It's also worth noting, in defence of the license fee, that many programs for the BBC contain plenty of rights issues outside the scope of the BBC. It's all well-and-good to assume that the Beeb's output is entirely paid for and OK to redistribute yourself, but it is usually riddled with considerations like "is that top 40 single playing in the background of this piece licensed for redistribution on the internet?"
The Beeb paid for it to be in the show, but probably not to be strewn across bittorrent! Not that it's particularly my concern, but it doesn't legitimise or legalise anyone's p2p use of BBC material.
Also of consideration is that the license fee is subsidised by sales of DVDs at whatever price. Loss of sale of BBC programs on DVD will directly affect the cost of the TV license (though, not by a lot - profits from the BBC commercial arm make up only a small part of the overall financial picture.)
Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.
Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code.
Here is what we know:
1) Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule.
2) Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled.
3) For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account.
4) Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree.
5) At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools).
6) Periodically for the last year we've been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don't know if these are related or independent.
Well, this sucks.
What I'd appreciate is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great.
We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can't imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community.
I would imaging that to some extent the numbers cheating would be reduced through agressive prosecution of those who get caught cheating. It's not going to wipe it out, but alongside Punkbuster you aren't going to see the same huge numbers of online cheats that you do on public servers just because the threat of what happens if you are caught is that much higher.
I forget, does the death penalty reduce murder rates?:)
Payphones in the UK are required to be operated by BT, the ex-government-owned telecomms monopoly. This is part of their legacy as a former nationalised entity. I remember reading something a while ago about how BT are stuck with the whole payphone business regardless of the cost. I for one have not noticed any fewer payphones in London, except perhaps for ones that AREN'T vandalised.
As for cellphones working on the London Underground - they work on the underground lines that are actually above ground - but I can guarantee that they don't work in any of the tunnels! The number of times I have been bored waiting for a tube and wanted to text message someone is testament to this!
One of the mobile networks - formerly One to One, and now part of the TMobile name - was looking into supplying a cellphone service on the underground. I'm not sure where that project went. This is a license to print money - there are millions of people every day on the underground and while they are down there they can't spend money on their phones. That said, if they start letting cellphones ring on the underground, I can't imagine the statistics for Tube passenger violence will get any better:/
Fair comment. I would still like to see scan give the consumer a choice about how fast they send the goods out. A stick of memory or a computer case both cost a tenner to ship from Scan!
I'm a regular buyer from Scan.co.uk, in spite of being ocassionally annoyed at them dropping the ball in terms of next day delivery. Their prices are pimped as being cheap, but I'm not convinced. After adding £10 for delivery, it's not always efficient compared to Dabs' "free" deal (1-3 days though).
I've got into the habit now of shooting an email around my department at work to see if anyone wants something from Scan in order to save some cash on the postage fees:)
I bought most of my current PC from overclockers.co.uk, who were efficient, well priced, and have a clean site with exactly what you want for the PC. My parent's new PC came from the same place, and a few pieces from Scan.
Also, Scan have recently updated their call centre and they are actually quite quick to pick up the phone now!
You don't deny that viruses are indeed raping and pillaging peoples machines - and there is a part to be played by AV-company-sponsored warnings. My own experience of this is that my Mum, whose knowledge of computers is small, asked me if they had an up to date virus scanner on their PC.
There is no way that she would have asked this if she hadn't been subjected to popular media stories about viruses, and there is no way that popular media stories are going to be written without the FUD from the AV companies.
It's a necessary evil, and it annoys those in the know but in the end the more people are aware of the threats, the more people will get protected.
I'd suggest that the military will still fly their multimillion dollar planes as high as they can while still leaving a good chance for a successful target. They don't want it being shot down whether there is a pilot in there or not - it always offers the enemy a chance for propaganda to have a destroyed foreign plane on the ground.
Re:Try to catch me ...
on
KaZaA Collapses
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Vanuatu is trying to clean up it's banking system which has been used for offshore havens for all sorts of monies that should have been taxed. It's not really a surprise that a company trying to evade legal action would hide there. The lengths companies will go to to provide free pr0n and mp3z to people never ceases to amaze me:)
I'd love to see a screensaver use this to pluck random images from the network and display them. Of course, any pr0n showing on your screensaver would only be the result of someone elses dubious work habits. I'm not sure if I could get that excuse to stick, but it might be fun trying:)
That was different! The channel I am talking about was a dedicated channel that ran a touch tone sensitive car racing game. It used to run on windows and crash overnight. You could see the popups on the screen and the game would then be broken until the admin came in the next day to click "OK"!
I remember seeing a game on a friends cable TV somewhere near Cambridge, UK. It was similar to Micro Machines insofar as it was overhead view racing game. You played against others on the cable network - it was pretty addictive! I think you had to use a touch tone phone to play though...
This was, of course, years before Digital TV promised to bring us all this stuff that was apparently possible anyway:)
I think a lot of these companies have issues with Google's cacheing of web pages. You can go so far as to get a site pulled, but to remove it from Google's web cache is a whole 'nother legal fight.
Slashdot Mirror
It's also worth noting, in defence of the license fee, that many programs for the BBC contain plenty of rights issues outside the scope of the BBC. It's all well-and-good to assume that the Beeb's output is entirely paid for and OK to redistribute yourself, but it is usually riddled with considerations like "is that top 40 single playing in the background of this piece licensed for redistribution on the internet?"
o ries/2004/05_may/26/creative_archive.shtml
The Beeb paid for it to be in the show, but probably not to be strewn across bittorrent! Not that it's particularly my concern, but it doesn't legitimise or legalise anyone's p2p use of BBC material.
