No, what he said was spot on. Do you seriously think that spammers identify themselves as spammers to ISPs when they contract to use their services? Of course not. Spamming is already banned by every American ISP and, for the most part, they vigorously enforce this. So the spammer just gets another account with another fake credit card. That's why that fee isn't much of a deterrent, we're talkin about people engaging in massive credit card fraud.
What the OP said is exactly right. This is simply another filtering scheme that WILL NOT WORK, but it's worse than most filters as it's also a money-making scam by the ISPs.
The solutions to the spam problem are well understood:
1) The ISPs and other big players need to get together and create, test, endorse, and freely distribute a revision to or replacement for SMTP that has some sort of authentication. This hasn't happened because the problem is "too big" (read: The problem requires a massive capital outlay that the ISPs are too cheap to spend, so they're waiting around for the government to bail them out.)
2) Law enforcement. Spam is illegal just about everywhere, but this hasn't stopped it. The problem is that the laws are directed against the shadowy spammers who are often difficult to track down or reside in foreign nations. The solution is not to target spammers, but anyone who does business with them. Companies who advertise through spam should be shut down (I'm looking at you Hewlett-Packard), ISPs who do business with spammers (knowingly or not) should be shut down, etc. This would also solve most identity theft problems too.
Pray tell me, what "valuable free work" is Maynor doing? Free QA. QA typically pays between $25-$35 per hour minimum. This is the whole point of a public Beta, free QA. So not only is he doing something nice for free, but Apple implicitly (maybe explicitly) asked him to do it.
He is not "taking revenge" on Apple or the users. He's WORKING FOR YOU. His argument, which is an argument widely shared by those in the "open disclosure" camp, is that Apple ignored previous PRIVATE disclosures he made to them about vulnerabilities. So in this case to chose to announce the EXISTENCE of the vulnerabilities publicly AND disclose the details privately to Apple IF THEY ASK for them in the next 30 days. At the end of 30 days he'll post the details of the vulnerability.
Basically he's giving Apple 30 days to fix it before disclosure and he's not willing to "work with" Apple to delay the disclosure till they have a patch ready. He's clearly doing this as a way to pressure Apple to patch the vulnerabilities faster.
Then I disagree entirely, and not just about your argument that it's identical to keep every phone conversation. It's not. Really, how? The "document" retention rules require the complete contents of electronic CONVERSATIONS be stored, that is the complete contents of the email, IM, text message, etc. How is this different for having to have a complete record of all voice conversation, other than one being voice and the other text?
Here's another one: At the last job site I worked we used a Cisco VoIP system that was matched to the Exchange server that stored all voicemail as attachments to email messages. Do these attachments have to be kept? If not, why not? And If so, how is the different from requiring conversations be recorded
As an IT professional, you can say that it might not be possible in your organization, but that's not the case for everyone This represents an overwhelming burden to any moderately-sized organization with a relative handful of account (a few thousand) and is flatly impossible for even small ISPs (with millions of accounts). The system was simply not designed with the archival of all traffic in mind. Alternative systems would require users to archive their own emails defeat the purpose of the legislation.
Without records laws, then we have far less accountability than we do now- public and private entities alike No, we have the ILLUSION of accountability. The year is 2007. Most people are not stupid, and at this point only someone stupid would use their business email account to conduct illegal or unethical business. They would simply use one of the thousans o fre email providers, or encryption, or (most commonly) avoid electronic communications altogether. IF THE LAW IS TRIVIALLY EASY TO CIRCUMVENT, IT'S COMPLETELY POINTLESS.
It's not a "loaner" Passport. Both users would have Passports as they could be obtained freely (a bit like a PGPKey issued by an authority), it would be the track itself that would expire. The timeout is stored in metadata in the track with a time and date stamp. We also had a "low quality" and "high quality" versions (this was mainly related to bandwith) and I believe you could only share the "low quality" version.
Theoretically you could keep the tracks from timing out by resetting your clock, since the timeout ran off the system clock. We could have had the player use a timeserver, but we wanted everything to work "offline" if possible.
You don't seem to get my point. I *DON'T* think these sorts of laws are a public good because they are a huge waste of time and money. When even the White House, the most closely monitored organization on the planet, can casually flout these laws, what's the point?
