Don't post negative product reviews to "punish" Paul. It won't (directly, anyhow). It will directly punish the manufacturers of the product, for which Paul is merely a third-party marketing arm. As Dave points out in his emails - the product is great and he truly feels the public should have access to the product. Trying to drive the company which manufactures it into the ground isn't going to help anyone.
Avenger has indicated they'll no longer use OceanMarketing after the events of the past day. This guy should be going down in flames on his own, not taking a great product with him. Sure N-Control, etc, made mistakes working with this guy. Sure, like most companies they saw only the $$$ but this is nothing new or unique to that particular organisation.
To explain the pre-amble, in the article, Paul pretends he's Brandon in an email earlier on:
Hi Joel,
I have been following this story since this morning when someone notified me about what was going on. I did not write that response to you.
Yes, in the past I received email at brandon@avengercontroller.com but even then we were an outsourced marketing agency for N-Control. I no longer receive email at that address because we fired N-Control as a client about 8 months ago due to constant shipping delays (which we had to deal with) and their association with Paul Cristoforo who is a street thug masquerading as a self proclaimed "Marketing Professional". This guy is a complete fool and somehow strong armed his way into working with the company so we walked away. I am not surprised in the slightest bit by what's going on right now. In fact, we told the owners of the company on many occasions that this would eventually happen.
I wasn't going to chime in but since he is replying as me, I can't resist. I personally can't stand him.
Who says he didn't? Someone doesn't have to file a patent every time they invent something. I've never patented any of my inventions, and don't disseminate the vast majority of them. OP is welcome to comment on a patent, and whether he inveted it or not is irrelevant. Bad troll. Bad!
That would be fine, except there's not necessarily any sign of an issue with the distraction of cellphone usage until one is in an emergency situation.
To be fair, if you're driving on a clear, open road, with minimal required speed adjustments, using a cellphone isn't going to impact you at all. The issue comes on those occasions when a kid suddenly runs out in front of your car, and someone who's preoccupied with texting or talking is less going to be able to avoid the accident.
Not being able to use a phone while driving isn't punishment. It's purely prevention.
Occam's Razor suggests someone who has access to the internals network and workings of the plant, and in fact built it, is far more able to write code to attack the network than a third party unfamiliar with their systems. So.. if we're going to strictly apply the rule, then YES.
Considering they have told their people that carrion birds circling over their decimated, poorly irrigated land are "zionist vulture spies", this would hardly surprise me.
That's true in most cases (although a format in Windows 7 of an SSD will request TRIM, erasing the data, but as we're talking about USB sticks that's not completely relevant here), and in those cases it doesn't appear as random data, but quite easily visible data. And if the perp's deniability is that he just formatted it, the random data is a dead-giveaway.
I wasn't intending to suggest to OP that he could format his drive and clear his data, but rather answering his question as to how his data should look as opposed to non-randomized data. Naturally, intact files are also obviously non-random.:) Ie, if the data is all zeros or all ones, it's clearly not encrypted.
You're quite right. The researchers were simply pointing out that not only a) are none of them encrypted but also, b) they've got malware on them. Two separate issues. Although yes, an encrypted drive can't be infected by malware while encrypted as there's no file system there for it to infect (unless it writes its own MBR, in which case goodbye data) but as soon as its decrypted and in use that doesn't really matter.
It should appear as random data (as opposed to an empty or freshly fully-formatted drive which appear zeroed or one'd depending on the case). This then means either it is encrypted, or has been securely erased. However, sometimes byte chains can be detected within the data. Use a tool like https://code.google.com/p/tcdiscover/ to test your volume.
Although there are more advanced tools available to LEA. Plausible deniability is more important than how hidden the volume is, and you should never give up the key to your external volume until forced to do so or in dire circumstances. It should be currently almost impossible (in most cases) to detect the second hidden volume within the outer volume.
So, work on that outer volume. Frequently write files to it - generally, as often as you're writing files to your hidden volume. So many people leave an empty outer volume and then expect plausible deniability to work when the volume was created 2 years ago and last modified 3 days ago. While it's "possible" that they "just erased all their data a few days ago", it's not plausible, hence the turn of phrase.
