Oh crap, missed entitiy'ing the less-than. The irony, eh? The part missing is:
[...] plain HTML =< 4.01 is a lost cause, but already I've seen sites claiming XHTML in the DTD, just to go on and PISS all over the spec (see forums.bioware.com for instance, though I guess the problem is with that bulletin-board package).
In fact, lets kill off mime altogether, and get this multimedia crap out of our inboxes. Email/Usenet is for plain text, period.
I second this. Also, let's make it so that non-validating and just generally malformed XHTML documents are rejected by browsers, and can be filtered out of google. plain HTML =
I'd just love to turn on a "[ ] Reject non-validating pages" option in google and see the world wide web with new eyes:-)
... if only to allow me to finally get to experience this alternative bizarro-universe that many politicians and the self-appointed "content owners" seem to live in.
I never felt that way about the DMCA, but this one is just so much more bizarre.
Actually, Starcraft (1998) didn't innovate a damned thing. It came out after Chris Taylor's Total Annihilation (1997), and TA was and is the better game.
TA has beautiful 3D-units, nice ballistics, build and order queues, and much more.
This article is poorly written, and missing several important sections. It is not for the kernel-phobic or beginner users.
Is setting up clusters something "kernel-phobic" or "beginner users" should be attempting in the first place? Really, it is kind of funny to expect an article to be aimed at that audience.
I saw that one not long ago. It was funny, in a tragic sort of way.
Re:The Patents Occur in the U.S.
on
Patent Nonsense
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Although a patent system does not exist in Finland or Sweden [...]
There is a patent system in Sweden, unless 'patent system' means something highly specific/technical of which I'm not aware. Patents in Sweden are handled by Patent och Registreringsverket.
Hell, there comes a point where its simply cheaper to buy them than the time you waste trying to crack them.
You're assuming a cracker is motivated by "monetary profit". This may be true for some crackers, or some crackers under some circumstances, but it totally ignores the much more likely reason for crackers being crackers, namely that they enjoy the challenge.
If you look around you will see that interesting schemes attract crackers like honey does bees. Crackers hone their skills by creating "crackme's" for each other, where they show off new techniques. Days can be spent reparing a dummy executable purposedly broken by another cracker, dissecting layer after layer of encryption and obfuscation, and then reversing its core functionality into HLL -- all for the fun of it.
A good cracker is something amazing to watch. Just like there are wannabe-hackers and a few supperior wizards, there are a _lot_ of wannbe-crackers ("Ohh! I can nooop!") and very few wizards. Some of these wizards does NOT engage in cracking for distribution.
The point of obfuscation, however imperfect is to drive crackers crazy to the point that they give up trying to break it.
Dedicated and passionate crackers never give up. However, the delay between release and published crack may be valuable to the obfuscator. But at the same time, if you release a product that will take crackers weeks to analyze, it's actually quite likely that some warezd00de somewhere will simply card the software, and distribute that.
So there are the producers which want to hold off cracking as long as possible, and there are the lUser-hordes who want the cracked software as soon as possible, but in between there are a lot of crackers who, for the most part, couldn't care less about time-frames.
Want to know what is possible? Want something to think smile about when you hear about the latest and greatest smartcard system? Just curious about how one actually can go about rev-eng'ing a chip?
Everything from how you use acid to remove the packaging without destroying the chip logic itself, to the actual microprobing to extract information from the circuit.
Well, you should expect the engineers to get it right, because they understand the issues, but to hear that the sub-beancounters have been trained to get it right too is most impressive indeed.
I'm sure the the Intel engineers have microprobed more circuits than their own, if you catch my drift, so they know.
dcc isn't practical though, unless you've got a heavily modified version. The offical version is hardwired to only support very small programs, and fixing that would require extensive rewriting of its internal structures.
Not saying that it isn't interesting, only that today, no one (I'll wager) is using dcc for practical reverse-engineering.
There's also rec (reverse-engineering compiler), but it's sort of limited in the kind of input it allows.
IDA on the other hand is the tool of choice for the kind of reverse-engineering you're thinking of. If there were to be a source-generating backend on that one, you'd see a lot of worried faces, I assure you.
(A little quick on the trigger there maybe. To clarify; I do understand the difference between being able to create a 3d-world "as you go" (easier) from inferring it without being able to move about freely, and then going from (possibly erraneously inferred) 3d-data to "This is a chair" (harder), but the this sounds so much more advanced than the things I've read about in AI research (1990s stuff)). Pointers would be much appreciated.