These laws don't work with PAPER documents. Remember all the records shredded during the Enron scandal?
Discovery is discovery. Once you sue somebody you try to get what records you can (and hope people are stupid enough to write things down) and that's it. Most illegal and unethical business involves "handshake deals" for exactly this reason. And most cases of this sort are not won based on records that popped up, but by TESTIMONY ("Bob told me to screw them over.") obtained by getting leverage, usually testimony from others. The only exception tends to be paper-shuffling contract disputes and the like, where almost all the of the documentation is publically filed anyway.
I know of one university that was required to keep all emails during litigation for several months. And what would I do in this case? I would refuse. As an IT profesional I would testify, "What the court is asking is impossible. We cannot comply because what they want simply cannot be done.", if the judge didn't listen I'd appeal. Legal fees are expensive, but they're a lot cheaper than millions in IT infrastructure investment which is what compliance would cost.
What I'm saying is that IT managers, organizations, and individuals need to start rebelling against this nonsene full force. It is EXACTLY IDENTICAL to requiring organizations to record and store every phone conversation for years and it's just as unreasonable.
Maynor might be a liar or confused about the vulnerabilites. This dos not seem to be the case based on my reading, and nobody seems to be saying that the vulnerabilites he found did not exist.
The issue seems be the notion that it is somhow "wrong" for Maynor to disclose the vulnerabilites without informing Apple and giving them time to fix it. Maynor claims that IN THE PAST Apple has been uncooperative WITH HIM. So based on his OWN PAST EXPERIENCE he chose to release the vulnerabities publically. He did nothing wrong.
Frankly, I'd be a little pissed off. Maynor is doing valuable free work for Apple and he's getting pissed on by the Apple community for it.
Well then Sony, how would Japan react if you included Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in your game? Or a game mission involved the Yasukuni shrine? Fictionalized versions of these temples appear in anime and various video games. At least the Yasukuni shrine, I'm not sure about the Kiyomizo Temple.
No wait, how about Resistance: Mission to Mecca? That'll be a good one to do. Think of the potential market in the Islamic world. Would Muslims buy a FPS with a level that takes place in Mecca? Absolutely, as long as they did not find it offensive. For example, a game that depicted pious religous soldiers defending Mecca from foreign invaders might do well. The "alien science fiction" genre has less play in the Muslim world, so a fantasy scenario with invading djinn (demons) might do better than Resistance. But the Muslim world simply isn't a big market for video games, yet.
This simply shows a sad lack or respect. Most of the people who wrote the game are Christians. This particular priest does not set religious standards for all Christians. This isn't offensive to the vast majority to Christians, just this one greedy priest looking for a handout and maybe a little attention.
Nobody is claiming that the PS2 had better graphics that PCs (even at launch) or the XBOX. The claim is that while the Gamecube technically had better hardware than the PS2, most games looked better on the PS2. Especially multiplatform games. I generally agree with this statement. With a handful of exceptions, most notably Resident Evil 4, PS2 games looked slightly better than Gamecube games.
I'd also like to address one other point: The deranged notion that most games don't use 100% of a console's resources. his statement must come from someone who knows nothing about game design. Ever hear the term "polygon budget"? Typcally games are "envisioned" and then that vision is pared down to accomodate the limitations of the console and the programming environment. That last bit is key. What happens during a console cycle is NOT the designers suddenly start using parts of the console they weren't before, but that they get better at utilizing he console's resources because the programming environment improves.
I'll concede that some launch games for consoles may not utilize all of the console's resources, but that's because those particular games were rushed and were created before the programmers knew how to write for the console. There also might be games released that just aren't that computationally intensive. Guitar Hero strikes me as an example with it's relatively simple graphics and gameplay.
Gun violence in the USA is not due to the availablity of handguns. That is a fact. Handguns are widely available in Canada, Germany, and many other Westrn nations with far lower rate of handgun violence than the United States. Again, handgun violence in the United States is NOT caused by the availablity of handguns.
Now WHY there is so much violence in the USA is an interesting question. Many people think it is due largely to ethnic tensions within the USA. Think about this for a second: In the UK, most people slavishly trust the police. In the USA, the police have a long history of terrorizing and murdering ethnic minorities. Now if you're a ethnic minority in the USA, why should you give up your firearms and rely on the "protection" of the police?