Truecrypt isn't designed to be invisible at all. Aside from entirely encrypted drives, it's fairly obvious if someone HAS encrypted data. Truecrypt is about hiding that data via hidden paritions within outer encrypted containers, and plausible deniability.
Truecrypt volumes are generally detectable: http://www.jadsoftware.com/?page_id=89 https://code.google.com/p/tcdiscover/ And if the researchers discovered drives that are filled entirely with random data, then they know they're either securely formatted or encrypted, and would likely consider them the latter - if they're securely formatted the file system appears intact. If the entire drive is encrypted (or securely erased from the MBR up) then the FS is not intact, and it's a fair bet that the researchers are claiming they found all sticks with intact file systems, formatted to the same volume as the stick, with single partitions.
But - the reason for the ramble: Never make the mistake of thinking Truecrypt is invisible. It's not. What's "invisible" should be your second hidden volume within the Truecrypt container - if you've set it up correctly. And there have previously even been attacks on that, in the event attackers are able to gain access to the external container. Work on your plausible deniability. Don't rely on TC to do the work for you or you'll end up with leaks everywhere. http://www.schneier.com/paper-truecrypt-dfs.pdf
I'm sorry, I think you misunderstood my post entirely. I'm not trying to justify piracy at all, quite the opposite. I was saying that I pay for all my products, and here's the reasons why.
Most of what you've said is quite correct. Some of it I had already covered, but I'll clairfy some points - and add that what I was listing was purely from my personal experience. Ie, the reasons why I purchase almost all of my software legitimately, rather than pirating it. For example, product stability. While it may be true that some DRMd products have caused massive headaches for many users, they haven't for me. If I start experiencing that, I may switch to pirated alternatives (as those people who do presumably started down that path for a reason - be it cost or convenience or DRM, etc), but in the meantime my experience remains true.
I would also like to see your source for illegally copied software being a noticeable (I won't hold you to "most common", even) malware distribution vector. For the record, I work in the IT security industry and so far I could not identify game copies as a serious attack vector. The main attack vectors of 2011 were browser plugin exploits, followed closely by the ever popular "install this instantly or the sky is falling" spam, both email and webad based.
Quite right, and I did say "after browser exploits". I was fairly imprecise here, as I'm referring to idendification of risk sources rather than actual infections. At my ISP we perform automated builds and scans of all usenet binaries we recieve to our NNTP servers (from our upstream provider - we don't identify or build our customers NNTP downloads from other sources). Over 90% of the binaries we recieve are infected with common malware. A portion of the remainder is going to be infected with custom or deeper, triggered malware. This is as opposed to less than 15% of the individual domains that are visited by our customers being known malware havens. So, I do apologise for the lack of clarity and allow me to reword: - Pirated software is an extremely common attack vector. It's not necessarily a common infection method, however, as generally most savvy users of Bittorrent, Usenet, and P2P software are somewhat practised in spotting and avoiding malicious software.
With games? Name one, just ONE, studio where you ever gotten any direct support that was worth the name and didn't consist only of form letters which may or may not have anything to do with your question.
To be fair, I did say "This is more important in commercial software than in games, generally - gaming support is usually terrible from most vendors.". Indeed the only support from a game vendor I could mention regarding this is Blizzard, as I've had excellent telephone support from them - however they're not the norm as in the case of World of Warcraft I have in the past been paying for a monthly service subscription which comes with an expectation of support - which is irrelevant in the case of most other games. And I agree with you - game publishers are terrible for after-sales service. Once they've got your money, they don't care. They know you'll be back for the next game regardless. Commercial vendors however have a different relationship with customers and want to keep you on their side for a product range.
Players that bought recent UBIsoft games might have diverging opinions on the stability of legally bought vs. copied games...
I consider the Ubisoft debacles recently the exception rather than the rule. I haven't had any difficulty with Ubisoft games - but I accept they do occur - especially as some of their "always-on DRM" in some of their titles are public fact. In cases where this occurs, I recommend we continue to vote with our wallet and avoid encouraging manufacturers to do this.
