The cracking and warez scene is not done for money, it's done for fame and respect. There are strict rules and levels of vetting done for pirated software as it makes its way through the system to end-users. Including malware in a crack is a death penalty for any group; their stuff will never be accepted again by site operators, and it would make it to a tiny segment of the population even if it weren't noticed.
Just about any other attack vector for malware, specifically rootkits, will have so much better penetration than a game crack that it's essentially a waste of time to a) crack the game so it works without the DRM (and yes, other crackers can figure out what you did to crack it), b) write undetectable malware to include in it, c) build a reputation good enough to allow the release of the crack, d) get your crack done and out the door before anyone else so yours doesn't get nuked, and e) harness the very few people who will receive the crack.
Keep in mind that a, b, c and d can all be undone by a single person in the distribution chain nuking your release because it's suspect or was released five minutes after someone else's working crack.
In other words, you don't know what you're talking about but LET'S ALL HOP ABOARD THE INSIGHTFUL TRAIN HERPA DERPA DERP.
I'm afRAID to tell you that the TRIM command is unavailable in RAID sets, thereby putting you in the same situation you have with Gen1 Intel SSDs, where performance degrades over time.
I bought an Intel SSD in March 09. Fast forward to February 2010 and WEI showed a 5.9 score--the same as a spindle drive. I did a secure erase using hdderase 3.3 and performance shot up to 7.4. HDTune also showed massive improvements (don't have the numbers for that handy, though).
Where you saw some kind of magical ritual and spirit living on, I saw a high-speed universal neural interface
And it's a good thing they remembered their A-to-B USB cable to allow the transfer. Kind of like how Jeff Goldblum hacked the alien ships in Independence Day with his Macintosh over a coax connection.
That means that console makers are taking 50% of the cost into their pocket, even though they didn't do anything in the development of the game at all.
Yeah, they didn't custom build the hardware, write the API, create the SDK, or write the standard for titles on the system. I definitely agree with you: the console makers had nothing to do with the development of the games.
Yes, it has cost you $0 to get SP1, 2 and 3, but there is no way you can compare the changes found between Mac OS X 10.1 (released September 2001) and OS X 10.5 (released October 2007) with the changes found between Windows XP SP0 (released October 2001) and Windows XP SP3 (released May 2008).
Service Packs are collections of hotfixes with some new features added. New revisions of OS X include entire application suite upgrades, in addition to hundreds of new features at each rev.
For those who are interested, a TechNet Plus subscription costs $349, and includes Windows XP (all versions), Windows Vista (all versions), Windows 7 (all versions), Office 2007 (all applications), Windows Server 2008 (all versions), and the license permits installation on multiple computers.
Compare this to the retail cost of Windows 7 Ultimate ($319) and Office 2007 Professional ($499) and it's quite a deal, especially since retail Windows 7 won't be available until October 22nd, whereas TechNet Plus subscribers get it August 6th.
Why would ANYONE pay retail for Windows or Office when TechNet is available?
Thanks to everyone for the replies. I'm not running NoScript. I checked AdBlock Plus to make sure it wasn't blocking anything (and I don't need it to--Slashdot likes me enough to give me the "opt-out of ads for free" option). I'll try those other tips.
Can anyone explain what the FUCK happened to slashdot to make comments unreadable, and how to fix it? There are unremovable grey horizontal and vertical bars and pill icons everywhere. OMGPONIES was supposed to be a joke, and now they've made it reality.
No research == fail. The colonies were not England.
Most of the 1787 delegates were natives of the Thirteen Colonies. Only 9 were born elsewhere: four (Butler, Fitzsimons, McHenry, and Paterson) in Ireland, two (Davie and Robert Morris) in England, two (Wilson and Witherspoon) in Scotland, and one (Hamilton) in the West Indies.
The vast majority of this comment could be complete jibberish (Bigelow/COTS-D/Sundancer/Obama/Falcon 9/BA-330? Come again?). It sounds like the poster knows what s/he's talking about, but the fact is the people who modded this insightful did so without any fucking insight into what was posted.
The same people who mod insightful on Slashdot also cite Wikipedia in school work.
