It sounds like you took my reply to your original post as a sign that I was jealous of your situation. I'm not.
Didn't mean to imply jealousy on your part. I just thought you should know nothing has been handed to me on a silver spoon.
The oil companies raise gasoline prices in anticipation of a coming hurricane despite the fact the hurricane won't instantaneously affect supply to the consumer...
Actually, it was gasoline stations who raised gasoline prices, based on oil futures. This is standard practice in an open market. If you think your gold is going to be rarer in the future because there won't be as much gold produced do you think you'd be willing to sell it for the current price, or would you start asking for more based on your knowledge? In other words if you still sold it at market price, knowing it was going to be worth more in the future, you aren't a very apt businessperson, are you?
No evil oil executives were sitting back in their huge chairs thinking about how they can squeeze more out of the consumer. Supply and demand, nothing else, is what caused the prices to inflate. And in case you haven't noticed, the supply of oil is probably the single largest contributing factor to economic change worldwide -- so when there's a possibility of something in the near future coming that can affect that supply I think you better understand that there will be a reaction.
So there is no reason I should thank you for buying gasoline at any price, no matter how low or high. My influence on gas prices is zero. In fact, the company I work for has no influence on gas prices except to make them lower if we undercut the market which makes absolutely no business sense because we have no problem selling every single barrel at market price, and it's the second largest oil company in the entire world.
You think the oil companies are engaged in price gouging. You think we charge whatever we want for oil. Well if you want to talk oil prices, let's talk OPEC (or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). Guess what the oil I help produce over here sells for? A price based largely on the prices OPEC chooses as what they consider fair for their member countries. OPEC's member countries hold about two-thirds of the world's oil reserves.
No, if anything, right now oil is cheaper than it should be. Dwindling worldwide supplies are more than evident, while consumption continues to rise at a great pace. Soon you will see the effects of the supply vs. demand function take it's toll to a much higher level and if you think oil and gasoline is expensive now, just wait. Maybe 10 years or so, possibly less, and you'll be wishing for the prices you have today.
Unless a better, cleaner, source of energy is found. And guess who is doing most of the research into that? Big Oil. We're not stupid. We know what's coming, and we understand what the future holds for petroleum production companies. It's bleak. We want to be ready when the coin flips. We want to be there to smooth the transition. Otherwise, high oil prices will be the least of your worries. That will be nothing. We're talking World War III.
I didn't mean to imply they hit the database for every action in the game. I meant to say that there is potential to hit the database multiple times per second for every single character logged in -- and all at once.
In any case, it seems the WoW network engineers have figured out a way to do it much more efficiently than before. This of course doesn't necesarily mean that it's as easy as Amazon, or even that it's harder. We just don't know enough details to compare them intelligently. So there's not much point in wild-ass-guesses.
One thing I think is a fair assumption is Amazon probably has more qualified people for the networking they do. Blizzard only recently (ok, a year ago now) had to deal with the kind of traffic WoW generates. They really didn't know WoW would be this huge. And that's probably part of the reason they had to perform weekly downtime maintenance -- they designed the system with less people in mind. They weren't prepared for the smashing success WoW has been.
Which brings me to my last point. MMORPGs must push the envelope to succeed. They have to be able to squeeze every last drop of capability out of their servers and network. Take for example large-scale outdoors (remember, seamless world here) player vs. player battles. Hundreds of players fighting each other at once. And the must be NO lag. Otherwise, when a new MMO comes out that can support the same hundreds or even thousands, with the same nice graphics and gameplay, but with zero lag, that new MMO will win every time. Star Wars Galaxies is a good example of that. I used to play it and on a few occasions there were pre-planned PvP battles. Hundreds of players on a side. Guess what happened as soon as the fighting started? Everything ground to a halt and the server would either crash or the pings would go up into several seconds. In other words it was unplayable. Compare that to WoW, and you can see why people would choose WoW over SWG, even though SWG had no downtime for maintenance. (all other game aspects aside)
You forgot to thank me and everyone else for paying you.