Which illustrates the point of many other posters. In the USA, the primary reason for owning firearms is not hunting or personal defense against criminals. In the USA, the primary reason for owning firearms is protection from the government, specifically the police. This is why police are so big on banning firearms ownership in America.
As quick pre-counter: Many people say that this function is irrelavent because the US military is so powerful that they could easily crush lightly armed opposition. Tell this to the insurgents in Iraq. Or to the street protestors that successfully stopped the coup in Venezuela. Or recent opposition in Nepal. History and reality strongly support the view that an armed population is far better equipped to resist tyranny.
It looks like the CoE has realized video gams make money and want their pound of flesh. Hopefully Sony will recognize this as the coercion that it is and will refuse to play along.
It looks like the CoE have seen that Sony is making a few bucks and want to extract their pound of flesh. Hopefully Sony will stand up to this coercion and refuse to give the CoE any "donations" to curb their "outrage".
I'll bite. Maynor described vulnerabilites. Maynor immeadately goes public with Mac vulnerabilites because he (in the past anyway) has claimed that Apple has ignored private disclosures. I've has exactly the same experience (many years ago) so I can support him on this point.
The primary question is: Are the vulnerabilites real? If so, then Maynor has provided a valuable service to the community out of the kindness of his heart. Period. Whining about him not telling Apple first is just whining. When YOU do the work then YOU can choose how to release the info.
I also seriously take umbrage at the notion that immeadiately disclosing vulnerabilites is somehow "unprofessional". Is is MORE professional to leave production environments vulnerable while you're waiting for the vendor to get his act together and send you a patch?
How the hell do you think this works in the Linux world, the world you supposedly come from? Most vulnerabilites are immeadately disclosed on Linux, because open source allows anyone to produce patches quickly, but according to you that is somhow "unprofessional".
At least I can't. The article in question has a giant AT&T ad that pops up and covers almost the entire article, and it doesn't go away when you click it. At least in IE6. Don't post this shit if it's unreadable due to advertising.
With the 360 completely dead in Japan, and floundering in Europe, it is unlikely that the 360 will even reach the same installed base the first Xbox had after the same amount of time on the market. No price cut in the first two years, the unprecedented hardware failure rate, and major first party titles like Halo 3 and Forza 2 getting ridiculed by gamers show that Microsoft is stuck between a rock and a hard place in the console market. The 360 isn't doing that great in Japan, but it's doing better than the original Xbox. Gears of War hit the top 10 sales chart back in January. The 360 simply hasn't had many big relases since then. A much bigger story is the way the PS3 has completely tanked. The PS3 doesn't have a single title in the top 50 in Japan and nothing in the top 20 in the USA and Europe and it's been that way since launch. All of the top titles in Japan right now are Ninendo titles, with the DS being more popular than the wii.
Halo 3 is being criticized mainly because it doesn't have in innovations seen in Gears of War or recent PC shooters. The 360 is currently the premiere console for shooters and it's likely to stay that way.
The Federal Rules of Evidence aren't quite as unreasonable as people seem to think. IMHO, the article is overstating the effects of the newly implemented rules. Important things to remember are A) Have a records retention policy, and B) follow that records retention policy. You simply do no grasp how much of hassle this is. Many of these systems were not designed with retention in mind. How the hell do you implement this for IM and text messages? Hell, how do you implement this is Exchange? Exchange, and most mail servers, assume that users can silently delete their own emails. So, in practice, I would have to set up an nearly identical mirror server (it would need a lot more space, pray nobody in your organiztion uses attachments) which maintains copies for THREE years.
Let me drill this in a bit: This legislation requires organizations spend AT LEAST double what they are spending on email now, and AT LEAST three times as much on storage. I consider that a major burden. In fact, in order to meet the letter of the law companies will be required to preserve every bit on every hard drive in the organization with weekly or even daily snapshots over 3 years. That's anywhere between 1095 and 156 times your current storage total.
On top of all this, these retention rules are incredibly easily circumvented. When people are talkng about illegal shit they will simply use outside email servers. For example, this is exactly what happened in the recent AG scandal in the White House. Congress wasn't able to subpoena critical emails because much of the corresponence took place on outside mail servers.
