I like textured soy and I like quorn. I don't know if the latter is sold in other countries but you get it in the UK & Ireland. It has a texture and taste similar to chicken. It's made from a fungus (probably in huge revolting vats of sludge) which is strained and bound together with egg white. So strictly speaking chickens are still involved but not committed to its production. I'm sure I would puke my guts up if I saw it being made but it tastes quite nice.
Soy is best as a beef substitute and works pretty well but sometimes I find it has quite a sharp taste. I do keep a couple of packets of soy mince handy since they're a standby for making chilli / spag in emergencies. I'm not a vegetarian but I enjoy the odd vegetarian meal simply for the variety. I really can't stand tofu though which is like a cube of white snot.
As I said it's hyperbole. If it's part of the PSN signon it's not a backdoor. The box would have to connect to PSN, be issued with a challenge of some form, execute the challenge, report the result, proceed to be signed on. We're not talking about an open port here where any arbitrary passer by can run code.
Or glued aluminum foil over it. Or chrome plated it. He chose the most cumbersome way. Everyone who works cutting glass gets some nicked fingers from time to time, imagine cutting 5800 tiny pieces.
I have no idea how the guy stuck mirrors to the parabola, but I'd point out that you can buy mirrored mosaic tiles either loose or stuck to a net backing. So you might buy a 20x20cm square which has 15x15 tiles on it.
So it's not necessarily that hard work - draw a cross in centre of parabola, apply glue to one quadrant, apply tile swathe over glue, tamp down, repeat for other quadrants, work outwards, wait to dry, death ray.
$600 a day tax free probably is likely to be equivalent to $1000 day salaried which would be equivalent to $240000 per annum. Not bad money at all, tax free. I think a greater danger to this kind of thing is the stores and the lottery would soon wise up to what was going on. And if not them then the tax authorities would begin wondering where your income was coming from. Then the lottery would change the manner in which they produce the cards. If you're extra unlucky you'd also find yourself arrested and hauled over the coals until you revealed how you did it. THEN they'd still change the manner they produce the cards.
I think it would have been better for the guy to keep a low profile and not be greedy. Keep the day job but check the cards during his regular routine, e.g. at the grocery store while he's buying something else. Nobody would probably notice and the exploit would likely remain for a long time.
And what's that got to do with a backdoor that allows remote code execution?
The fact that MS are suspected of patching games to add those checks? Go google about previous MS banhammers. Console vendors obviously don't want modded boxes using their services and it is quite obvious they are going to develop surreptitious ways of checking for mods.
FFS, the hyperbole in this story is ridiculous. One IRC and people are running around screaming "backdoor". It's clearly just a way for Sony to execute checks during signon or similar. i.e. box tries to sign on PSN, PSN says to box run this piece of code and return an answer. If you don't like it don't mod your box, or don't sign onto PSN because you'll get banned and your PS3 will be blacklisted.
With a PC, you can install GNU/Linux and in theory audit the source code of every package. With a video game console, you don't have that power even in theory.
Which is great unless you actually want to play video games with your hardware.
Sony, Samsung and no doubt others already release the GPL / LGPL components to their firmware, e.g. here. I very much doubt Panasonic would be able to release the full source to their firmware even if they wanted to due to legal commitments. More likely they're referring to the GPL / LGPL pieces too, or bits they've accidentally infected with GPL code.
The worst it currently does is check that your firmware and the game you are wanting to play are both up to date, and then if either check fails, tells you you will be signed out of Live (but still free to play the game in offline or LAN mode).
So how do you explain Microsoft are able to wield the banhammer and ban people with modded XBoxes? The answer obviously is they have installed surreptitious checks in the firmware, into games and possibly during signon that test for mods and flags them for review. I assume modded boxes reveal themselves in a number of ways, e.g. by sailing through copy protection checks faster than possible, not reading bytes correctly in some cases and so on.
You're strange. I'd sooner eat cloned muscle from a lab, then from an animal that's been abused, bled to death, and chopped up.
That should really depend on whether it is edible and tasty and cheap to produce. If it's the meat equivalent of tofu being some nondescript slab of substance you can expect it to go down as well as tofu with the general public. It would probably end competing with mechanically separated meats as the filler sludge in cheap canned food and hotdogs where it's not really saving any animal's life.