Nobody is forcing you to not get a job like mine in Big Oil. I went to school for 2.5 years, got two Associates degrees, did well in my class, and got the job. You can too. And here's the if, and it's a big one:If you want to work in the Arctic (I work a few miles from the Arctic ocean) and are willing to do a shift rotation of 2 weeks working and 2 weeks off. This means you'd probably have to move to Alaska. Or be willing to do A LOT of travel (I know many who live outside and still find it worthwhile).
Don't want to do that? No? Then don't complain.
I don't need to thank anybody. I worked for what I have. I knew nobody in the industry, so I didn't have an "in". And I earn my wages.
While I agree that needing to be taken offline every week is indicative of bad design, I do not agree that you can compare Amazon's traffic to WoW's. I believe if you broke each individual connection to a WoW account down and compared it to each individual connection to an Amazon account you would see a GREAT deal of difference.
For example, every single milliseconda person's WoW account is capable of multiple updates to the server's database. A player's entire actions must be queued, executed and responded to in a mere fraction of a second or the entire game is unplayable. People would scream LAG until WoW was a ghost MMO -- or, more accurately, WoW would never have gotten so large in the first place.
Compare that to the average connection for an Amazon account. I think you'll see there's a huge difference, even just in principle. Now, how many thousands of people do you think are accessing Amazon.com at once?
Each WoW servers literally has thousands of people online at any given time, and each and every one of these people is expecting to get fast service because they pay for it every month and the game would be plain stupid without it.
Now I'm not claiming that I know the intricacies of the WoW database, but I imagine that even Amazon's database runs into barriers and needs maintenance and optimization. Compare that to WoW and you might see why there is a need for constant maintenance. Only now they don't (we'll see) have to bring the servers down every week for extended maintenance. They need only restart them.. which to me sounds like they have some reason for the restarts. Perhaps it gives them a chance to quickly remove various time-stamped data that is no longer relevant to the game once it has been rebooted. Like I said, I don't know.
But rest assured, it's a lot different than Amazon.
I work for Big Oil, and this year every employee in the state got a gift worth $450, after taxes. Yep, they paid for the gift via our paychecks, deducted taxes from the additional money (it was like $620 gross) and deducted the $450 after taxes for the gift. I.E. the paycheck was no larger than normal but you got a $450 gift with taxes already paid. I thought that was pretty nice.
We also received 'end of the year' checks for $1,000 after taxes and our bonus is usually around 10% of our yearly gross (so anywhere from $11,000 to $20,000 for most employees).
When I take a second to think about it, I really consider myself fortunate. I love this company.
"That's good news for people just wanting to rock the hell out over the holidays."
For some reason this made me laugh. A good rock'n'roll quote (merry christmas):
"When buying a used car, punch the buttons on the radio. If all the stations are rock and roll, there's a good chance the transmission is shot." -Larry Lujack
Good point. But I think you can at least consider e-mail a social avenue. With that said, social engineering over e-mail is quite common. And learning how to adequately filter and deal with the harmful messages becomes the same as being able to deal with somebody who calls 'from the IT dept.' because they need to fix your account at work but they don't have your password. Neh?
I just wonder why these people who are so good at compromising Windows' security don't go legal and start writing anti-virus software. They obviously know all the tricks. Seems theirs would be the best AV software in the world and they could sell it and make loads of cash legally. Why, I wonder, does this not happen?
Seriously. I have like 5 email accounts, and I doubt that's a lot compared to some people who use e-mail more than me. Three of which I will drop at a moments notice. The other two I consider untouchable. They are whitelisted. You want to get to my good ones? You gotta go through the other three. Then, and only then, will you get to my inner e-mail sanctum.
So bots and spam and worms and identity phishers don't get to me. Part of the reason is that I simply don't pay attention to e-mails from unsolicited sources. That's half the reason cyber crime works at all: people are idiots when it comes to computers. Odds are you know someone who sees a pop-up disguised to look like an authentic Windows message box and clicks on the buttons thinking they are actually talking to Windows and not some porn-site-based phisher and thief. Odds are you know someone who thinks those e-mails are from someone with an actual product instead of a phishing scam, like a second chance offer from www.ebay.cra.cz or something similar.
These criminals are simply separating stupid people and their money. I know, I know, it's a harsh perspective. You know somebody who got nailed so you want to mod me down because I called your friend stupid. Well, hopefully they learned. The saying goes, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. It's true.
