Re:Piracy Helps, someday they will notice that.
on
Piracy and the PSP
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· Score: 1
A PC and a games console are a bit different though, I think you'l have to agree. A games console, even with half-hearted attempts to turn it into a movie rental platform (looking at you 360), are basically just gaming machines. People will spend more on PCs because they can do other stuff. And if I'm honest, PC games are often far better than their console versions.
The combination of two of the most overused computer game brands in history would create a black hole large enough to swallow the Earth - and not even Will Wright is that stupid.
I heard that when he held book signings he'd sign people's books, then throw them in a fire and spit in their faces too.
Man, he sounds like a real douchebag.
Re:Piracy Helps, someday they will notice that.
on
Piracy and the PSP
·
· Score: 1
If anything, the piracy has HELPED PSP sales. The reason there's 50m units is because they can be opened to do what you want.
Perhaps, but if they make a loss on each piece of hardware and recoup the loss through software sales, then they're losing more money through selling PSP's that people don't buy games for.
If piracy is hurting Sony, then they need to charge more for the hardware.
Easy to say, but how much would you be willing to pay for a games hardware? If an Xbox 360 had cost £500 at launch I sure as hell wouldn't have bought one.
So aggressive. You should chill out man. Or are you going for the "Most Agressive Twat on Slashdot" achievement?
Like I've said to the many people before you who pointed out my confusing (and badly written) paragraph, I should have said something less about this particular solution, and more about how no solution that requires significant user intervention is going to "solve" the Conficker problem.
It's kind of silly to expect TFA is targeted at "your parents" when it's using nmap to scan a network...
Indeed, I should have been clearer in my post. What I meant to say was along the lines of "people like my parents, if their PC gets infected, are unlikely to ever remove the worm, and it'll be on their machine until the day they throw it out and buy a new one".
Bottom line: a pretty big botnet exists, and despite numerous clever solutions that can help clean it off large networks quickly there will still be a lot of PCs infected for the foreseeable future.
I know the article and others like it aren't aimed at clueless users, in fact I thought my post made that pretty clear. My point was that no matter how many clever solutions are created we're still going to be stuck with a sizeable array of computers that can be used for evil-doing, until an automatic detection and removal tool that can be simultaneously delivered and run on pretty much every infected machine at the same time is created.
And I think we're all aware of how likely to happen that is...
1) I started writing a question, got distracted half way through and then finished the sentence as a statement
2) I accidentally put a full stop instead of a question mark
3) Conficker performed a man-in-the-middle attack and messed with my punctuation
Clearly, your parents don't have a problem. They have a child that can fix things for them.
Sadly for them they raised a lazy and selfish child, and I can't be bothered to manage their computer's security for them, even remotely. At some point my Dad's love of naked chicks will land him in trouble, as there's only so many "Free p0rn" e-mails you can open before something nasty gets you.
You'll want to shake his hand right up to the point where his botnet of compromised machines manages to brute-force your bank account login and password and steals all your money.
Isn't the biggest problem with worms like Conficker the fact that most of the affected users are totally unaware that they have it. We already established that the worm exploits a vulnerability that was patched before its realease, and we've speculated that therefore it's mainly affecting users who are clueless about security, and therefore unlikely to even realise they have a problem?
From TFA:
To scan you network quickly for Conficker infections before the next
variant breaks this new techinque, we recommend this command:
nmap -p139,445 --script p2p-conficker,smb-os-discovery,smb-check-vulns --script-args checkconficker=1,safe=1 -T4 [target networks]
Now forgive me but people like my parents (running Windows 98 until last year, now on XP) with no idea about security, no anti-virus scanner (despite my lectures over the phone) and no idea what the symptoms of a virus, worm or other malware, are not going to find this information, nor know what to do with it if they did.
Computing professionals might have little trouble detecting and removing Conficker, or are safe in the knowledge that they were protected before its release, but we'll still have to deal with the consequences of a botnet comprised of infected computers belonging to people with little or no technical computer knowledge.
Exactly. We've all seen news of the Internet addiction clinics in Asia, and I can honestly see how people would get addicted to the Internet. Hell, I get withdrawal symptoms when I go on holiday or to visit my parents. The difference is that way fewer people are claiming the Internet is an evil invention than those claiming that games are evil.
In some ways I'd be highly amused if games, TV, films, comic books, rock and roll and so on had all been banned when they were labelled as corrupting the "youth of today". Perhaps when entire generations of psychopaths grew up - mentally unblanced by being so bloody bored all day, every day - then the "think of the children" crowd might lighten up a little.