If they can produce something which is textured, tastes of what it's supposed to taste of, doesn't involve some horrific chemical process during it's manufacture then yes it could do well. I suppose to continue the tofu analogy, it should be closer to quorn than it is to tofu.
So the "backdoor" code does a timing test and your VM flunks it. Basically unless you can perfectly emulate a normal firmware including all memory ranges, GPU functionality, the presences of all legit files, the absence of any illegitimate files, the timing of hardware (e.g. spinup / down of BD drive), the behaviour when dealing with bad sectors / fuzzy bits on discs etc. etc. etc. you will never be able to correctly answer some arbitrary challenge or code thrown at the firmware. The only way to win is not to play.
New countermeasures of this kind were also incredibly obvious and likely once the console couldn't rely on code signing any more.
Um, no? M$ uses the MAC and unique console ID and does the banning entirely on their own end. There is no code executed on the 360 at all.
Bollocks. How do you detect a modded XBox 360 using just the MAC & ID? Answer - you can't. The firmware obviously has to run certain tests that a legit firmware / hardware would pass but a modded one would fail. These have to be delivered to the console by means of a firmware update, or during signon, or by patches to games. Then those tests are executed and the results are stealth reported back to Microsoft. Then the banhammer falls.
There is no reason to think anything different is happening here. Except for the paranoid hyperbole that appears when Sony does something which a competitor already does. It's hard to see where this paranoia is even coming from. If you have a legit PS3 Sony can already run any code they like so what's the problem. And if you're running a modded PS3, why did you ever think in a million years you would be entitled to carry on using Sony's online services?
The answer is stark, either don't mod the console and things don't change one little bit, or do mod the console and get used to not having it.
I only have a 360, which at the moment is being repaired. Yes, RRoD, but after 4.5 years of good performance, I'll give it some maintenance. At least with the 360 things are straightforward and Microsoft knows how to not be evil.
Maybe you should be wondering how Microsoft manages to detect and ban people using modchips. Answer - in a similar fashion as Sony is intending right now - mandatory updates that detect modchips through various means when users sign onto XBL. e.g. this story speculates that MS stealth patched some games to install modchip detection code to wield the banhammer.
There's no way in hell I want to install a firmware that intentionally creates a backdoor into my system.
Wow that makes no sense at all. You install firmware by Sony and you're worried that Sony might "do things" to test the integrity of the firmware before letting you sign onto an online service also run by Sony?
The "backdoor" is probably a way for PS3 to run arbitrary code (e.g. through PSN signon) to detect modified PS3s. e.g. if Sony knew that some byte range was indicative of a mod they might run a bit of code during signon to test that byte range. If a new CFW test appeared to counter that test they could run a new one instead. Basically they could run any arbitrary piece of code they liked. Fail the test in a manner indicative of a modded box and watch your PSN access go bye byes.
I doubt the situation is any different from XBL where they've engaged in waves of bannings presumably by deploying similar tests. Did anyone seriously think Sony would sit idly by and let modders / pirates retain full access to PSN? Seriously?
The issues with Mozilla / Seamonkey were largely usability issues but there were some performance issues too:
More buttons, menus etc. Firefox was designed to create a clean, minimalist browser experience. The Mozilla suite was cluttered with functionality for email, composition etc.
Runtime overhead. The more complex UI meant more chrome overlays, more registered components, more cruft. This meant the suite took longer to start and respond. Of course on the flip side if you did run Thunderbird / Firefox side by side your runtime overhead was probably higher than the combined suite.
Increase headaches for development, QA and release trying to release basically 3x the UI when the browser was the primary component. By splitting the projects, it means they can follow their own more natural development lifecycles.
I used to love the whole Mozilla suite but I understand why the split was made and I think it was the right thing to do. I continued to use Thunderbird but these days the amount of spam I get means I've more or less given up on a thick client email. It's easier to route my POP account through gmail where the spam gets efficiently stripped out for me.
How many people (perhaps apart from malware writers) will really be affected by this disclosure of the source for some 4-year-old software?