Yes, but if Chuck Norris simply sneezes the Solar Flare will be pushed back. It's just too bad Chuck Norris never gets sick and has no allergies. Jack Bauer, you win this round.
Hmm, is that the cycle where we see one day of the Sun's life, and during that day the sun gets shot multiple times, saves the president, arrests the president later, gets beaten mercilessly, heals completely, and saves the girl, all in one day.. Or am I confusing this with something else...?
"Co-authoring any article with a government employee (or even a corporate employee) is always a risk. While the NYT is free to publish almost anything they want, the co-author (by nature of his/her employment) is not, which was the problem in this situation."
The co-author is a former employee. I fail to see the reasoning behind the censorship, given the circumstances. Perhaps, if it were some issue of national security, I could see the relevance. However, I do not believe it is. More like current administration security.
"I work at best buy.. our display is constantly freezing.. we have only had it for 3 days!!!! granted its running alot being in a store.. but it over heats alot.. I would wait a while till they perfect their system..
I have a 360.. I got it when the 1st batch came out.. and it crashed.. good thing i bought the replacement plan (ive known 3 other people who were the first ones with it whos crashed..) if you ask me your better off waiting a while before you get any system.."
"SYSTEM ISSUES:
I've never had a problem with my Xbox, I know some people have had freeze issues, but no one I know. However, the Xbox is louder than the PS3.
PS3 freezes like 4-5 times a day. I'm waiting for a patch to fix that, or maybe when the second gen. machine comes out I'll trade this one in. Definately buy a replacement plan if you purchase this machine. "
"PS3 has some serious compatability issues such as if you own an HDTV that is just a couple years old you can forget Hi-Def because the PS3 runs a 60Hz refresh rate and your older HDTV runs 24hz so no compatability."
Not exactly freezing, but still no good.
"FYI- Just went to my local Target store here in Los Angeles Calif. The "display" model was not working. The Target Sales person said it had "lots of problems" and "locked up all the time" and has not worked since he came back to work after 3 days off. He said it still does not work. The PS3 was turned off in it's display case."
"The playstation 3 has many problems from load issues to gamepad sensitivity...for the price it is selling on ebay not worth it...I getting my money back..."
"This system works great for the most part. However, some bugs and errors have developed to warrant waiting a few months until an update or something is done to fix them."
"Dont even bother with the ps3, after owning the 360 for a year, I am very disappointed in the Ps3. Not only are the graphics worse than on the 360 but its constitly locking up and its has no cool features like the 360. Save you money buy the 360. Sony over promises and underdelivers once again!"
" would wait until Sony works out all the bugs with this system. I've read several articles and have experienced this myself. I returned the system to the store and someone else purchased it right away even with the bugs.
The system is good, but I would really wait as Sony has admitted problems nationally with several of the games that won't play on the system 3. These bugs are hardware related and connot be fixed with a software patch.
Please wanted to give Ebay'ers peace of mind and not have them be disappointed."
"The PS3 has a 55.4% failure rating!!!! I personally know 8 people who own this system and 6 of the 8 have gotten bad systems and now have to wait even longer for the replacements. Also SONY is telling every one that 1080p is the setting this system will trasmit at. It's true!!!! If your TV is capable of 1080p you'll have the same picture as XBOX 360 does in most of it's settings. However, if you TV isn't capable your picture will be distorted and there is not anything you can do to change it. XBOX 360 is the definate winner of the new generation in gaming. As a matter of fact, SONY has no buisness charging more for the PS3 than NINTENDO does for the Wii, and the is far superior to the PS3."
I've read over two hundred customer reviews of the PS3 (because I may still buy one) and a good percentage (not a majority, but it's significant), probably at least one in five, claim they have had problems with their PS3 locking up.
And let's not consider the possibility that Blu-Ray goes the way of BetaMax? That would be a significant blow to Sony. Why couldn't they just use HD-DVD in the PS3? Because of greed? Seems like if they had done so they would be ensured a more promising future.
Agreed. It would be generally very poor form for a company to do such a thing.
And obviously the people who sell these exploits want to get more than one sale out of each one. Selling them to Microsoft means, hopefully, the end of the exploit and no more sales. So if MS really did buy these exploits, they'd have to do it without letting the hackers find out it was them buying the exploits. Because the hackers would probably never want to sell them to MS.