If studios can return to this practice where they actually offer players games that "just work", sales will pick up instantly.
Agreed. I was only giving reasons why I purchase legally as opposed to pirating. If it was made more convenient for me, I'm sure I'd buy more.
I don't pay due to guilt (or fear).. I'm not sure where you got that idea that. The fact is that pirates don't have advantages over everything else. They have the advantage on price, and (in some cases, but not all) on distribution.
The advantages I get from official suppliers of my software produce are generally, in no particular order -
- A far greater likliehood that my software will be free of malware. Sure, it has happened *occasionally* in commercial software, usually due to bad production, but it's far safer. By comparison, pirated software is the most common malware distribution vector, after web-browser exploits. (And no, "scanners" will not pick up all malware, specifically not custom malware built by the packagers of the distro and made a functional part of the software).
- Far better after-sales support, again, in most cases. Having a purchased license and owner's serial information gives me access to a lot of direct assistance that purchasers of the pirated versions instead rely on users of internet forums to assist them with. This is more important in commercial software than in games, generally - gaming support is usually terrible from most vendors.
- Better support for upgrades and DLC. Frequently, it's taken many months, if not longer, before a crew has been bothered updating a pirated release to support a recent DLC. And some less popular games simply never get support for updates or DLC. There'll be pirated versions of 1.0 everywhere, and when all the game-breaking flaws are finally patched by 1.5, nobody's working on that 18-month old game anymore. You're stuck with your frequently flawed crashing version.
- More stable products. Speaking of crashing versions, frequently DRM circumvention results in far less than stable products. Don't get me wrong, many products are faulty to begin with, but internet forums are frequently flooded with complaints about a certain bug occurring which is known to only occur on pirated versions of the game due to the methodolgy breaking it. Alas, we're long from the golden days of piracy, when Razor1911 or Class would release a pirated version which actually *fixed* bugs in games. Now everyone's pumping and dumping releases as fast as possible. That's the name of the game.
- Download security. I can download any game from my Steam library, for instance, right now, at 1.5mb/sec (limited on my side). Half of my 400-odd games on Steam are nigh on impossible to find stable torrents for. Torrents are great for the latest and greatest games. When you want to replay something a few years later though, not so great. Usenet is touch-and-go - longer lasting, but eventually too many files get broken that the parity packs can't handle it any more. And you have all the problems listed above.
Sorry Mdmurphy, I misread - thought you'd said your phone does NOT allow 911 calls when locked. While it's true that some don't, almost all allow 112 while locked. Which, isn't really relevant as that wasn't what you said. Apologies!
The mod is already maxxed, so all I can say is +1.
I've heard this same question asked by many people on Slashdot with the same faulty premise - that somehow I should be switching to Linux, so what bugbears are stopping me, whereas in reality - why SHOULD I switch to Linux?
And that would make a far more interesting and in-depth conversation. We already know the top 10 reasons why WIndows is more ubiquitous than Linux on the desktop. There's nothing to be learnt. Far better would be a question saying something along the lines of:
"I'm a Windows user who sees no good reason to drop the OS and switch to Linux. Convince me."
Again, you've focused on five words of my post as if you're personally insulted by the fact, and instead refer to those five words as my "entire post". My argument, since you seem to have missed it on multiple attempts at comprehension, was that individuals create markets for certain material through the consumption thereof. In periods where, for example, child pornography, have been unregulated have created a considerable market-driven increase thereof. Only censorship and making this material illegal have subsequently proven effective at reducing the production thereof. So what did my comment that most people are idiots have to do with that? Quite simply exactly what I alluded to in my previous statement of over-estimating the self-regulation abilities that people possess. Many individuals will continue to consume a material they know is causing harm in its production, simply because it isn't causing harm to them. Most of you only believe in "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" right up until you want something which will harm someone else and then suddenly it's "fine". There's a reason why video sites on the net which focus largely on videos of people being killed through accident or execution enjoy wild popularity, and it's a sad reflection on you, 99%.