This release will come eight years almost to the day after the release of Windows XP. I'm using the beta of 7 at home, just like I used all the betas and RCs of XP at home. Looking at Windows then and Windows now, I see a huge missed opportunity. I am pleased with Windows 7, and I think Microsoft has made a lot of smart decisions in their design, production, and marketing of the OS, but it still feels like more of a mea culpa than a solid, polished OS.
If Microsoft's management had been on top of their shit, this product would have released four years ago and what we're seeing today could be so much more. Unfortunately, their back-to-the-drawing-board idea with Longhorn, though a good thing in the end, lost so many years of work and code that it seriously stunted Microsoft's growth of the OS.
Hence Windows Vista. Hence Windows 7. What I'm going to be most interested in is, once 7 is out and people lower the volume of their trash-talking, what is Microsoft going to do next? What major technologies are they working on? What is their vision for the desktop? Windows 7 is just Windows Vista with two more years of polish. Though a terrific upgrade from Vista, I want to hear more about Microsoft's research projects and what real, major features they're working on for future OSes. I'm tired of hearing about multitouch, because that is quickly becoming genericized among OS makers and will remain out of reach for most users for some time, being hardware-dependent.
Ask anyone what they'd change about Windows and you'll get a litany of complaints. Ask Microsoft and they'll tell you Windows is perfect, you just don't understand it.
Not at all. HIPAA is all about what security measures can be deemed reasonably sufficient. In this case, the systems may have been provided by a vendor and are certified only to run at a certain patch level. Makers of medical devices can't be expected to fuzz the software every time Microsoft releases a patch to make sure it doesn't kill someone when used; they instead sell a single device certified to work a certain way.
Given that, reasonable security measures would have been to physically isolate the network these devices were on. This often doesn't happen thanks to VLANs and sloppy network administration.
Lots of replies and none are the right one. The reason why you won't see the same kinds of breaches you do with credit cards is because of the magical law known as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). For more information check here.
How it breaks down is this:
The government DOES care about your privacy
But ONLY if it is your medical history
It includes strict rules regarding the handling of PHI (protected/patient health information)
It includes steep fines for failure to properly handle PHI or improperly accessing PHI
There's a fine for the institution, and there's a fine for the individual(s) who caused the leak
The fine for individuals ranges from $25,000 to $250,000 and one year in prison to ten years in prison
You can be fined for contributing to lax security procedures that allowed it (watch out, IT admins!)
HIPAA compliance programs are required at all hospitals, including training for all staff, with a HIPAA control point to monitor and enforce compliance
The control point works with JCAHO to test and certify compliance
HIPAA is very specific about how data is to be handled and audited from end-to-end, and includes specifics on how data can be properly de-identified. As a systems and network administrator at a major trauma center, HIPAA has been a nightmare to implement and a security officer's dream come true. That said, the focus on personal accountability and the high level of monitoring and enforcement leads to an environment much different than a credit card processor or company.
Isn't it strange that people are still surprised that their computers are fast? Computers have gotten ridiculously fast compared during the last 20 years, and still they seem slow to many of us. Is that just the result of crappy programming, or is there more to it?
It's the hard drive, stupid. Consider the Core i7 processor, which has 64 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth. Now consider your hard drive, which has 100 megabytes per second bandwidth. Yes, I am VERY surprised when my computer is fast because I'm using the technological equivalent of an Intel 8088 (née 1979) for my 5.25" HDD (née 1980).
I am considerably less surprised these days since my purchase of a solid state drive, but I'm still forced to use three spinning platter drives for archival storage.
chances are, the users of Windows 2000 are still using the OS that they are because they're frustrated with Microsoft's "support" policies and the further regressions (performance and usability issues, product activation) posed by newer versions of its products.
People who have no problem using an operating system that is ten years old (Windows 2000 went RTM Dec '99) probably have no problem using a web browser that is zero years old (Firefox 3.5, which hasn't been released). But by your logic, they'll instead want to use Netscape 5, aka Mozilla, also released ten years ago, to avoid further regressions (performance and usability issues) posed by newer versions of web browsers.