Also of consideration is that the license fee is subsidised by sales of DVDs at whatever price. Loss of sale of BBC programs on DVD will directly affect the cost of the TV license (though, not by a lot - profits from the BBC commercial arm make up only a small part of the overall financial picture.)
There is hope on the horizon though:
-- http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/st
The BBC Creative Archive is looking to open the BBC archive under creative commons licensing. That will ROCK.
There's something else cool coming out this year from the bbc website, too, but I can't find a link to it so I should wait until I can!
Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.
Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code.
Here is what we know:
1) Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule.
2) Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled.
3) For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account.
4) Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree.
5) At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools).
6) Periodically for the last year we've been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don't know if these are related or independent.
Well, this sucks.
What I'd appreciate is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great.
We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can't imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community.
Gabe
__________________
Gabe Newell
I dunno about other phones, but the last 2 Sony Ericsson's I've bought (T68, T610) have big enough screens and bright enough backlights to see by!
I would imaging that to some extent the numbers cheating would be reduced through agressive prosecution of those who get caught cheating. It's not going to wipe it out, but alongside Punkbuster you aren't going to see the same huge numbers of online cheats that you do on public servers just because the threat of what happens if you are caught is that much higher.
:)
I forget, does the death penalty reduce murder rates?
Tell me about your Motherboard...
Payphones in the UK are required to be operated by BT, the ex-government-owned telecomms monopoly. This is part of their legacy as a former nationalised entity. I remember reading something a while ago about how BT are stuck with the whole payphone business regardless of the cost. I for one have not noticed any fewer payphones in London, except perhaps for ones that AREN'T vandalised.
:/
As for cellphones working on the London Underground - they work on the underground lines that are actually above ground - but I can guarantee that they don't work in any of the tunnels! The number of times I have been bored waiting for a tube and wanted to text message someone is testament to this!
One of the mobile networks - formerly One to One, and now part of the TMobile name - was looking into supplying a cellphone service on the underground. I'm not sure where that project went. This is a license to print money - there are millions of people every day on the underground and while they are down there they can't spend money on their phones. That said, if they start letting cellphones ring on the underground, I can't imagine the statistics for Tube passenger violence will get any better
Fair comment. I would still like to see scan give the consumer a choice about how fast they send the goods out. A stick of memory or a computer case both cost a tenner to ship from Scan!
I'm a regular buyer from Scan.co.uk, in spite of being ocassionally annoyed at them dropping the ball in terms of next day delivery. Their prices are pimped as being cheap, but I'm not convinced. After adding £10 for delivery, it's not always efficient compared to Dabs' "free" deal (1-3 days though).
:)
I've got into the habit now of shooting an email around my department at work to see if anyone wants something from Scan in order to save some cash on the postage fees
I bought most of my current PC from overclockers.co.uk, who were efficient, well priced, and have a clean site with exactly what you want for the PC. My parent's new PC came from the same place, and a few pieces from Scan.
Also, Scan have recently updated their call centre and they are actually quite quick to pick up the phone now!
You don't deny that viruses are indeed raping and pillaging peoples machines - and there is a part to be played by AV-company-sponsored warnings. My own experience of this is that my Mum, whose knowledge of computers is small, asked me if they had an up to date virus scanner on their PC.
There is no way that she would have asked this if she hadn't been subjected to popular media stories about viruses, and there is no way that popular media stories are going to be written without the FUD from the AV companies.
It's a necessary evil, and it annoys those in the know but in the end the more people are aware of the threats, the more people will get protected.
The Register's Story
I'd suggest that the military will still fly their multimillion dollar planes as high as they can while still leaving a good chance for a successful target. They don't want it being shot down whether there is a pilot in there or not - it always offers the enemy a chance for propaganda to have a destroyed foreign plane on the ground.
Vanuatu is trying to clean up it's banking system which has been used for offshore havens for all sorts of monies that should have been taxed. It's not really a surprise that a company trying to evade legal action would hide there. The lengths companies will go to to provide free pr0n and mp3z to people never ceases to amaze me :)
Indeed
PGPCorpDesktop_7.1.1.. 08-Jan-2002 11:25 11.8M
(google cache - the site is not responding for me - presumed dead)
I wonder if they will have a copy of Zero Wing on display :)
I'd love to see a screensaver use this to pluck random images from the network and display them. Of course, any pr0n showing on your screensaver would only be the result of someone elses dubious work habits. I'm not sure if I could get that excuse to stick, but it might be fun trying :)
That was different! The channel I am talking about was a dedicated channel that ran a touch tone sensitive car racing game. It used to run on windows and crash overnight. You could see the popups on the screen and the game would then be broken until the admin came in the next day to click "OK"!
I remember seeing a game on a friends cable TV somewhere near Cambridge, UK. It was similar to Micro Machines insofar as it was overhead view racing game. You played against others on the cable network - it was pretty addictive! I think you had to use a touch tone phone to play though...
:)
This was, of course, years before Digital TV promised to bring us all this stuff that was apparently possible anyway
I think a lot of these companies have issues with Google's cacheing of web pages. You can go so far as to get a site pulled, but to remove it from Google's web cache is a whole 'nother legal fight.