In relation to snuff? No. As snuff films are largely un-verifiable, we can only look at anecdotal evidence surrounding popularity of extremely bad film where people have THOUGHT an individual died in the filming thereof.
I can easily back it up in relation to child porn though. Look at Ukraine, early 2000s, BD Company and LS Studios and various subsidiary and even unaffiliated companies. A market was created for CP through the temporarily unregulated sale of material from Ukraine. It started out with some small sites (LA for example), and drew a huge wealth of income from all over the world and changed from one group with a few models to multinationals and thousands of girls. It progressed to video sites, where explicit videos became purchaseable from sites, or viewable by paying additional "VIP" access fees. It was eventually shut down as the studios were beginning to expand on non-explicit (initially, and at least to those not paying VIP fees) male+female "photography".
This is just one example. There is substantial evidence that without regulation and censorship preventing child pornography, the child-abuse market would grow exponentially.
In Australia, X-rated material is still banned, with the exception of in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the Northern Territories (NT).
Thus, anything which doesn't fall under R18 classification falls instead under "Refused Classification". As there's no X rating available, it's simply not saleable. Of course, there's plenty of X-rated material imported to Australia every day (via the internet, largely). There's no law against possession of X-rated material, however it is illegal to possess certain material (bestiality, child porn, snuff, etc).
And no, it's not really chilling. You seem to overestimate the self-regulation abilities of your fellow man. Most people are drooling idiots. If it wasn't illegal to buy snuff films, they'd be widely purchased and a market created for such - even though people know they're creating a market for it by buying it. You think censorship is obscene, I see it as a necessary evil - because there are worse evils out there. If you can think of a way to remove all censorship, and at the same time not create a market for snuff or child porn, please let me know.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough for you. The article purports to blame DRM for the failure of Vista. My point is, DRM has very little to do with the failure of Vista, and subsequent versions have only built on that DRM. In other words, pointing out Vista's failure was inserted simply to try and bash Microsoft for something. There are many products which DO fail due to their DRM. Vista wasn't one of them. It was completely irrelevant to the article, and judging by your response, will go unnoticed (and even, backed up) by most zealots.
I'd completely agree with you in regards to Windows 8. But I still don't see Vista fitting in contexually to the statements made at all.
"There is a trend in devices to protect the interests of the manufacturer ".. "as we saw with the market failure of Windows Vista and see here"
The market failure of Windows Vista had nothing at all to do with vendor hardware locking whatsoever. That Windows Vista was a market failure is beyond dispute. That any lockouts may or may not have occurred in embedded systems with Vista, may also be possible. And certainly, Vista supports hardware-based DRM - as Windows 7, and MacOSX do. However, the market failure of Windows Vista bears no comparison to manufacturer hardware protection.
My point was not to argue about whether Windows Vista failed, but that its placement appears to be a cheap jab at Microsoft, as its failure doesn't relate to the topic being discussed. WHEN Windows 8 comes out, if we experience a severe lack of adoption due *in large part* to vendor hardware locking - and it fails on that basis - then by all means, use it as an example of an OS failing in the market due to such.
There are plenty of current vendors shipping software locked to specific hardware - any one of which, if shown to cause failure in the marketplace for that product, would have provided a fine example. Trying to attribute Vista's failure to such is extremely weak, and gives the appearance of catering to a specific group of readers. If the problem is that hardware locks aren't actually causing marketplace failures yet (see Apple, Sony, MS Xbox, etc), then that's a space for another discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't post negative product reviews to "punish" Paul. It won't (directly, anyhow). It will directly punish the manufacturers of the product, for which Paul is merely a third-party marketing arm. As Dave points out in his emails - the product is great and he truly feels the public should have access to the product. Trying to drive the company which manufactures it into the ground isn't going to help anyone.
Avenger has indicated they'll no longer use OceanMarketing after the events of the past day. This guy should be going down in flames on his own, not taking a great product with him. Sure N-Control, etc, made mistakes working with this guy. Sure, like most companies they saw only the $$$ but this is nothing new or unique to that particular organisation.