The same thing happened to me when Assassin's Creed was released for 360. On release day I did not pre-order and called ahead to make sure they had copies in the store. They assured me they did.
When I got there and asked for it they said they didn't have it. I said I had just called and been told there were copies. The guy behind the counter turned to the guy next to him and said "Hey [co-worker], were you, uhhh..." and trailed off. He replied Lumberg-style with a "Yeeeahhhh, I was going to take it home... Naw, that's ok, sell it."
I was all like what the fuck man, and asked them if it was an open box copy that had been taken home by employees and played. He said yeah. I asked if I would be charged full price. The guy said of course and looked at me like he was the confused one. The three other employees nearby were similarly non-plussed. "If there's anything wrong with it you can return it."...just like I can with a new copy?
I took the cash in my hand and put it away, said no thanks. There was another Gamestop on the way home that had it, nevermind the two Best Buys with obscene pallets of copies.
It was a braindead move on the employees' parts and I'd hate to think the manager would approve of that going down in front of a customer. But that's what happens when you have a bunch of kids running the front of house, unsupervised and with a shrink wrapper, and it's no surprise it's happening everywhere.
I treat the Gamestop sales counter like a casino chip-exchange. I watch every hand at every time, especially when they ask a co-worker to pull out a game. The kids back there do stupid, careless shit with your credit card/license/games/money, and they spend most of their free time dreaming up scams to get more money and more games. That's the business!
No offense to any upstanding Slashdotters working at Gamestop. I'm clearly talking about your slovenly coworkers.
I experienced this with BSG Razor on DVD; it would not play properly in VLC or Media Player Classic on Windows, or VLC on Mac OS X. It played fine on Apple's DVD player. This is because of the way deleted scenes are included in some DVDs: rather than having two full copies of a film on the disc, they have the original copy and the deleted scenes, and if you choose to play the DVD in the unedited/director's-cut/whatever mode, then those scenes get spliced into the playback of the original. It's that splicing that causes the trouble. Whoever invented it should eat a back of dicks for breaking something that everyone believed worked just fine.
Those "insane and stupid requirements" are what mission critical requirements are, and it's ill-advised to assume it's "insane and stupid" just because you can't imagine systems that would require it (financial processing systems, clinical applications in hospitals).
But don't let me bore you with actual experience or first hand knowledge. Please continue telling me I've got my job all wrong.
Tapes are rubbish. Tape is expensive and unreliable. Anyone that tells you otherwise is selling the stuff.
I hope nobody confuses your inability to think beyond your world with fact, because this is the hugest crock of shit.
I have about 12 TB of data that I am required to be able to restore to any day within the last five weeks. One week of backups = 20 TB. In addition, I must:
1) always have at least four weeks' worth of data in different building on the same site
2) always have at most one week's worth of data in the rack
3) always have at least one full backup from within the last five weeks at an off-site storage facility
4) retain every fifth backup for one year
5) retain every 52nd backup for seven years
What are my options?
Option 1 (your option): Buy a minimum of 442 TB of additional disks (102 TB for five weeks of storage [1 & 2 above]; 200 TB for [4]; 140 TB for [5]; 37 times more storage than we currently use), plus the SAN, plus the network, power, and cooling systems to support it. When rotating media, physically remove the drives and carry them around. Carefully. Because one backup weighs thirty pounds. Media cost: $132,000 ($300 per); SAN cost: $50,000.
Option 2 (my option): Buy a tape library and 442 TB of tapes (one library, 368 tapes). When rotating media off-site, throw the tapes into a bag. Carelessly. Because they weigh 15 pounds and don't break. Media cost: $20,600 ($56 per); Library cost: $20,000
Looking at the last 600+ rotations I've done for various systems in the last five years, the failure rate is far, far, far lower than hard drives already; when you take into account the fact that 20% of all tapes are transported 60 miles per year and 50% of all tapes are transported between local sites at least twice per month, the failure rate of hard drives would be through the roof. Further, while I have had tapes fail during a write operation, I have never had a tape fail during a data restore, even on tapes overwritten hundreds of times and tapes stored for years. Perhaps your backup administrator has never heard of data verification or proper media storage, but if he had perhaps you wouldn't have experienced all those repeated failures of your backup system.
