aping Apple with proprietary ports (or even a modded PDMI one) and expensive adapters then screw them, screw them all the way to hell. They're not the only tablet manufacturer in town and there will be other tablets which use standard connectors. Many of them will be cheaper too.
Did it never occur to him to just strap a camera to his head? Or just wear a hat with a camera on. Methinks that the main reason for having this implanted was to generate publicity for this project.
I think you nailed it. Only an attention whore would do this and it sounds like the bugger got his attention too. And a septic head.
Right, which is why there are so many competing tablets of equivalent featureset coming in under the iPad's price...
The Archos 101 costs 3/5 the price of an iPad and is a perfectly fine tablet with 10.1" capacitive screen, wifi, 10 hour battery life etc.. Of course you added the weasel phrase "same featureset" so you could say this is not so. After all the 8GB internal flash is less than the cheapest iPad's 16Gb and some stuff like rear camera, GPS isn't there. An the flip side it has HDMI out, micro sd, stand, USB slave / host for mass storage, greater multimedia support) that make it a wash IMO.
The biggest issue with the Archos is probably that it uses an uncertified version of Android 2.2. Even so It's a sign of things to come. When Google get their finger out and release Android 3.0 there will be numerous models to choose from and many will be perfectly functional and a great deal cheaper than the iPad.
So HP should send out Léo Apotheker in a tasteful turtleneck and announce that the product is shipping in 3, 2, 1...
Much though I dislike Apple, I think the way they announce and release products is pretty spot on. Just launch the sodding thing and begin selling it.
I think the best thing HP could do is licence out webOS and grab itself a partner or two. Nokia might be a good choice simply because they're floundering too. Together they might be able to make enough of a splash to take out Windows Phone 7 or Blackberry as 3rd place behind Android and iOS.
Any attacker that has access to your hashed passwords will have access to your source code and the salt.
That's not necessarily true at all. For example a hacker might crack someone's web admin password, enough to see what's in the DB but not have file system access or knowledge of how the salt was produced. They may not have the source code either, especially if the site bothered to separate the authenticator and hasher into two separate machines.
There is nothing blatantly false about it. Do you think Sony would really give a shit if all that was stake was some box tinkerers? Of course not. What they DO give a shit about is their reputation going down the toilet if they allow piracy on their platform. It will mean less premium games and less revenues. Pirates might also try to compromise PSN, such as cheating in multiplayer games, hacking trophies and so forth. So they are obviously going to to do everything they can to minimize piracy. If that means hurting the feelings of modders, so be it. The best thing modders can do for themselves is cut loose. Mod some other box, e.g. media boxes which are $100 these days, or develop XBMC for the PS3 or run CFW and forget about PSN and new games entirely because you're not going to be able to have it on a modded box. Period.
Files are fine assuming you can transfer them around and play them on any device you own regardless of a) where you purchased it, b) without registering the device, c) without caring who manufactured the player. Which rules out any video purchased on iTunes and most other stores for that matter. The best solution at the moment is to rip content.
They won't give up. They have deeper pockets than the hackers and can keep them tied up in the courts for as long as they like.