Apparently N-Control decided to stick with this guy even when they were told not to:
http://kotaku.com/5871400/cut-paul-oceanmarketting-christoforo-a-breakhe-probably-just-has-roid-rage/
To explain the pre-amble, in the article, Paul pretends he's Brandon in an email earlier on:
Hi Joel,
I have been following this story since this morning when someone notified me about what was going on. I did not write that response to you.
Yes, in the past I received email at brandon@avengercontroller.com but even then we were an outsourced marketing agency for N-Control. I no longer receive email at that address because we fired N-Control as a client about 8 months ago due to constant shipping delays (which we had to deal with) and their association with Paul Cristoforo who is a street thug masquerading as a self proclaimed "Marketing Professional". This guy is a complete fool and somehow strong armed his way into working with the company so we walked away. I am not surprised in the slightest bit by what's going on right now. In fact, we told the owners of the company on many occasions that this would eventually happen.
I wasn't going to chime in but since he is replying as me, I can't resist. I personally can't stand him.
Brandon
Who says he didn't? Someone doesn't have to file a patent every time they invent something. I've never patented any of my inventions, and don't disseminate the vast majority of them. OP is welcome to comment on a patent, and whether he inveted it or not is irrelevant. Bad troll. Bad!
FYI, in most western countries, doing most of those while driving is illegal. The US is behind the curve here.
That would be fine, except there's not necessarily any sign of an issue with the distraction of cellphone usage until one is in an emergency situation.
To be fair, if you're driving on a clear, open road, with minimal required speed adjustments, using a cellphone isn't going to impact you at all. The issue comes on those occasions when a kid suddenly runs out in front of your car, and someone who's preoccupied with texting or talking is less going to be able to avoid the accident.
Not being able to use a phone while driving isn't punishment. It's purely prevention.
Occam's Razor suggests someone who has access to the internals network and workings of the plant, and in fact built it, is far more able to write code to attack the network than a third party unfamiliar with their systems. So.. if we're going to strictly apply the rule, then YES.
Considering they have told their people that carrion birds circling over their decimated, poorly irrigated land are "zionist vulture spies", this would hardly surprise me.
That's true in most cases (although a format in Windows 7 of an SSD will request TRIM, erasing the data, but as we're talking about USB sticks that's not completely relevant here), and in those cases it doesn't appear as random data, but quite easily visible data. And if the perp's deniability is that he just formatted it, the random data is a dead-giveaway.
I wasn't intending to suggest to OP that he could format his drive and clear his data, but rather answering his question as to how his data should look as opposed to non-randomized data. Naturally, intact files are also obviously non-random. :) Ie, if the data is all zeros or all ones, it's clearly not encrypted.
You're quite right. The researchers were simply pointing out that not only a) are none of them encrypted but also, b) they've got malware on them. Two separate issues. Although yes, an encrypted drive can't be infected by malware while encrypted as there's no file system there for it to infect (unless it writes its own MBR, in which case goodbye data) but as soon as its decrypted and in use that doesn't really matter.
It should appear as random data (as opposed to an empty or freshly fully-formatted drive which appear zeroed or one'd depending on the case). This then means either it is encrypted, or has been securely erased. However, sometimes byte chains can be detected within the data. Use a tool like https://code.google.com/p/tcdiscover/ to test your volume.
Although there are more advanced tools available to LEA. Plausible deniability is more important than how hidden the volume is, and you should never give up the key to your external volume until forced to do so or in dire circumstances. It should be currently almost impossible (in most cases) to detect the second hidden volume within the outer volume.
So, work on that outer volume. Frequently write files to it - generally, as often as you're writing files to your hidden volume. So many people leave an empty outer volume and then expect plausible deniability to work when the volume was created 2 years ago and last modified 3 days ago. While it's "possible" that they "just erased all their data a few days ago", it's not plausible, hence the turn of phrase.