The answer is lots of people. Customers of Kaspersky may suddenly discover themselves infected with malware that sidesteps, disables or otherwise interferes with their AV or firewall software. Other people might receive emails offering "free" and apparently legit Kaspersky software which subsequently holds their machine to ransom, or installs a bot. And everyone else who suddenly finds new botnets springing up spamming and DDOS'ing with wild abandon thanks to a flood of compromised machines appearing.
They want everyone keeping all their devices connected to the online hub. This way they can control licensing, require updates, etc., more effectively than they do today.
In this case, no. Cloud saves are something users want (and would pay for in some cases) so Sony can make money by including them as part of a PSN+ sub. I doubt non PSN+ users will get them. I wouldn't be surprised if when the PSP2 turns up that some fashion of 3G access is free to PSN+ users too.
Of course you are right though that the more people are dependent on PSN, the less likely they are to mod / cfw their systems to play pirate games because they'll miss out on things.
No matter how engrained a free service becomes in your life, unless you have a contract with the provider I can’t see how you are in any way entitled to damages when it’s taken away from you.
It's not even like it's taken away from him forever. 10 minutes would be enough to roll a new account. Then he can put the word out his old account was locked and can people refriend him again. Chances are he could rebuild most of his network up in the space of a day or two. Or politely going through whatever FB appeals process exists would do the same.
Hardly the end of the world by any stretch. Of course I wonder why Facebook booted him. I expect someone complained about him. Perhaps he was so obsessive about the service that he did something to justify getting booted, such as stalking people or spamming them with useless messages.
I couldn't agree more. The way google is forcing Apple and Microsoft to not support the open and non patent encumbered WebM makes me sick. It is amazing to me how many sheeple still support evil google over the icon of fair market practices that is Microsoft.
I very much doubt Google are doing it for altruistic reasons but rather as a way to stick it to Microsoft, Apple and MPEG-LA by dumping an industry standard format for one which they control. Not only will they control one of the largest content sources but also the format it's delivered in and that puts them in a strong position to dictate terms that others must follow. The fact that the format is open source is largely irrelevant.
As soon as WebM suits their purpose (e.g. if MPEG-LA waives some fees or changes it's terms for web use), you might suddenly find they "capitulate" and provide h264 on an equal basis. Regardless, preventing sites or users from using the video tag with other formats / containers is restrictive and quite unjustifiable especially when every desktop and smartphone OS has a media framework that could be used to support other formats.
The nice thing about modded firmware is that the trust model is completely broken. Sure, PSN can do that, but all that happens is the modded firmware will remap things to a copy of the genuine article.
The PSN signon can require the PS3 execute any arbitrary challenge or check it likes, possibly even run it's own code. You can't patch what you don't know and you can bet the challenges will be explicitly crafted to detect mods. Failure to respond with the correct answer will likely flag your PS3. Signing on is suicide for your PSN account. For all we know Sony also have a way to ban the PS3 from using any PSN account thereafter.
Seems like MS takes the approach of "Fine, mod your console if you like, but if you get caught you can't use it on XBL". And since XBL is a subscription service they set their rules, but you agree to them by paying for the service.
MS doesn't tolerate piracy anymore than Sony or Nintendo does. The reason they use XBL to catch people is because it is probably the easiest way they have to do it. A new dashboard update can do a check for mods and then the banhammer can fall swiftly on modders before they have a chance to work around the checks.
Expect Sony to do likewise. Basically anyone who signs onto PSN, (or perhaps even has their PS3 connected to the internet) could find themselves getting a nasty surprise. I fully expect the PSN sign on will start challenging firmware with crafted tests such as checksums etc. and audits will be surreptitiously embedded in far flung places in the Game OS and even in games. Users with modded firmware will find their PSN account suspended in no time which means no DLC, no access to purchased content, no patches, no multiplayer etc.
That by itself will be a strong disincentive to mod the firmware. Piracy would also be strongly discouraged by bloating up game discs to be 25/50/66Gb in size. It wouldn't be hard to do, and there is ample opportunity for games to lay booby traps to detect tampering of game files if someone tried to strip out padding or data to minimize the download size.
There are plenty of reasons. Native code will always perform better and consume less battery life. Very important on a mobile device.