To me, though, the highlight of the show was that it is now possible to walk around with an uncalibrated, handheld camera, and completely automatically get a decent 3-D model out of it (textured, of course).
That sounds amazing. Does this mean that a formerly HARD AI problem (vision & representation) is now solved?! Do you recall any names or something, so that I can look for more information?
I think it is at least as likely that they are doing this because people could develop for the platform without going "through them", as it is that they would oppose this on any real "piracy" grounds, though I must admit to ignorance on their official stance on GBA development.
Yeah, that'd be my guess too. It's just one big exploit waiting to happen.
I remember before Diablo 2 was released, when the fanboys in the newsgroups would proclaim how the vault characters would mean the end of cheating(TM>).
Yeah, that brought me a good chuckle, right there.
Something tells me that this is simply a petty scam.
Well, I've been to their offices. I applied for a job as a programmer there -- which I was then offered (first assignment; work on the GUI) -- but turned down because I felt that it was way too uncertain (aka 'doomed').
So, I can confirm that the game does indeed exist, or at least, that a game was being developed about a year ago.:-)
Anyway, the irony is that the offer I took instead lead to me being laid off just recently, so according to Murhpy's Law I guess P:Entropia will go on to be very successful, and I will sit here like a bitter man wondering, why oh why didn't I go there instead.
I have to post a warning here. I predicted, and I have found that many many players have come to agree with me, that Black and White is one of those games that are fun for a week. Then you don't want to see it ever again.
Really. There's a few who really love it, but the vast majority (and this is my experience) will just drop it after one or two weeks, never to go back.
(I really liked "god-games" back in the days of Populous and friends, but it seems like it's harder and harder to keep the players attention, now that the novelty has worn off)
Slashdot Mirror
Was he talking about DOS'ing competitors off the net? :-)
Oh crap, missed entitiy'ing the less-than. The irony, eh? The part missing is:
[...] plain HTML =< 4.01 is a lost cause, but already I've seen sites claiming XHTML in the DTD, just to go on and PISS all over the spec (see forums.bioware.com for instance, though I guess the problem is with that bulletin-board package).
I second this. Also, let's make it so that non-validating and just generally malformed XHTML documents are rejected by browsers, and can be filtered out of google. plain HTML =
I'd just love to turn on a "[ ] Reject non-validating pages" option in google and see the world wide web with new eyes :-)
The nice folks over at sci.crypt seems to have listed quite a few cases of possible prior art.
Not that that makes it much better on the whole, but...
... if only to allow me to finally get to experience this alternative bizarro-universe that many politicians and the self-appointed "content owners" seem to live in.
I never felt that way about the DMCA, but this one is just so much more bizarre.
Actually, Starcraft (1998) didn't innovate a damned thing. It came out after Chris Taylor's Total Annihilation (1997), and TA was and is the better game.
TA has beautiful 3D-units, nice ballistics, build and order queues, and much more.
Starcraft... <chuckle>
You will get a new drive.
I can identify with the horrible noise. My own 75GXP _woke me up_ with that horrible noise.
On a slightly hopeful note; I've seen reports that you can temporarily revive the drive by mounting it upside-down. Try it, you have nothing to lose.
Is setting up clusters something "kernel-phobic" or "beginner users" should be attempting in the first place? Really, it is kind of funny to expect an article to be aimed at that audience.
I saw that one not long ago. It was funny, in a tragic sort of way.
There is a patent system in Sweden, unless 'patent system' means something highly specific/technical of which I'm not aware. Patents in Sweden are handled by Patent och Registreringsverket.
You're assuming a cracker is motivated by "monetary profit". This may be true for some crackers, or some crackers under some circumstances, but it totally ignores the much more likely reason for crackers being crackers, namely that they enjoy the challenge.
If you look around you will see that interesting schemes attract crackers like honey does bees. Crackers hone their skills by creating "crackme's" for each other, where they show off new techniques. Days can be spent reparing a dummy executable purposedly broken by another cracker, dissecting layer after layer of encryption and obfuscation, and then reversing its core functionality into HLL -- all for the fun of it.
A good cracker is something amazing to watch. Just like there are wannabe-hackers and a few supperior wizards, there are a _lot_ of wannbe-crackers ("Ohh! I can nooop!") and very few wizards. Some of these wizards does NOT engage in cracking for distribution.