As I posted elsewhere, but in case you don't see it - for finding truecrypt volumes hidden in files: http://16s.us/TCHunt/index.php
Truecrypt isn't designed to be invisible at all. Aside from entirely encrypted drives, it's fairly obvious if someone HAS encrypted data. Truecrypt is about hiding that data via hidden paritions within outer encrypted containers, and plausible deniability.
Truecrypt volumes are generally detectable:
http://www.jadsoftware.com/?page_id=89
https://code.google.com/p/tcdiscover/
And if the researchers discovered drives that are filled entirely with random data, then they know they're either securely formatted or encrypted, and would likely consider them the latter - if they're securely formatted the file system appears intact. If the entire drive is encrypted (or securely erased from the MBR up) then the FS is not intact, and it's a fair bet that the researchers are claiming they found all sticks with intact file systems, formatted to the same volume as the stick, with single partitions.
As are those hidden within files:
http://16s.us/TCHunt/index.php
But - the reason for the ramble: Never make the mistake of thinking Truecrypt is invisible. It's not. What's "invisible" should be your second hidden volume within the Truecrypt container - if you've set it up correctly. And there have previously even been attacks on that, in the event attackers are able to gain access to the external container. Work on your plausible deniability. Don't rely on TC to do the work for you or you'll end up with leaks everywhere.
http://www.schneier.com/paper-truecrypt-dfs.pdf
I'm sorry, I think you misunderstood my post entirely. I'm not trying to justify piracy at all, quite the opposite. I was saying that I pay for all my products, and here's the reasons why.
Most of what you've said is quite correct. Some of it I had already covered, but I'll clairfy some points - and add that what I was listing was purely from my personal experience. Ie, the reasons why I purchase almost all of my software legitimately, rather than pirating it. For example, product stability. While it may be true that some DRMd products have caused massive headaches for many users, they haven't for me. If I start experiencing that, I may switch to pirated alternatives (as those people who do presumably started down that path for a reason - be it cost or convenience or DRM, etc), but in the meantime my experience remains true.
I would also like to see your source for illegally copied software being a noticeable (I won't hold you to "most common", even) malware distribution vector. For the record, I work in the IT security industry and so far I could not identify game copies as a serious attack vector. The main attack vectors of 2011 were browser plugin exploits, followed closely by the ever popular "install this instantly or the sky is falling" spam, both email and webad based.
Quite right, and I did say "after browser exploits". I was fairly imprecise here, as I'm referring to idendification of risk sources rather than actual infections. At my ISP we perform automated builds and scans of all usenet binaries we recieve to our NNTP servers (from our upstream provider - we don't identify or build our customers NNTP downloads from other sources). Over 90% of the binaries we recieve are infected with common malware. A portion of the remainder is going to be infected with custom or deeper, triggered malware. This is as opposed to less than 15% of the individual domains that are visited by our customers being known malware havens. So, I do apologise for the lack of clarity and allow me to reword:
- Pirated software is an extremely common attack vector. It's not necessarily a common infection method, however, as generally most savvy users of Bittorrent, Usenet, and P2P software are somewhat practised in spotting and avoiding malicious software.
With games? Name one, just ONE, studio where you ever gotten any direct support that was worth the name and didn't consist only of form letters which may or may not have anything to do with your question.
To be fair, I did say "This is more important in commercial software than in games, generally - gaming support is usually terrible from most vendors.". Indeed the only support from a game vendor I could mention regarding this is Blizzard, as I've had excellent telephone support from them - however they're not the norm as in the case of World of Warcraft I have in the past been paying for a monthly service subscription which comes with an expectation of support - which is irrelevant in the case of most other games. And I agree with you - game publishers are terrible for after-sales service. Once they've got your money, they don't care. They know you'll be back for the next game regardless. Commercial vendors however have a different relationship with customers and want to keep you on their side for a product range.
Players that bought recent UBIsoft games might have diverging opinions on the stability of legally bought vs. copied games...