Even if it is true, games cannot be villified by these findings. Addiction as described by TFA is used as a means of escape, it even says so in the body of text, and if games didn't exist then some other medium would fill the void.
Before the widespread popularity of computer games (yes I'm that old) it was TV that my parents were sure I was addicted to. Now my loved ones are sure it's games, and to a lesser extent alcohol. If you ask me I'm just finding things to pass the time...
Not sure that the ZDnet author is in love with his captors, but fair enough.
it could lead to more Web-based app usage, rather than desktop app usage
Or people buying better hardware that comes with a more powerful OS, if they require the ability to run many applications at the same time. Why would I buy a tiny cheap car with a small engine, then fit a roof rack, a turbo, bigger tyres etc. when I can just buy a bigger car in the first place? Horses for courses (Google it if you're not English) is very much the case here.
I'm with Tiscali, and before people start slating me I've never had any problems with them at all, I get just under 6Mbps download speed on a 4Mbps package (Shhhhhhh don't tell them) and I get no usage cap for 14.99 a month. From time to time by checking your account on their website and switching packages you can get lower monthly prices for 12 months by selecting one of their "Offers", which in the past saved me £1 a month and didn't affect my speed or service in any way.
People are harsh about Tiscali, but they've never given me any reason to complain. I've experienced slow speeds in the past, but running a traceroute and posting the resulst in their tech support fourms got the problem resolved extremely quickly (~12 hours once a couple of us had identified the server in London that was causing the problem).
Most of these question are answered in an article that this (poorly written and biased) one links to. I suggest you check it out. It's the zdnet.com one about half way down the page.
Now I'm not an M$ fanboy so save your trolling, but TFA is clearly biased and written badly. Thankfully there's a link to a better article hidden in there somewhere, and I suggest people read it before they post or judge.
I'm guessing BT are targetting a particular market demographic, judging by their adverts and the pricing structure they have. For me, their service is overpriced and I can get faster speeds, a lower price and a higher (unlimited actually) data cap with other ISPs. BT seem to be going for the "bewildered middle aged computer user" market with their Home Hub and associated services.
Really then I'm not surprised that they're blocking TPB, since they're probably fairly confident that this will have little effect on the customers they're targetting, whilst it raises their reputation with watchdog groups and copyright associations.
you are clearly a MS fan boy. Lets see... redhat, mysql, perl, php, oscommerce, bugzilla, etc, etc. There are PLENTY of OSS contributions that are highly successful that don't make money off OSS software they produce. They empower the companies that use them to monetize their software in other means. So really, your argument is nonsense
i don't know whether you're really that jaded you believe the nonsense you just said or if you're just trying to be difficult and retort with nonsense arguments but regardless of which it is, please put more thought into your arguments
I'm sorry, what the fuck has this got to do with Microsoft? Thanks for outing yourself as an ignorant individual who jumps to conclusions based on your own prejudices. This might come as a shock to you, but not everyone that disagrees with you in a fanboy of whatever corporation you're harbouring a grudge against this week. Back on topic though:
Yes, lots of companies succesfully use OSS as their main way of making money. True enough. I should have clarified (and already did to some extent in snother post where you injected a needless aside about OSS) that the world could run on OSS, but propriatary software in much more commonly used in almost every facet of computing. "Coincidence!" I'm sure you'll shout. Well fair enough then. Can you honestly say that we'd all be sat here posting our thoughts on/. if all software, from the birth of computing, had been OSS and non-profit? Bullshit, we'd still be sat here on BBC computers playing games that used 4 colours.
Proprietary software, based on good old fashioned desire for money, drives innovation and invention. You can stealthily call me an imbecile all you like, but money is a key factor in motivating companies to develop great software. Perhaps I should have been more specific. The world could run on OSS, but we'd be twenty years behind our current level and losing all the time.
People weren't copyrighting software until pretty much the 1980's
Source please. I find it hard to believe that nobody thought about copyrighting computer programs for decades. But let's assume you're right anyway...
Somehow a lot of good stuff got written before then.
And a lot of good stuff got illegally copied before then. Spectrum games were routinely copied amongst friends in the 80's. Ditto Commodore and Amiga games. Ditto Windows in the 90's on floppy disk. It was also much harder to copy programs in the past, when disks weren't cheap and the Internet wasn't in every home. Technology changes and makes new laws necessary, and obseletes old ones.