Frankly, I think this whole concept is unfair and absurd. It's akin to requiring oranizations to tap and record every internal phone conversation. And it won't work for the same reasons. Everyone would simply switch to outside phones, cell phones, prepaid, phone booths, etc. for their illegal activity. Most "serious" criminals assume their being watched and do this anyway.
The post-9/11 political climate is definitely not the time for it to try, because as far as I know there's nothing constitutional to prevent Congress from killing it if they've got a reason. Encryption is here to stay. People seem to forget that the biggest users of encryption are large corporations trying to ward off corporate espionage, prevent data theft by hackers, and protect intellectual property. Large corporations run the government and they want their shit protected.
Naxalism is pure and simple terrorism. They are merely a subversive group of thugs and murderers who decided to take over a bunch of colleges and start raping babies. I don't know much about the Naxalites, but I do know that they are definitely not "raping babies" because doing so is physically impossible. This is simply hysterical anti-communist propoganda unless you can present video that proves otherwise.
My reading on the Naxalites is that they are typical communist insurgent groups, similar perhaps to Columbia's FARC. Much like in Columbia, India is awash in warring militant groups, with government sponsored militia fighting the communists increasing the violence.
Pretty good. In fact, I'd reverse it and ask if any significant music players don't support it. I certainly wouldn't look at any that didn't. Did you actually read the list you posted? Most Sony players won't work with Apples version of AAC (for whatever reason) so, on the list you posted, the only non-Apple player that supports unprotected AAC is the Microsoft Zune, released about 8 months ago. Bought a music player in the last 5 years? If it's not a Apple player there's a 90% chance it won't play unprotected AAC. The majority of music players that have been released recently, including the important music phone category, do not suport unprotected AAC.
And since every review puts AAC ahead of MP3 for sound quality at a given bitrate Not any unbiased review. Psychoacustics on the MP3 format have improved dramatically over the years. Recent versions of LAME MP3 sound as good as AAC or Vorbis, particularly at lower bitrates. At the high end (384kbps+) and low end (32kbps-) AAC may have some advantages, but not at the typical 128-256kbps. At the 384kbps+ rates you should be using FLAC anyway.
doesn't require royalties to distribute or stream, Again, wrong. AAC requires royalties to distribute encoders, decoders, and hardware, exactly the same fees as MP3 (they're slightly lower in many cases). MP3 is awash in litigation so it is truly unclear what the fees are supposed to be collected. In nations like China and Russia, LEGALLY, manufacturers and distributors don't have to pay licenscing fees. More imporantly, the streaming fees only apply to large commercial broadcasters and music stores. You can run your own Shoutcast server without paying fees.
This is a good point rarely made. The primary competitor of/. is digg. Nobody seriously thinks digg has a better discussion system than/. Or at least *I* can't think of any other tech-oriented news sites with a better discussion system.
"Paying for the rights to use something" means buying a license, and buying a license means being bound by the terms of that license.. whatever they happen to be. If you concede the validity of "pack-in" licences you are essentially signing away all legal rights and might as well resign yourself to abject slavery. That's not melodramatic, it's a simple fact.
Example: You go to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk. After purchasing your milk you break out a magnifying glass yo read the fine print on the back of he recipt that informs you by purchasing the milk you have agreed join the store's "Milk Notifification Plan", which costs $100 per week and helpfully informs you when you might be running out of milk, for a term of not less that three years. You have no choice but to pay or to sue the store (and lose, by your legal theory).
Do you think the above scenario is unfair? This is EXACTLY what happens with credit cards, which make extensive use of bullshit licenses. But the difference there is, at least in theory, you have to explictly agree to these terms by signing an agreement (I would argue that credit card agreements are not valid, but that's a different rant). You're arguing that a purchase (or merely walking into the store) should constitute a binding contract for whatever terms the seller wishes to specify.
you can strip them using your favorite tag editor Can anyone confirm this? It strikes me that if the information can be easily removed (especially with iTunes) the personal information is far less relavent. It strikes me that this situation is very similar to issues with personal imfornation embeded in Microsoft Office documents.