I consider the Ubisoft debacles recently the exception rather than the rule. I haven't had any difficulty with Ubisoft games - but I accept they do occur - especially as some of their "always-on DRM" in some of their titles are public fact. In cases where this occurs, I recommend we continue to vote with our wallet and avoid encouraging manufacturers to do this.
If studios can return to this practice where they actually offer players games that "just work", sales will pick up instantly.
Agreed. I was only giving reasons why I purchase legally as opposed to pirating. If it was made more convenient for me, I'm sure I'd buy more.
I don't pay due to guilt (or fear).. I'm not sure where you got that idea that. The fact is that pirates don't have advantages over everything else. They have the advantage on price, and (in some cases, but not all) on distribution.
The advantages I get from official suppliers of my software produce are generally, in no particular order -
- A far greater likliehood that my software will be free of malware. Sure, it has happened *occasionally* in commercial software, usually due to bad production, but it's far safer. By comparison, pirated software is the most common malware distribution vector, after web-browser exploits. (And no, "scanners" will not pick up all malware, specifically not custom malware built by the packagers of the distro and made a functional part of the software).
- Far better after-sales support, again, in most cases. Having a purchased license and owner's serial information gives me access to a lot of direct assistance that purchasers of the pirated versions instead rely on users of internet forums to assist them with. This is more important in commercial software than in games, generally - gaming support is usually terrible from most vendors.
- Better support for upgrades and DLC. Frequently, it's taken many months, if not longer, before a crew has been bothered updating a pirated release to support a recent DLC. And some less popular games simply never get support for updates or DLC. There'll be pirated versions of 1.0 everywhere, and when all the game-breaking flaws are finally patched by 1.5, nobody's working on that 18-month old game anymore. You're stuck with your frequently flawed crashing version.
- More stable products. Speaking of crashing versions, frequently DRM circumvention results in far less than stable products. Don't get me wrong, many products are faulty to begin with, but internet forums are frequently flooded with complaints about a certain bug occurring which is known to only occur on pirated versions of the game due to the methodolgy breaking it. Alas, we're long from the golden days of piracy, when Razor1911 or Class would release a pirated version which actually *fixed* bugs in games. Now everyone's pumping and dumping releases as fast as possible. That's the name of the game.
- Download security. I can download any game from my Steam library, for instance, right now, at 1.5mb/sec (limited on my side). Half of my 400-odd games on Steam are nigh on impossible to find stable torrents for. Torrents are great for the latest and greatest games. When you want to replay something a few years later though, not so great. Usenet is touch-and-go - longer lasting, but eventually too many files get broken that the parity packs can't handle it any more. And you have all the problems listed above.
Guilt and fear don't play into it at all.
Sorry Mdmurphy, I misread - thought you'd said your phone does NOT allow 911 calls when locked. While it's true that some don't, almost all allow 112 while locked. Which, isn't really relevant as that wasn't what you said. Apologies!
Dial 112 from the lock screen. Emergency call, almsot every phone, every carrier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112_(emergency_telephone_number)
The mod is already maxxed, so all I can say is +1.
I've heard this same question asked by many people on Slashdot with the same faulty premise - that somehow I should be switching to Linux, so what bugbears are stopping me, whereas in reality - why SHOULD I switch to Linux?
And that would make a far more interesting and in-depth conversation. We already know the top 10 reasons why WIndows is more ubiquitous than Linux on the desktop. There's nothing to be learnt. Far better would be a question saying something along the lines of:
"I'm a Windows user who sees no good reason to drop the OS and switch to Linux. Convince me."
Again, you've focused on five words of my post as if you're personally insulted by the fact, and instead refer to those five words as my "entire post". My argument, since you seem to have missed it on multiple attempts at comprehension, was that individuals create markets for certain material through the consumption thereof. In periods where, for example, child pornography, have been unregulated have created a considerable market-driven increase thereof. Only censorship and making this material illegal have subsequently proven effective at reducing the production thereof. So what did my comment that most people are idiots have to do with that? Quite simply exactly what I alluded to in my previous statement of over-estimating the self-regulation abilities that people possess. Many individuals will continue to consume a material they know is causing harm in its production, simply because it isn't causing harm to them. Most of you only believe in "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" right up until you want something which will harm someone else and then suddenly it's "fine". There's a reason why video sites on the net which focus largely on videos of people being killed through accident or execution enjoy wild popularity, and it's a sad reflection on you, 99%.