Try being a backup administrator, not just playing pretend like you are now, before being so glib.
Steam often has "free weekends" where you can download and play the game for free for a set period of time. If you like it you can buy it and keep playing. If not, it just deactivates and you have the option to delete it.
Slashdot Mirror
The cracking and warez scene is not done for money, it's done for fame and respect. There are strict rules and levels of vetting done for pirated software as it makes its way through the system to end-users. Including malware in a crack is a death penalty for any group; their stuff will never be accepted again by site operators, and it would make it to a tiny segment of the population even if it weren't noticed.
Just about any other attack vector for malware, specifically rootkits, will have so much better penetration than a game crack that it's essentially a waste of time to a) crack the game so it works without the DRM (and yes, other crackers can figure out what you did to crack it), b) write undetectable malware to include in it, c) build a reputation good enough to allow the release of the crack, d) get your crack done and out the door before anyone else so yours doesn't get nuked, and e) harness the very few people who will receive the crack.
Keep in mind that a, b, c and d can all be undone by a single person in the distribution chain nuking your release because it's suspect or was released five minutes after someone else's working crack.
In other words, you don't know what you're talking about but LET'S ALL HOP ABOARD THE INSIGHTFUL TRAIN HERPA DERPA DERP.
I'm afRAID to tell you that the TRIM command is unavailable in RAID sets, thereby putting you in the same situation you have with Gen1 Intel SSDs, where performance degrades over time.
I bought an Intel SSD in March 09. Fast forward to February 2010 and WEI showed a 5.9 score--the same as a spindle drive. I did a secure erase using hdderase 3.3 and performance shot up to 7.4. HDTune also showed massive improvements (don't have the numbers for that handy, though).
TRIM makes a HUUUUGE difference.
And it's a good thing they remembered their A-to-B USB cable to allow the transfer. Kind of like how Jeff Goldblum hacked the alien ships in Independence Day with his Macintosh over a coax connection.
Yeah, they didn't custom build the hardware, write the API, create the SDK, or write the standard for titles on the system. I definitely agree with you: the console makers had nothing to do with the development of the games.
I'm ready to scream bloody murder over it not being included yet.
Yes, it has cost you $0 to get SP1, 2 and 3, but there is no way you can compare the changes found between Mac OS X 10.1 (released September 2001) and OS X 10.5 (released October 2007) with the changes found between Windows XP SP0 (released October 2001) and Windows XP SP3 (released May 2008).
Service Packs are collections of hotfixes with some new features added. New revisions of OS X include entire application suite upgrades, in addition to hundreds of new features at each rev.
For those who are interested, a TechNet Plus subscription costs $349, and includes Windows XP (all versions), Windows Vista (all versions), Windows 7 (all versions), Office 2007 (all applications), Windows Server 2008 (all versions), and the license permits installation on multiple computers.
Compare this to the retail cost of Windows 7 Ultimate ($319) and Office 2007 Professional ($499) and it's quite a deal, especially since retail Windows 7 won't be available until October 22nd, whereas TechNet Plus subscribers get it August 6th.
Why would ANYONE pay retail for Windows or Office when TechNet is available?
My phone has a camera. It has Internet access. It has ringtones. It has GPS. It runs programs.
My phone makes phone calls, and I wish to death it would stop.
Thanks to everyone for the replies. I'm not running NoScript. I checked AdBlock Plus to make sure it wasn't blocking anything (and I don't need it to--Slashdot likes me enough to give me the "opt-out of ads for free" option). I'll try those other tips.
Can anyone explain what the FUCK happened to slashdot to make comments unreadable, and how to fix it? There are unremovable grey horizontal and vertical bars and pill icons everywhere. OMGPONIES was supposed to be a joke, and now they've made it reality.
Viz: http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/9974/wtfiswrongwithslashdot.png
No research == fail. The colonies were not England.
Most of the 1787 delegates were natives of the Thirteen Colonies. Only 9 were born elsewhere: four (Butler, Fitzsimons, McHenry, and Paterson) in Ireland, two (Davie and Robert Morris) in England, two (Wilson and Witherspoon) in Scotland, and one (Hamilton) in the West Indies.