But as another poster said, this tagging is not needed by Apple for the "upgrade" or any other purpose other than customer tracking. They should presumably already have sales records of all tracks on iTunes. If Apple DRM was a multi-vendor soution like Windows Media there might be an argument here, but they aren't so it isn't.
BTW, Liquid Audio had a scheme very similar to this. Purchased tracks were attached to a "Passport", or encryption token similar to a PGPKey. You couldn't play the tracks without the Passport and the Passport contained lots of personal info, most importantly your SSN and Credit Card number. If you wanted to redistribute the music to others you had to also redistribute the Passport. One feature we were working on would allow you to "lend" tracks to other Liquid Audio users by transferring an expiring (30 days) version of the track to their Passport. The Microsoft Zune had a similar feature.
One advantage of this system is it gave Liquid Audio a complete record of every track purchased. So if a user lost his entire music collection somehow he could simply login to his account online and redownload all the purchased music. Or if he travelled somewhere without his computer he could redownload all his music at a new location.
So it is possible to use DRM to implement useful new features, but Microsoft and Apple don't seem capable of it. And don't blame the labels. Liquid Audio's DRM scheme was designed at the direct behest of the major labels.
There claim is about licensing, not patents. Basically they're claiming that Bulgaria, etc. are breaking nonexistent international licensing agreements. The Russians (obviously) want to make more money in this market and they can't compete directly (noticing the "dumping" comment in the article). They're just whining. What they should do is a little marketing, arguing that "knock offs" are of inferior quality, and strongarming, outright threatening countries that buy AK-47s from others with disfavor. That's the American way. Other nations make M-16 knockoffs, but the US still controls the majority of production.
Not necessarily true. Hacking can get you a long way, but eventually it usually breaks down.
99% of players do not, and will not, compete in tournaments. Perhaps 10% engage in online tournaments. From what I have seem (I don't play XBOX live that much), cheating is insanely rampant in online shooters like Halo and Ghost Recon. I've played maybe about 50 games of Halo and 100 of Ghost Recon, and I would say there was some sort or cheating or "griefing" (if the host was losing he's quit, etc.) in at least half the games I played. I also strongly suspect it's a big factor in MMORPGs, but I haven't played those since Ultima Online.
And that's only taking one of the most known (Pokémon are even more known), but Xenogears or some Tales games shatter your weak argument.
Not to dig here, by are you seriously claiming that ANY Pokemon game has a good story? There are JRPGS with good stories. They are in the distinct minority. MOST JRPGs have lame cookie-cutter plots filled with anime chicles (amnesiac hero, female spellcaster love interest/sidekick, effeminate villan trying to destroy world, blah, blah, blah). Note the key word: MOST. There have been a shitload of JRPGs released for the PS1 and PS2 in recent years, far more than comparable PC releases. That's why it seems like the writing in console RPGS is better, there is simply a bigger field.
If I think about the RPGs that do best in America, it's because they speak more to the "American" experience. Fallout has it's kitschy 1950's style and "Pip-Boy". KOTOR is based on Star Wars, which while basically a religion in the USA, might not have as much impact overseas. And iconic D&D games like Baldur's Gate might not have as much impact for those not familiar with the tabletop game. The gamestyle tends to be slightly different. Part of this is because of console conventions (save points vs. save anywhere), but others are stylistic, like the heavy use of random encounters.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that poor JRPG sales in the USA might not have anything to do with the quality of said games, but of the nature of Japanese and American culture. "Dating sims" are also big in Japan, but the whole idea seems ridiculous to Americans. Most Japanese people think American Football is boring, by Madden is the bestselling game in the USA.
It might well be possible to reduce or eliminate handgun sales in the US, but it won't be possible in the same way, nor on the same timescale, as any other country. Yes, but this is true mainly for logistical reasons, not legal ones. The United States is the worlds' largest arms manufacturer and has been for quite some time. There are a LOT of handguns in the United States, registered and otherwise. Any sort of program that involved turning in firearms and licensing would likely take decades and as a practical measure would meet enormous resistance from rural Americans, who are disproportionately powerful in the USA.
Slashdot Mirror
No, what he said was spot on. Do you seriously think that spammers identify themselves as spammers to ISPs when they contract to use their services? Of course not. Spamming is already banned by every American ISP and, for the most part, they vigorously enforce this. So the spammer just gets another account with another fake credit card. That's why that fee isn't much of a deterrent, we're talkin about people engaging in massive credit card fraud.