I'm sure this fits into some science fiction plot somewhere. And the truth as it is said is often stranger than fiction.
The PS3 will win over the hardcore gamers who have to have the fastest, most amazing machine available.
Oh, great. The hardcore portion of the market. What is this, 5-10% of the market, if that?
The Wii will skim off the younger players and those who don't have as much money to spend.
Again, what a tremendously huge portion of the market. Maybe check the gamer demographic to see who buys most consoles... You might be surprised at the average age. It's not 13.
Both have the advantage of being made in Japan, so they'll crowd the Xbox right out of that market.
Again.. right out of the huge Japanese market. The one that Microsoft is obviously depending on for survival. Or.. wait.. no.
In the US and Europe, it's harder to say, but I see the Xbox's early start as more of a liability than a benefit.
I can't find a single reason this statement makes sense except that it means the 360 isn't the newest thing out there... and some people want the newest thing out there. And guess what, that means they already have a 360 because not too long ago, it WAS the newest thing out there. And now they'll see the problems with their PS3 and that the graphics aren't much better and wonder why they ever bought the 360.
BTW, you can purcahse a 360 HD-DVD player and use it on your PC. It's $200. Or you can buy a PS3 and play Blu-Ray movies for 45 minutes before the system hangs. And there's no firmware update that will fix the hardware problems. Also, go ahead and feel free to be all warm and fuzzy when you find out that your return/replacement turnaround is months and months.
Not to say I told you so.. but the 360 is succeeding right now. In a year, maybe not so much. But by then Microsoft will have firmly seated itself in the console market. Something nobody thought possible, or at least many people didn't, not too long ago. Except me, and maybe a few others.
There are numerous ways to make yourself anonymous, however, they are for another discussion. Which is why I just suffice to say this guy is a piss-poor hacker.
He didn't even try. He was just a disgruntled IT worker. Instead of using a machine gun to mow people down he wanted to use a transmitter to mow packets down. In this day and age people take that very seriously. So he's going to jail for 15 months. End of story.
But seriously. No way to hide IP addresses from the server. Unless you want to terminate your connection. Then you can hide all day. And get nowhere fast.
This guy who got caught.. well, in short, he sucked. Good hackers don't get caught.
Besides, I would say calling him a hacker does a disservice to the name. He was much closer to a script kiddie IMHO.
I think what Microsoft is doing right now is analogous to the old practice of offering a product at a higher cost initially just so you can then negotiate down to the price you really want.
You might claim it is apples and oranges. I think it's not. They design the product with more restrictive DRM knowing the consumer will not want ANY DRM. Then they 'listen' to the consumer by removing some, but not all of it. Thus arriving at a middle ground, but really closer to their originally planned position. This serves to possibly give them what they want while simultaneously making them look good in the eyes of the consumer.
Of course, most intelligent consumers decry... well why finish the sentence. "Most intelligent consumers" probably accounts for a very small percentage of the total consumer base.
Mod me Troll, it's obvious I couldn't care less. But shouldn't you be modding up good posts rather than modding down ones that nobody is going to see anyway? Nice job with those mod points morons.
Slashdot articles of late are like email spam. They entice you to want to read them, and then when you do you find that something else entirely is the case. Like I said, news for nerds, stuff that matters? Bullshit. TLF
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't mean to imply jealousy on your part. I just thought you should know nothing has been handed to me on a silver spoon.
Actually, it was gasoline stations who raised gasoline prices, based on oil futures. This is standard practice in an open market. If you think your gold is going to be rarer in the future because there won't be as much gold produced do you think you'd be willing to sell it for the current price, or would you start asking for more based on your knowledge? In other words if you still sold it at market price, knowing it was going to be worth more in the future, you aren't a very apt businessperson, are you?
No evil oil executives were sitting back in their huge chairs thinking about how they can squeeze more out of the consumer. Supply and demand, nothing else, is what caused the prices to inflate. And in case you haven't noticed, the supply of oil is probably the single largest contributing factor to economic change worldwide -- so when there's a possibility of something in the near future coming that can affect that supply I think you better understand that there will be a reaction.