Sourced
The vast majority of this comment could be complete jibberish (Bigelow/COTS-D/Sundancer/Obama/Falcon 9/BA-330? Come again?). It sounds like the poster knows what s/he's talking about, but the fact is the people who modded this insightful did so without any fucking insight into what was posted.
The same people who mod insightful on Slashdot also cite Wikipedia in school work.
This release will come eight years almost to the day after the release of Windows XP. I'm using the beta of 7 at home, just like I used all the betas and RCs of XP at home. Looking at Windows then and Windows now, I see a huge missed opportunity. I am pleased with Windows 7, and I think Microsoft has made a lot of smart decisions in their design, production, and marketing of the OS, but it still feels like more of a mea culpa than a solid, polished OS.
If Microsoft's management had been on top of their shit, this product would have released four years ago and what we're seeing today could be so much more. Unfortunately, their back-to-the-drawing-board idea with Longhorn, though a good thing in the end, lost so many years of work and code that it seriously stunted Microsoft's growth of the OS.
Hence Windows Vista. Hence Windows 7. What I'm going to be most interested in is, once 7 is out and people lower the volume of their trash-talking, what is Microsoft going to do next? What major technologies are they working on? What is their vision for the desktop? Windows 7 is just Windows Vista with two more years of polish. Though a terrific upgrade from Vista, I want to hear more about Microsoft's research projects and what real, major features they're working on for future OSes. I'm tired of hearing about multitouch, because that is quickly becoming genericized among OS makers and will remain out of reach for most users for some time, being hardware-dependent.
Ask anyone what they'd change about Windows and you'll get a litany of complaints. Ask Microsoft and they'll tell you Windows is perfect, you just don't understand it.
Not at all. HIPAA is all about what security measures can be deemed reasonably sufficient. In this case, the systems may have been provided by a vendor and are certified only to run at a certain patch level. Makers of medical devices can't be expected to fuzz the software every time Microsoft releases a patch to make sure it doesn't kill someone when used; they instead sell a single device certified to work a certain way.
Given that, reasonable security measures would have been to physically isolate the network these devices were on. This often doesn't happen thanks to VLANs and sloppy network administration.
They aren't facts if they're open to interpretation.
How it breaks down is this:
HIPAA is very specific about how data is to be handled and audited from end-to-end, and includes specifics on how data can be properly de-identified. As a systems and network administrator at a major trauma center, HIPAA has been a nightmare to implement and a security officer's dream come true. That said, the focus on personal accountability and the high level of monitoring and enforcement leads to an environment much different than a credit card processor or company.
It's the hard drive, stupid. Consider the Core i7 processor, which has 64 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth. Now consider your hard drive, which has 100 megabytes per second bandwidth. Yes, I am VERY surprised when my computer is fast because I'm using the technological equivalent of an Intel 8088 (née 1979) for my 5.25" HDD (née 1980).
I am considerably less surprised these days since my purchase of a solid state drive, but I'm still forced to use three spinning platter drives for archival storage.
I love how every example you gave came about under the auspices of the same regulators so decried.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Good thing you put so much research into your post. It's a good thing mods don't let being right get in the way of sounding right.
People who have no problem using an operating system that is ten years old (Windows 2000 went RTM Dec '99) probably have no problem using a web browser that is zero years old (Firefox 3.5, which hasn't been released). But by your logic, they'll instead want to use Netscape 5, aka Mozilla, also released ten years ago, to avoid further regressions (performance and usability issues) posed by newer versions of web browsers.
The same thing happened to me when Assassin's Creed was released for 360. On release day I did not pre-order and called ahead to make sure they had copies in the store. They assured me they did.
...just like I can with a new copy?
When I got there and asked for it they said they didn't have it. I said I had just called and been told there were copies. The guy behind the counter turned to the guy next to him and said "Hey [co-worker], were you, uhhh..." and trailed off. He replied Lumberg-style with a "Yeeeahhhh, I was going to take it home... Naw, that's ok, sell it."