What the OP said is exactly right. This is simply another filtering scheme that WILL NOT WORK, but it's worse than most filters as it's also a money-making scam by the ISPs.
The solutions to the spam problem are well understood:
1) The ISPs and other big players need to get together and create, test, endorse, and freely distribute a revision to or replacement for SMTP that has some sort of authentication. This hasn't happened because the problem is "too big" (read: The problem requires a massive capital outlay that the ISPs are too cheap to spend, so they're waiting around for the government to bail them out.)
2) Law enforcement. Spam is illegal just about everywhere, but this hasn't stopped it. The problem is that the laws are directed against the shadowy spammers who are often difficult to track down or reside in foreign nations. The solution is not to target spammers, but anyone who does business with them. Companies who advertise through spam should be shut down (I'm looking at you Hewlett-Packard), ISPs who do business with spammers (knowingly or not) should be shut down, etc. This would also solve most identity theft problems too.
He is not "taking revenge" on Apple or the users. He's WORKING FOR YOU. His argument, which is an argument widely shared by those in the "open disclosure" camp, is that Apple ignored previous PRIVATE disclosures he made to them about vulnerabilities. So in this case to chose to announce the EXISTENCE of the vulnerabilities publicly AND disclose the details privately to Apple IF THEY ASK for them in the next 30 days. At the end of 30 days he'll post the details of the vulnerability.
Basically he's giving Apple 30 days to fix it before disclosure and he's not willing to "work with" Apple to delay the disclosure till they have a patch ready. He's clearly doing this as a way to pressure Apple to patch the vulnerabilities faster.
Here's another one: At the last job site I worked we used a Cisco VoIP system that was matched to the Exchange server that stored all voicemail as attachments to email messages. Do these attachments have to be kept? If not, why not? And If so, how is the different from requiring conversations be recorded As an IT professional, you can say that it might not be possible in your organization, but that's not the case for everyone This represents an overwhelming burden to any moderately-sized organization with a relative handful of account (a few thousand) and is flatly impossible for even small ISPs (with millions of accounts). The system was simply not designed with the archival of all traffic in mind. Alternative systems would require users to archive their own emails defeat the purpose of the legislation. Without records laws, then we have far less accountability than we do now- public and private entities alike No, we have the ILLUSION of accountability. The year is 2007. Most people are not stupid, and at this point only someone stupid would use their business email account to conduct illegal or unethical business. They would simply use one of the thousans o fre email providers, or encryption, or (most commonly) avoid electronic communications altogether. IF THE LAW IS TRIVIALLY EASY TO CIRCUMVENT, IT'S COMPLETELY POINTLESS.
It's not a "loaner" Passport. Both users would have Passports as they could be obtained freely (a bit like a PGPKey issued by an authority), it would be the track itself that would expire. The timeout is stored in metadata in the track with a time and date stamp. We also had a "low quality" and "high quality" versions (this was mainly related to bandwith) and I believe you could only share the "low quality" version.
Theoretically you could keep the tracks from timing out by resetting your clock, since the timeout ran off the system clock. We could have had the player use a timeserver, but we wanted everything to work "offline" if possible.
These laws don't work with PAPER documents. Remember all the records shredded during the Enron scandal?
Discovery is discovery. Once you sue somebody you try to get what records you can (and hope people are stupid enough to write things down) and that's it. Most illegal and unethical business involves "handshake deals" for exactly this reason. And most cases of this sort are not won based on records that popped up, but by TESTIMONY ("Bob told me to screw them over.") obtained by getting leverage, usually testimony from others. The only exception tends to be paper-shuffling contract disputes and the like, where almost all the of the documentation is publically filed anyway. I know of one university that was required to keep all emails during litigation for several months. And what would I do in this case? I would refuse. As an IT profesional I would testify, "What the court is asking is impossible. We cannot comply because what they want simply cannot be done.", if the judge didn't listen I'd appeal. Legal fees are expensive, but they're a lot cheaper than millions in IT infrastructure investment which is what compliance would cost.