So there is no reason I should thank you for buying gasoline at any price, no matter how low or high. My influence on gas prices is zero. In fact, the company I work for has no influence on gas prices except to make them lower if we undercut the market which makes absolutely no business sense because we have no problem selling every single barrel at market price, and it's the second largest oil company in the entire world.
You think the oil companies are engaged in price gouging. You think we charge whatever we want for oil. Well if you want to talk oil prices, let's talk OPEC (or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). Guess what the oil I help produce over here sells for? A price based largely on the prices OPEC chooses as what they consider fair for their member countries. OPEC's member countries hold about two-thirds of the world's oil reserves.
No, if anything, right now oil is cheaper than it should be. Dwindling worldwide supplies are more than evident, while consumption continues to rise at a great pace. Soon you will see the effects of the supply vs. demand function take it's toll to a much higher level and if you think oil and gasoline is expensive now, just wait. Maybe 10 years or so, possibly less, and you'll be wishing for the prices you have today.
Unless a better, cleaner, source of energy is found. And guess who is doing most of the research into that? Big Oil. We're not stupid. We know what's coming, and we understand what the future holds for petroleum production companies. It's bleak. We want to be ready when the coin flips. We want to be there to smooth the transition. Otherwise, high oil prices will be the least of your worries. That will be nothing. We're talking World War III.
TLF
I didn't mean to imply they hit the database for every action in the game. I meant to say that there is potential to hit the database multiple times per second for every single character logged in -- and all at once.
In any case, it seems the WoW network engineers have figured out a way to do it much more efficiently than before. This of course doesn't necesarily mean that it's as easy as Amazon, or even that it's harder. We just don't know enough details to compare them intelligently. So there's not much point in wild-ass-guesses.
One thing I think is a fair assumption is Amazon probably has more qualified people for the networking they do. Blizzard only recently (ok, a year ago now) had to deal with the kind of traffic WoW generates. They really didn't know WoW would be this huge. And that's probably part of the reason they had to perform weekly downtime maintenance -- they designed the system with less people in mind. They weren't prepared for the smashing success WoW has been.
Which brings me to my last point. MMORPGs must push the envelope to succeed. They have to be able to squeeze every last drop of capability out of their servers and network. Take for example large-scale outdoors (remember, seamless world here) player vs. player battles. Hundreds of players fighting each other at once. And the must be NO lag. Otherwise, when a new MMO comes out that can support the same hundreds or even thousands, with the same nice graphics and gameplay, but with zero lag, that new MMO will win every time. Star Wars Galaxies is a good example of that. I used to play it and on a few occasions there were pre-planned PvP battles. Hundreds of players on a side. Guess what happened as soon as the fighting started? Everything ground to a halt and the server would either crash or the pings would go up into several seconds. In other words it was unplayable. Compare that to WoW, and you can see why people would choose WoW over SWG, even though SWG had no downtime for maintenance. (all other game aspects aside)
TLF
Nobody is forcing you to not get a job like mine in Big Oil. I went to school for 2.5 years, got two Associates degrees, did well in my class, and got the job. You can too. And here's the if, and it's a big one:If you want to work in the Arctic (I work a few miles from the Arctic ocean) and are willing to do a shift rotation of 2 weeks working and 2 weeks off. This means you'd probably have to move to Alaska. Or be willing to do A LOT of travel (I know many who live outside and still find it worthwhile).
Don't want to do that? No? Then don't complain.
I don't need to thank anybody. I worked for what I have. I knew nobody in the industry, so I didn't have an "in". And I earn my wages.
TLF
While I agree that needing to be taken offline every week is indicative of bad design, I do not agree that you can compare Amazon's traffic to WoW's. I believe if you broke each individual connection to a WoW account down and compared it to each individual connection to an Amazon account you would see a GREAT deal of difference.
For example, every single milliseconda person's WoW account is capable of multiple updates to the server's database. A player's entire actions must be queued, executed and responded to in a mere fraction of a second or the entire game is unplayable. People would scream LAG until WoW was a ghost MMO -- or, more accurately, WoW would never have gotten so large in the first place.
Compare that to the average connection for an Amazon account. I think you'll see there's a huge difference, even just in principle. Now, how many thousands of people do you think are accessing Amazon.com at once?