Stability, architecture are also very important in phones. Apps written in a VM decrease the likelihood that they will destabilize the system such as by crashing unexpectedly, passing duff data around to other apps, accessing devices or files they have no permissions to access, consuming resources, hogging CPU or otherwise causing the phone to bug out. Using a VM also means it is largely irrelevant what chipset is sitting underneath because the app in the VM doesn't care.
Of course Google offers a native dev kit too, but frankly unless an app (e.g. a app) absolutely needs the performance it would be better off sticking in a VM. I'm surprised they don't also offer llvm support so devs can write bitcode portable executables.
So it will be less powerful than the PS3, and with resolution barely better than a PS2 (720x480). That would make it better than the Nintendo DS (comparable to a high-res N64).
That resolution is 1.5x what the PS2 put out and doubtless it has more powerful fill rates too. And 4 cores to do stuff in parallel.
I have no doubt at all that the device will be more powerful than the PS2 by a significant amount, though I doubt it will be comparable to the PS3 despite some of the hyperbole to that effect. It probably occupies a similar relationship to the PS3 that the PSP did to the PS2 - at it's best it may get close but will never match its larger stable mate.
That said, it's an awesomely powerful handheld and will kick the living shit out of the 3DS for resolution and graphics performance. Whether that translates into sales is another matter entirely.
I think it's clever and will be effective for gaming since people will have a surplus of fingers holding the device doing nothing. Putting the touch on the back means they can swipe, touch or whatever without taking their thumbs off the control pads.
I'm not so sure it would be useful outside of games though e.g. to click on a link in a web browser probably means feeling around the back, presumably with some onscreen feedback and tapping or something.
That doesn't make sense either. So it's possible that the back might fall off, big deal. I'd be more worried about dropping a phone sandwiched between two layers of glass than the minor convenience of the back falling off. If it's such a huge problem buy a case (as many iPhone owners clearly do anyway) or a rugged phone.
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I like textured soy and I like quorn. I don't know if the latter is sold in other countries but you get it in the UK & Ireland. It has a texture and taste similar to chicken. It's made from a fungus (probably in huge revolting vats of sludge) which is strained and bound together with egg white. So strictly speaking chickens are still involved but not committed to its production. I'm sure I would puke my guts up if I saw it being made but it tastes quite nice. Soy is best as a beef substitute and works pretty well but sometimes I find it has quite a sharp taste. I do keep a couple of packets of soy mince handy since they're a standby for making chilli / spag in emergencies. I'm not a vegetarian but I enjoy the odd vegetarian meal simply for the variety. I really can't stand tofu though which is like a cube of white snot.
As I said it's hyperbole. If it's part of the PSN signon it's not a backdoor. The box would have to connect to PSN, be issued with a challenge of some form, execute the challenge, report the result, proceed to be signed on. We're not talking about an open port here where any arbitrary passer by can run code.
Or glued aluminum foil over it. Or chrome plated it. He chose the most cumbersome way. Everyone who works cutting glass gets some nicked fingers from time to time, imagine cutting 5800 tiny pieces.
I have no idea how the guy stuck mirrors to the parabola, but I'd point out that you can buy mirrored mosaic tiles either loose or stuck to a net backing. So you might buy a 20x20cm square which has 15x15 tiles on it.
So it's not necessarily that hard work - draw a cross in centre of parabola, apply glue to one quadrant, apply tile swathe over glue, tamp down, repeat for other quadrants, work outwards, wait to dry, death ray.
$600 a day tax free probably is likely to be equivalent to $1000 day salaried which would be equivalent to $240000 per annum. Not bad money at all, tax free. I think a greater danger to this kind of thing is the stores and the lottery would soon wise up to what was going on. And if not them then the tax authorities would begin wondering where your income was coming from. Then the lottery would change the manner in which they produce the cards. If you're extra unlucky you'd also find yourself arrested and hauled over the coals until you revealed how you did it. THEN they'd still change the manner they produce the cards. I think it would have been better for the guy to keep a low profile and not be greedy. Keep the day job but check the cards during his regular routine, e.g. at the grocery store while he's buying something else. Nobody would probably notice and the exploit would likely remain for a long time.