I was all like what the fuck man, and asked them if it was an open box copy that had been taken home by employees and played. He said yeah. I asked if I would be charged full price. The guy said of course and looked at me like he was the confused one. The three other employees nearby were similarly non-plussed. "If there's anything wrong with it you can return it."
I took the cash in my hand and put it away, said no thanks. There was another Gamestop on the way home that had it, nevermind the two Best Buys with obscene pallets of copies.
It was a braindead move on the employees' parts and I'd hate to think the manager would approve of that going down in front of a customer. But that's what happens when you have a bunch of kids running the front of house, unsupervised and with a shrink wrapper, and it's no surprise it's happening everywhere.
I treat the Gamestop sales counter like a casino chip-exchange. I watch every hand at every time, especially when they ask a co-worker to pull out a game. The kids back there do stupid, careless shit with your credit card/license/games/money, and they spend most of their free time dreaming up scams to get more money and more games. That's the business!
No offense to any upstanding Slashdotters working at Gamestop. I'm clearly talking about your slovenly coworkers.
I experienced this with BSG Razor on DVD; it would not play properly in VLC or Media Player Classic on Windows, or VLC on Mac OS X. It played fine on Apple's DVD player. This is because of the way deleted scenes are included in some DVDs: rather than having two full copies of a film on the disc, they have the original copy and the deleted scenes, and if you choose to play the DVD in the unedited/director's-cut/whatever mode, then those scenes get spliced into the playback of the original. It's that splicing that causes the trouble. Whoever invented it should eat a back of dicks for breaking something that everyone believed worked just fine.
You can't buy 2 TB Western Digital SATA drives and just toss them into a SAN and expect to go. To get a SAN you're looking at a cost of about $300 per 1 TB (PDF link: http://www.berghell.com/whitepapers/Projecting%20the%20Cost%20of%20Magnetic%20Storage%20Over%20the%20Next%2010%20years.pdf).
Those "insane and stupid requirements" are what mission critical requirements are, and it's ill-advised to assume it's "insane and stupid" just because you can't imagine systems that would require it (financial processing systems, clinical applications in hospitals).
But don't let me bore you with actual experience or first hand knowledge. Please continue telling me I've got my job all wrong.
I hope nobody confuses your inability to think beyond your world with fact, because this is the hugest crock of shit.
I have about 12 TB of data that I am required to be able to restore to any day within the last five weeks. One week of backups = 20 TB. In addition, I must:
1) always have at least four weeks' worth of data in different building on the same site
2) always have at most one week's worth of data in the rack
3) always have at least one full backup from within the last five weeks at an off-site storage facility
4) retain every fifth backup for one year
5) retain every 52nd backup for seven years
What are my options?
Option 1 (your option): Buy a minimum of 442 TB of additional disks (102 TB for five weeks of storage [1 & 2 above]; 200 TB for [4]; 140 TB for [5]; 37 times more storage than we currently use), plus the SAN, plus the network, power, and cooling systems to support it. When rotating media, physically remove the drives and carry them around. Carefully. Because one backup weighs thirty pounds. Media cost: $132,000 ($300 per); SAN cost: $50,000.
Option 2 (my option): Buy a tape library and 442 TB of tapes (one library, 368 tapes). When rotating media off-site, throw the tapes into a bag. Carelessly. Because they weigh 15 pounds and don't break. Media cost: $20,600 ($56 per); Library cost: $20,000
Looking at the last 600+ rotations I've done for various systems in the last five years, the failure rate is far, far, far lower than hard drives already; when you take into account the fact that 20% of all tapes are transported 60 miles per year and 50% of all tapes are transported between local sites at least twice per month, the failure rate of hard drives would be through the roof. Further, while I have had tapes fail during a write operation, I have never had a tape fail during a data restore, even on tapes overwritten hundreds of times and tapes stored for years. Perhaps your backup administrator has never heard of data verification or proper media storage, but if he had perhaps you wouldn't have experienced all those repeated failures of your backup system.
Try being a backup administrator, not just playing pretend like you are now, before being so glib.
Steam often has "free weekends" where you can download and play the game for free for a set period of time. If you like it you can buy it and keep playing. If not, it just deactivates and you have the option to delete it.