Each WoW servers literally has thousands of people online at any given time, and each and every one of these people is expecting to get fast service because they pay for it every month and the game would be plain stupid without it.
Now I'm not claiming that I know the intricacies of the WoW database, but I imagine that even Amazon's database runs into barriers and needs maintenance and optimization. Compare that to WoW and you might see why there is a need for constant maintenance. Only now they don't (we'll see) have to bring the servers down every week for extended maintenance. They need only restart them.. which to me sounds like they have some reason for the restarts. Perhaps it gives them a chance to quickly remove various time-stamped data that is no longer relevant to the game once it has been rebooted. Like I said, I don't know.
But rest assured, it's a lot different than Amazon.
TLF
I work for Big Oil, and this year every employee in the state got a gift worth $450, after taxes. Yep, they paid for the gift via our paychecks, deducted taxes from the additional money (it was like $620 gross) and deducted the $450 after taxes for the gift. I.E. the paycheck was no larger than normal but you got a $450 gift with taxes already paid. I thought that was pretty nice.
We also received 'end of the year' checks for $1,000 after taxes and our bonus is usually around 10% of our yearly gross (so anywhere from $11,000 to $20,000 for most employees).
When I take a second to think about it, I really consider myself fortunate. I love this company.
TLF
"That's good news for people just wanting to rock the hell out over the holidays."
For some reason this made me laugh. A good rock'n'roll quote (merry christmas):
"When buying a used car, punch the buttons on the radio. If all the stations are rock and roll, there's a good chance the transmission is shot."
-Larry Lujack
TLF
Good point. But I think you can at least consider e-mail a social avenue. With that said, social engineering over e-mail is quite common. And learning how to adequately filter and deal with the harmful messages becomes the same as being able to deal with somebody who calls 'from the IT dept.' because they need to fix your account at work but they don't have your password. Neh?
TLF
I just wonder why these people who are so good at compromising Windows' security don't go legal and start writing anti-virus software. They obviously know all the tricks. Seems theirs would be the best AV software in the world and they could sell it and make loads of cash legally. Why, I wonder, does this not happen?
TLF
Seriously. I have like 5 email accounts, and I doubt that's a lot compared to some people who use e-mail more than me. Three of which I will drop at a moments notice. The other two I consider untouchable. They are whitelisted. You want to get to my good ones? You gotta go through the other three. Then, and only then, will you get to my inner e-mail sanctum.
So bots and spam and worms and identity phishers don't get to me. Part of the reason is that I simply don't pay attention to e-mails from unsolicited sources. That's half the reason cyber crime works at all: people are idiots when it comes to computers. Odds are you know someone who sees a pop-up disguised to look like an authentic Windows message box and clicks on the buttons thinking they are actually talking to Windows and not some porn-site-based phisher and thief. Odds are you know someone who thinks those e-mails are from someone with an actual product instead of a phishing scam, like a second chance offer from www.ebay.cra.cz or something similar.
These criminals are simply separating stupid people and their money. I know, I know, it's a harsh perspective. You know somebody who got nailed so you want to mod me down because I called your friend stupid. Well, hopefully they learned. The saying goes, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. It's true.
TLF
So what you're telling me is to buy stock in a corporation, and probably one that produces sun tan lotion?
TLF
Yes, but if Chuck Norris simply sneezes the Solar Flare will be pushed back. It's just too bad Chuck Norris never gets sick and has no allergies. Jack Bauer, you win this round.
TLF
Hmm, is that the cycle where we see one day of the Sun's life, and during that day the sun gets shot multiple times, saves the president, arrests the president later, gets beaten mercilessly, heals completely, and saves the girl, all in one day.. Or am I confusing this with something else...?
TLF
The co-author is a former employee. I fail to see the reasoning behind the censorship, given the circumstances. Perhaps, if it were some issue of national security, I could see the relevance. However, I do not believe it is. More like current administration security.
TLF
Look.. I don't want to call you an idiot.. But.. well you are.
I own a PS3. So, what were you saying again?
TLF
Not exactly freezing, but still no good.
To quote but a few....
TLF
You haven't seen many reports then.