Slashdot Mirror
A PC and a games console are a bit different though, I think you'l have to agree. A games console, even with half-hearted attempts to turn it into a movie rental platform (looking at you 360), are basically just gaming machines. People will spend more on PCs because they can do other stuff. And if I'm honest, PC games are often far better than their console versions.
Lego Sims 2 could never be made.
The combination of two of the most overused computer game brands in history would create a black hole large enough to swallow the Earth - and not even Will Wright is that stupid.
Of course there are "legos" - they're what your feetos are attached to.
I heard that when he held book signings he'd sign people's books, then throw them in a fire and spit in their faces too. Man, he sounds like a real douchebag.
If anything, the piracy has HELPED PSP sales. The reason there's 50m units is because they can be opened to do what you want.
Perhaps, but if they make a loss on each piece of hardware and recoup the loss through software sales, then they're losing more money through selling PSP's that people don't buy games for.
If piracy is hurting Sony, then they need to charge more for the hardware.
Easy to say, but how much would you be willing to pay for a games hardware? If an Xbox 360 had cost £500 at launch I sure as hell wouldn't have bought one.
So aggressive. You should chill out man. Or are you going for the "Most Agressive Twat on Slashdot" achievement?
Like I've said to the many people before you who pointed out my confusing (and badly written) paragraph, I should have said something less about this particular solution, and more about how no solution that requires significant user intervention is going to "solve" the Conficker problem.
It's kind of silly to expect TFA is targeted at "your parents" when it's using nmap to scan a network...
Indeed, I should have been clearer in my post. What I meant to say was along the lines of "people like my parents, if their PC gets infected, are unlikely to ever remove the worm, and it'll be on their machine until the day they throw it out and buy a new one".
Bottom line: a pretty big botnet exists, and despite numerous clever solutions that can help clean it off large networks quickly there will still be a lot of PCs infected for the foreseeable future.
I know the article and others like it aren't aimed at clueless users, in fact I thought my post made that pretty clear. My point was that no matter how many clever solutions are created we're still going to be stuck with a sizeable array of computers that can be used for evil-doing, until an automatic detection and removal tool that can be simultaneously delivered and run on pretty much every infected machine at the same time is created.
And I think we're all aware of how likely to happen that is...
There are two possibilities:
1) I started writing a question, got distracted half way through and then finished the sentence as a statement
2) I accidentally put a full stop instead of a question mark
3) Conficker performed a man-in-the-middle attack and messed with my punctuation
You can pick the answer you like best.
Yeah, I probably should have thought of a better example. You get the idea though, things are impressive until they bite you on the arse.
Clearly, your parents don't have a problem. They have a child that can fix things for them.
Sadly for them they raised a lazy and selfish child, and I can't be bothered to manage their computer's security for them, even remotely. At some point my Dad's love of naked chicks will land him in trouble, as there's only so many "Free p0rn" e-mails you can open before something nasty gets you.
You'll want to shake his hand right up to the point where his botnet of compromised machines manages to brute-force your bank account login and password and steals all your money.
Then you'd procede to nad-kicking.
From TFA:
To scan you network quickly for Conficker infections before the next variant breaks this new techinque, we recommend this command: nmap -p139,445 --script p2p-conficker,smb-os-discovery,smb-check-vulns --script-args checkconficker=1,safe=1 -T4 [target networks]
Now forgive me but people like my parents (running Windows 98 until last year, now on XP) with no idea about security, no anti-virus scanner (despite my lectures over the phone) and no idea what the symptoms of a virus, worm or other malware, are not going to find this information, nor know what to do with it if they did.
Computing professionals might have little trouble detecting and removing Conficker, or are safe in the knowledge that they were protected before its release, but we'll still have to deal with the consequences of a botnet comprised of infected computers belonging to people with little or no technical computer knowledge.
Exactly. We've all seen news of the Internet addiction clinics in Asia, and I can honestly see how people would get addicted to the Internet. Hell, I get withdrawal symptoms when I go on holiday or to visit my parents. The difference is that way fewer people are claiming the Internet is an evil invention than those claiming that games are evil.
In some ways I'd be highly amused if games, TV, films, comic books, rock and roll and so on had all been banned when they were labelled as corrupting the "youth of today". Perhaps when entire generations of psychopaths grew up - mentally unblanced by being so bloody bored all day, every day - then the "think of the children" crowd might lighten up a little.