You're argument is that people are drooling idiots
You're argument
You're
Thanks for proving my point. But no. While that was a statement I made, it was not the crux of my argument at all.
Do you have any evidence to back this up?
In relation to snuff? No. As snuff films are largely un-verifiable, we can only look at anecdotal evidence surrounding popularity of extremely bad film where people have THOUGHT an individual died in the filming thereof.
I can easily back it up in relation to child porn though. Look at Ukraine, early 2000s, BD Company and LS Studios and various subsidiary and even unaffiliated companies. A market was created for CP through the temporarily unregulated sale of material from Ukraine. It started out with some small sites (LA for example), and drew a huge wealth of income from all over the world and changed from one group with a few models to multinationals and thousands of girls. It progressed to video sites, where explicit videos became purchaseable from sites, or viewable by paying additional "VIP" access fees. It was eventually shut down as the studios were beginning to expand on non-explicit (initially, and at least to those not paying VIP fees) male+female "photography".
This is just one example. There is substantial evidence that without regulation and censorship preventing child pornography, the child-abuse market would grow exponentially.
If my arguement is ridiculous, you would actually counter the points I raised. You're unable to. Carry on, 99%.
In Australia, X-rated material is still banned, with the exception of in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the Northern Territories (NT).
Thus, anything which doesn't fall under R18 classification falls instead under "Refused Classification". As there's no X rating available, it's simply not saleable. Of course, there's plenty of X-rated material imported to Australia every day (via the internet, largely). There's no law against possession of X-rated material, however it is illegal to possess certain material (bestiality, child porn, snuff, etc).
And no, it's not really chilling. You seem to overestimate the self-regulation abilities of your fellow man. Most people are drooling idiots. If it wasn't illegal to buy snuff films, they'd be widely purchased and a market created for such - even though people know they're creating a market for it by buying it. You think censorship is obscene, I see it as a necessary evil - because there are worse evils out there. If you can think of a way to remove all censorship, and at the same time not create a market for snuff or child porn, please let me know.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough for you. The article purports to blame DRM for the failure of Vista. My point is, DRM has very little to do with the failure of Vista, and subsequent versions have only built on that DRM. In other words, pointing out Vista's failure was inserted simply to try and bash Microsoft for something. There are many products which DO fail due to their DRM. Vista wasn't one of them. It was completely irrelevant to the article, and judging by your response, will go unnoticed (and even, backed up) by most zealots.
I'd completely agree with you in regards to Windows 8. But I still don't see Vista fitting in contexually to the statements made at all.
"There is a trend in devices to protect the interests of the manufacturer " .. "as we saw with the market failure of Windows Vista and see here"
The market failure of Windows Vista had nothing at all to do with vendor hardware locking whatsoever. That Windows Vista was a market failure is beyond dispute. That any lockouts may or may not have occurred in embedded systems with Vista, may also be possible. And certainly, Vista supports hardware-based DRM - as Windows 7, and MacOSX do. However, the market failure of Windows Vista bears no comparison to manufacturer hardware protection.
My point was not to argue about whether Windows Vista failed, but that its placement appears to be a cheap jab at Microsoft, as its failure doesn't relate to the topic being discussed. WHEN Windows 8 comes out, if we experience a severe lack of adoption due *in large part* to vendor hardware locking - and it fails on that basis - then by all means, use it as an example of an OS failing in the market due to such.
There are plenty of current vendors shipping software locked to specific hardware - any one of which, if shown to cause failure in the marketplace for that product, would have provided a fine example. Trying to attribute Vista's failure to such is extremely weak, and gives the appearance of catering to a specific group of readers. If the problem is that hardware locks aren't actually causing marketplace failures yet (see Apple, Sony, MS Xbox, etc), then that's a space for another discussion.