I've read over two hundred customer reviews of the PS3 (because I may still buy one) and a good percentage (not a majority, but it's significant), probably at least one in five, claim they have had problems with their PS3 locking up.
And let's not consider the possibility that Blu-Ray goes the way of BetaMax? That would be a significant blow to Sony. Why couldn't they just use HD-DVD in the PS3? Because of greed? Seems like if they had done so they would be ensured a more promising future.
TLF
Agreed. It would be generally very poor form for a company to do such a thing.
And obviously the people who sell these exploits want to get more than one sale out of each one. Selling them to Microsoft means, hopefully, the end of the exploit and no more sales. So if MS really did buy these exploits, they'd have to do it without letting the hackers find out it was them buying the exploits. Because the hackers would probably never want to sell them to MS.
I'm sure this fits into some science fiction plot somewhere. And the truth as it is said is often stranger than fiction.
TLF
Obviously Microsoft is missing these holes in Vista in house.
Maybe the biggest customer for these zero-day exploits should be.. Microsoft?
$50,000 isn't that much compared to the other option IMHO.
Just a thought.
TLF
Sorry for the hasty post. Should've used preview.
Anyway, I meant people will wonder why they ever bought the PS3, not the 360.
TLF
Oh, great. The hardcore portion of the market. What is this, 5-10% of the market, if that?
Again, what a tremendously huge portion of the market. Maybe check the gamer demographic to see who buys most consoles... You might be surprised at the average age. It's not 13.
Again.. right out of the huge Japanese market. The one that Microsoft is obviously depending on for survival. Or.. wait.. no.
I can't find a single reason this statement makes sense except that it means the 360 isn't the newest thing out there... and some people want the newest thing out there. And guess what, that means they already have a 360 because not too long ago, it WAS the newest thing out there. And now they'll see the problems with their PS3 and that the graphics aren't much better and wonder why they ever bought the 360.
BTW, you can purcahse a 360 HD-DVD player and use it on your PC. It's $200. Or you can buy a PS3 and play Blu-Ray movies for 45 minutes before the system hangs. And there's no firmware update that will fix the hardware problems. Also, go ahead and feel free to be all warm and fuzzy when you find out that your return/replacement turnaround is months and months.
Not to say I told you so.. but the 360 is succeeding right now. In a year, maybe not so much. But by then Microsoft will have firmly seated itself in the console market. Something nobody thought possible, or at least many people didn't, not too long ago. Except me, and maybe a few others.
TLF
TLF
There are numerous ways to make yourself anonymous, however, they are for another discussion. Which is why I just suffice to say this guy is a piss-poor hacker.
He didn't even try. He was just a disgruntled IT worker. Instead of using a machine gun to mow people down he wanted to use a transmitter to mow packets down. In this day and age people take that very seriously. So he's going to jail for 15 months. End of story.
TLF
... And what's one more? ;p
But seriously. No way to hide IP addresses from the server. Unless you want to terminate your connection. Then you can hide all day. And get nowhere fast.
This guy who got caught.. well, in short, he sucked. Good hackers don't get caught.
Besides, I would say calling him a hacker does a disservice to the name. He was much closer to a script kiddie IMHO.
TLF
I think what Microsoft is doing right now is analogous to the old practice of offering a product at a higher cost initially just so you can then negotiate down to the price you really want.
... well why finish the sentence. "Most intelligent consumers" probably accounts for a very small percentage of the total consumer base.
You might claim it is apples and oranges. I think it's not. They design the product with more restrictive DRM knowing the consumer will not want ANY DRM. Then they 'listen' to the consumer by removing some, but not all of it. Thus arriving at a middle ground, but really closer to their originally planned position. This serves to possibly give them what they want while simultaneously making them look good in the eyes of the consumer.
Of course, most intelligent consumers decry
TLF
I was implying I couldn't care less about the Karma hit. But thanks for playing.
TLF
Mod me Troll, it's obvious I couldn't care less. But shouldn't you be modding up good posts rather than modding down ones that nobody is going to see anyway? Nice job with those mod points morons.
Slashdot articles of late are like email spam. They entice you to want to read them, and then when you do you find that something else entirely is the case. Like I said, news for nerds, stuff that matters? Bullshit.
TLF