Dedicated and passionate crackers never give up. However, the delay between release and published crack may be valuable to the obfuscator. But at the same time, if you release a product that will take crackers weeks to analyze, it's actually quite likely that some warezd00de somewhere will simply card the software, and distribute that.
So there are the producers which want to hold off cracking as long as possible, and there are the lUser-hordes who want the cracked software as soon as possible, but in between there are a lot of crackers who, for the most part, couldn't care less about time-frames.
New target, new protection-scheme, new puzzle.
IANAC.
Want to know what is possible? Want something to think smile about when you hear about the latest and greatest smartcard system? Just curious about how one actually can go about rev-eng'ing a chip?
You owe it to yourself to read the following paper: Design Principles for Tamper-Resistant Smartcard Processors and check out the slides for lots of interesting pictures.
Everything from how you use acid to remove the packaging without destroying the chip logic itself, to the actual microprobing to extract information from the circuit.
Well, you should expect the engineers to get it right, because they understand the issues, but to hear that the sub-beancounters have been trained to get it right too is most impressive indeed.
I'm sure the the Intel engineers have microprobed more circuits than their own, if you catch my drift, so they know.
dcc isn't practical though, unless you've got a heavily modified version. The offical version is hardwired to only support very small programs, and fixing that would require extensive rewriting of its internal structures.
Not saying that it isn't interesting, only that today, no one (I'll wager) is using dcc for practical reverse-engineering.
There's also rec (reverse-engineering compiler), but it's sort of limited in the kind of input it allows.
IDA on the other hand is the tool of choice for the kind of reverse-engineering you're thinking of. If there were to be a source-generating backend on that one, you'd see a lot of worried faces, I assure you.
The DVB Common Scrambling Algorithm is a "deCSS" waiting to happen, mark my words.
(A little quick on the trigger there maybe. To clarify; I do understand the difference between being able to create a 3d-world "as you go" (easier) from inferring it without being able to move about freely, and then going from (possibly erraneously inferred) 3d-data to "This is a chair" (harder), but the this sounds so much more advanced than the things I've read about in AI research (1990s stuff)). Pointers would be much appreciated.
That sounds amazing. Does this mean that a formerly HARD AI problem (vision & representation) is now solved?! Do you recall any names or something, so that I can look for more information?
Blizzard PR hyped it, now they reap the benefits. Seems logical to me.
I think it is at least as likely that they are doing this because people could develop for the platform without going "through them", as it is that they would oppose this on any real "piracy" grounds, though I must admit to ignorance on their official stance on GBA development.
Myself, I decided to never touch their stuff after reading the classic paper The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Read it if you haven't already, it's hilarious.
You're not nordic, are you? We don't sue eachother every other day, like the 'merikkkans.
I can vouch for the fact that he worked at Mindark.
Yeah, that'd be my guess too. It's just one big exploit waiting to happen.
I remember before Diablo 2 was released, when the fanboys in the newsgroups would proclaim how the vault characters would mean the end of cheating(TM>).
Yeah, that brought me a good chuckle, right there.
Well, I've been to their offices. I applied for a job as a programmer there -- which I was then offered (first assignment; work on the GUI) -- but turned down because I felt that it was way too uncertain (aka 'doomed').
So, I can confirm that the game does indeed exist, or at least, that a game was being developed about a year ago. :-)
Anyway, the irony is that the offer I took instead lead to me being laid off just recently, so according to Murhpy's Law I guess P:Entropia will go on to be very successful, and I will sit here like a bitter man wondering, why oh why didn't I go there instead.
cdrinfo reviewed the Ricoh 5120A (CDRW and DVR+RW) months ago. Then they did the Philips DVD+RW 208.
The current review is of a 32x writer, the Mitsumi CR-480ATE, so no need for a "Woow! First review of a 32x writer" in two months :-)
The WinTV-PVR (which is a specific product, not some generic term like you seem to assume) application WinTV 2K let's you "pause" the live feed.
Granted, the software is complete crap, and the drivers too, but you can do it.
I have to post a warning here. I predicted, and I have found that many many players have come to agree with me, that Black and White is one of those games that are fun for a week. Then you don't want to see it ever again.
Really. There's a few who really love it, but the vast majority (and this is my experience) will just drop it after one or two weeks, never to go back.
(I really liked "god-games" back in the days of Populous and friends, but it seems like it's harder and harder to keep the players attention, now that the novelty has worn off)