The fact that MS are suspected of patching games to add those checks? Go google about previous MS banhammers. Console vendors obviously don't want modded boxes using their services and it is quite obvious they are going to develop surreptitious ways of checking for mods.
FFS, the hyperbole in this story is ridiculous. One IRC and people are running around screaming "backdoor". It's clearly just a way for Sony to execute checks during signon or similar. i.e. box tries to sign on PSN, PSN says to box run this piece of code and return an answer. If you don't like it don't mod your box, or don't sign onto PSN because you'll get banned and your PS3 will be blacklisted.
Which is great unless you actually want to play video games with your hardware.
Sony, Samsung and no doubt others already release the GPL / LGPL components to their firmware, e.g. here. I very much doubt Panasonic would be able to release the full source to their firmware even if they wanted to due to legal commitments. More likely they're referring to the GPL / LGPL pieces too, or bits they've accidentally infected with GPL code.
So how do you explain Microsoft are able to wield the banhammer and ban people with modded XBoxes? The answer obviously is they have installed surreptitious checks in the firmware, into games and possibly during signon that test for mods and flags them for review. I assume modded boxes reveal themselves in a number of ways, e.g. by sailing through copy protection checks faster than possible, not reading bytes correctly in some cases and so on.
That should really depend on whether it is edible and tasty and cheap to produce. If it's the meat equivalent of tofu being some nondescript slab of substance you can expect it to go down as well as tofu with the general public. It would probably end competing with mechanically separated meats as the filler sludge in cheap canned food and hotdogs where it's not really saving any animal's life.
If they can produce something which is textured, tastes of what it's supposed to taste of, doesn't involve some horrific chemical process during it's manufacture then yes it could do well. I suppose to continue the tofu analogy, it should be closer to quorn than it is to tofu.
New countermeasures of this kind were also incredibly obvious and likely once the console couldn't rely on code signing any more.
Bollocks. How do you detect a modded XBox 360 using just the MAC & ID? Answer - you can't. The firmware obviously has to run certain tests that a legit firmware / hardware would pass but a modded one would fail. These have to be delivered to the console by means of a firmware update, or during signon, or by patches to games. Then those tests are executed and the results are stealth reported back to Microsoft. Then the banhammer falls.
There is no reason to think anything different is happening here. Except for the paranoid hyperbole that appears when Sony does something which a competitor already does. It's hard to see where this paranoia is even coming from. If you have a legit PS3 Sony can already run any code they like so what's the problem. And if you're running a modded PS3, why did you ever think in a million years you would be entitled to carry on using Sony's online services?
The answer is stark, either don't mod the console and things don't change one little bit, or do mod the console and get used to not having it.
Maybe you should be wondering how Microsoft manages to detect and ban people using modchips. Answer - in a similar fashion as Sony is intending right now - mandatory updates that detect modchips through various means when users sign onto XBL. e.g. this story speculates that MS stealth patched some games to install modchip detection code to wield the banhammer.
Wow that makes no sense at all. You install firmware by Sony and you're worried that Sony might "do things" to test the integrity of the firmware before letting you sign onto an online service also run by Sony?
I doubt the situation is any different from XBL where they've engaged in waves of bannings presumably by deploying similar tests. Did anyone seriously think Sony would sit idly by and let modders / pirates retain full access to PSN? Seriously?
I used to love the whole Mozilla suite but I understand why the split was made and I think it was the right thing to do. I continued to use Thunderbird but these days the amount of spam I get means I've more or less given up on a thick client email. It's easier to route my POP account through gmail where the spam gets efficiently stripped out for me.
The answer is lots of people. Customers of Kaspersky may suddenly discover themselves infected with malware that sidesteps, disables or otherwise interferes with their AV or firewall software. Other people might receive emails offering "free" and apparently legit Kaspersky software which subsequently holds their machine to ransom, or installs a bot. And everyone else who suddenly finds new botnets springing up spamming and DDOS'ing with wild abandon thanks to a flood of compromised machines appearing.
In this case, no. Cloud saves are something users want (and would pay for in some cases) so Sony can make money by including them as part of a PSN+ sub. I doubt non PSN+ users will get them. I wouldn't be surprised if when the PSP2 turns up that some fashion of 3G access is free to PSN+ users too.