Even if it is true, games cannot be villified by these findings. Addiction as described by TFA is used as a means of escape, it even says so in the body of text, and if games didn't exist then some other medium would fill the void.
Before the widespread popularity of computer games (yes I'm that old) it was TV that my parents were sure I was addicted to. Now my loved ones are sure it's games, and to a lesser extent alcohol. If you ask me I'm just finding things to pass the time...
it could lead to more Web-based app usage, rather than desktop app usage
Or people buying better hardware that comes with a more powerful OS, if they require the ability to run many applications at the same time. Why would I buy a tiny cheap car with a small engine, then fit a roof rack, a turbo, bigger tyres etc. when I can just buy a bigger car in the first place? Horses for courses (Google it if you're not English) is very much the case here.
I'm with Tiscali, and before people start slating me I've never had any problems with them at all, I get just under 6Mbps download speed on a 4Mbps package (Shhhhhhh don't tell them) and I get no usage cap for 14.99 a month. From time to time by checking your account on their website and switching packages you can get lower monthly prices for 12 months by selecting one of their "Offers", which in the past saved me £1 a month and didn't affect my speed or service in any way.
People are harsh about Tiscali, but they've never given me any reason to complain. I've experienced slow speeds in the past, but running a traceroute and posting the resulst in their tech support fourms got the problem resolved extremely quickly (~12 hours once a couple of us had identified the server in London that was causing the problem).
Explorer doesn't count. Services don't count. RTFA. Or more accurately, read the more informative links within the article.
Most of these question are answered in an article that this (poorly written and biased) one links to. I suggest you check it out. It's the zdnet.com one about half way down the page.
Now I'm not an M$ fanboy so save your trolling, but TFA is clearly biased and written badly. Thankfully there's a link to a better article hidden in there somewhere, and I suggest people read it before they post or judge.
You go first, we'll do it tomorrow.
I'm guessing BT are targetting a particular market demographic, judging by their adverts and the pricing structure they have. For me, their service is overpriced and I can get faster speeds, a lower price and a higher (unlimited actually) data cap with other ISPs. BT seem to be going for the "bewildered middle aged computer user" market with their Home Hub and associated services.
Really then I'm not surprised that they're blocking TPB, since they're probably fairly confident that this will have little effect on the customers they're targetting, whilst it raises their reputation with watchdog groups and copyright associations.
you are clearly a MS fan boy. Lets see... redhat, mysql, perl, php, oscommerce, bugzilla, etc, etc. There are PLENTY of OSS contributions that are highly successful that don't make money off OSS software they produce. They empower the companies that use them to monetize their software in other means. So really, your argument is nonsense
i don't know whether you're really that jaded you believe the nonsense you just said or if you're just trying to be difficult and retort with nonsense arguments but regardless of which it is, please put more thought into your arguments
I'm sorry, what the fuck has this got to do with Microsoft? Thanks for outing yourself as an ignorant individual who jumps to conclusions based on your own prejudices. This might come as a shock to you, but not everyone that disagrees with you in a fanboy of whatever corporation you're harbouring a grudge against this week. Back on topic though:
/. if all software, from the birth of computing, had been OSS and non-profit? Bullshit, we'd still be sat here on BBC computers playing games that used 4 colours.
Yes, lots of companies succesfully use OSS as their main way of making money. True enough. I should have clarified (and already did to some extent in snother post where you injected a needless aside about OSS) that the world could run on OSS, but propriatary software in much more commonly used in almost every facet of computing. "Coincidence!" I'm sure you'll shout. Well fair enough then. Can you honestly say that we'd all be sat here posting our thoughts on
Proprietary software, based on good old fashioned desire for money, drives innovation and invention. You can stealthily call me an imbecile all you like, but money is a key factor in motivating companies to develop great software. Perhaps I should have been more specific. The world could run on OSS, but we'd be twenty years behind our current level and losing all the time.
People weren't copyrighting software until pretty much the 1980's
Source please. I find it hard to believe that nobody thought about copyrighting computer programs for decades. But let's assume you're right anyway...
Somehow a lot of good stuff got written before then.
And a lot of good stuff got illegally copied before then. Spectrum games were routinely copied amongst friends in the 80's. Ditto Commodore and Amiga games. Ditto Windows in the 90's on floppy disk. It was also much harder to copy programs in the past, when disks weren't cheap and the Internet wasn't in every home. Technology changes and makes new laws necessary, and obseletes old ones.