Of course you are right though that the more people are dependent on PSN, the less likely they are to mod / cfw their systems to play pirate games because they'll miss out on things.
It's not even like it's taken away from him forever. 10 minutes would be enough to roll a new account. Then he can put the word out his old account was locked and can people refriend him again. Chances are he could rebuild most of his network up in the space of a day or two. Or politely going through whatever FB appeals process exists would do the same.
Hardly the end of the world by any stretch. Of course I wonder why Facebook booted him. I expect someone complained about him. Perhaps he was so obsessive about the service that he did something to justify getting booted, such as stalking people or spamming them with useless messages.
I very much doubt Google are doing it for altruistic reasons but rather as a way to stick it to Microsoft, Apple and MPEG-LA by dumping an industry standard format for one which they control. Not only will they control one of the largest content sources but also the format it's delivered in and that puts them in a strong position to dictate terms that others must follow. The fact that the format is open source is largely irrelevant.
As soon as WebM suits their purpose (e.g. if MPEG-LA waives some fees or changes it's terms for web use), you might suddenly find they "capitulate" and provide h264 on an equal basis. Regardless, preventing sites or users from using the video tag with other formats / containers is restrictive and quite unjustifiable especially when every desktop and smartphone OS has a media framework that could be used to support other formats.
The PSN signon can require the PS3 execute any arbitrary challenge or check it likes, possibly even run it's own code. You can't patch what you don't know and you can bet the challenges will be explicitly crafted to detect mods. Failure to respond with the correct answer will likely flag your PS3. Signing on is suicide for your PSN account. For all we know Sony also have a way to ban the PS3 from using any PSN account thereafter.
MS doesn't tolerate piracy anymore than Sony or Nintendo does. The reason they use XBL to catch people is because it is probably the easiest way they have to do it. A new dashboard update can do a check for mods and then the banhammer can fall swiftly on modders before they have a chance to work around the checks.
Expect Sony to do likewise. Basically anyone who signs onto PSN, (or perhaps even has their PS3 connected to the internet) could find themselves getting a nasty surprise. I fully expect the PSN sign on will start challenging firmware with crafted tests such as checksums etc. and audits will be surreptitiously embedded in far flung places in the Game OS and even in games. Users with modded firmware will find their PSN account suspended in no time which means no DLC, no access to purchased content, no patches, no multiplayer etc.
That by itself will be a strong disincentive to mod the firmware. Piracy would also be strongly discouraged by bloating up game discs to be 25/50/66Gb in size. It wouldn't be hard to do, and there is ample opportunity for games to lay booby traps to detect tampering of game files if someone tried to strip out padding or data to minimize the download size.
Stability, architecture are also very important in phones. Apps written in a VM decrease the likelihood that they will destabilize the system such as by crashing unexpectedly, passing duff data around to other apps, accessing devices or files they have no permissions to access, consuming resources, hogging CPU or otherwise causing the phone to bug out. Using a VM also means it is largely irrelevant what chipset is sitting underneath because the app in the VM doesn't care.
Of course Google offers a native dev kit too, but frankly unless an app (e.g. a app) absolutely needs the performance it would be better off sticking in a VM. I'm surprised they don't also offer llvm support so devs can write bitcode portable executables.
That resolution is 1.5x what the PS2 put out and doubtless it has more powerful fill rates too. And 4 cores to do stuff in parallel.
I have no doubt at all that the device will be more powerful than the PS2 by a significant amount, though I doubt it will be comparable to the PS3 despite some of the hyperbole to that effect. It probably occupies a similar relationship to the PS3 that the PSP did to the PS2 - at it's best it may get close but will never match its larger stable mate.
That said, it's an awesomely powerful handheld and will kick the living shit out of the 3DS for resolution and graphics performance. Whether that translates into sales is another matter entirely.
I'm not so sure it would be useful outside of games though e.g. to click on a link in a web browser probably means feeling around the back, presumably with some onscreen feedback and tapping or something.
That doesn't make sense either. So it's possible that the back might fall off, big deal. I'd be more worried about dropping a phone sandwiched between two layers of glass than the minor convenience of the back falling off. If it's such a huge problem buy a case (as many iPhone owners clearly do anyway) or a rugged phone.