What I'm saying is that IT managers, organizations, and individuals need to start rebelling against this nonsene full force. It is EXACTLY IDENTICAL to requiring organizations to record and store every phone conversation for years and it's just as unreasonable.
Maynor might be a liar or confused about the vulnerabilites. This dos not seem to be the case based on my reading, and nobody seems to be saying that the vulnerabilites he found did not exist.
The issue seems be the notion that it is somhow "wrong" for Maynor to disclose the vulnerabilites without informing Apple and giving them time to fix it. Maynor claims that IN THE PAST Apple has been uncooperative WITH HIM. So based on his OWN PAST EXPERIENCE he chose to release the vulnerabities publically. He did nothing wrong.
Frankly, I'd be a little pissed off. Maynor is doing valuable free work for Apple and he's getting pissed on by the Apple community for it.
Or a game mission involved the Yasukuni shrine? Fictionalized versions of these temples appear in anime and various video games. At least the Yasukuni shrine, I'm not sure about the Kiyomizo Temple. No wait, how about Resistance: Mission to Mecca? That'll be a good one to do. Think of the potential market in the Islamic world. Would Muslims buy a FPS with a level that takes place in Mecca? Absolutely, as long as they did not find it offensive. For example, a game that depicted pious religous soldiers defending Mecca from foreign invaders might do well. The "alien science fiction" genre has less play in the Muslim world, so a fantasy scenario with invading djinn (demons) might do better than Resistance. But the Muslim world simply isn't a big market for video games, yet. This simply shows a sad lack or respect. Most of the people who wrote the game are Christians. This particular priest does not set religious standards for all Christians. This isn't offensive to the vast majority to Christians, just this one greedy priest looking for a handout and maybe a little attention.
Nobody is claiming that the PS2 had better graphics that PCs (even at launch) or the XBOX. The claim is that while the Gamecube technically had better hardware than the PS2, most games looked better on the PS2. Especially multiplatform games. I generally agree with this statement. With a handful of exceptions, most notably Resident Evil 4, PS2 games looked slightly better than Gamecube games.
I'd also like to address one other point: The deranged notion that most games don't use 100% of a console's resources. his statement must come from someone who knows nothing about game design. Ever hear the term "polygon budget"? Typcally games are "envisioned" and then that vision is pared down to accomodate the limitations of the console and the programming environment. That last bit is key. What happens during a console cycle is NOT the designers suddenly start using parts of the console they weren't before, but that they get better at utilizing he console's resources because the programming environment improves.
I'll concede that some launch games for consoles may not utilize all of the console's resources, but that's because those particular games were rushed and were created before the programmers knew how to write for the console. There also might be games released that just aren't that computationally intensive. Guitar Hero strikes me as an example with it's relatively simple graphics and gameplay.
Gun violence in the USA is not due to the availablity of handguns. That is a fact. Handguns are widely available in Canada, Germany, and many other Westrn nations with far lower rate of handgun violence than the United States. Again, handgun violence in the United States is NOT caused by the availablity of handguns.
Now WHY there is so much violence in the USA is an interesting question. Many people think it is due largely to ethnic tensions within the USA. Think about this for a second: In the UK, most people slavishly trust the police. In the USA, the police have a long history of terrorizing and murdering ethnic minorities. Now if you're a ethnic minority in the USA, why should you give up your firearms and rely on the "protection" of the police?
Which illustrates the point of many other posters. In the USA, the primary reason for owning firearms is not hunting or personal defense against criminals. In the USA, the primary reason for owning firearms is protection from the government, specifically the police. This is why police are so big on banning firearms ownership in America.
As quick pre-counter: Many people say that this function is irrelavent because the US military is so powerful that they could easily crush lightly armed opposition. Tell this to the insurgents in Iraq. Or to the street protestors that successfully stopped the coup in Venezuela. Or recent opposition in Nepal. History and reality strongly support the view that an armed population is far better equipped to resist tyranny.
It looks like the CoE has realized video gams make money and want their pound of flesh. Hopefully Sony will recognize this as the coercion that it is and will refuse to play along.
It looks like the CoE have seen that Sony is making a few bucks and want to extract their pound of flesh. Hopefully Sony will stand up to this coercion and refuse to give the CoE any "donations" to curb their "outrage".
I'll bite. Maynor described vulnerabilites. Maynor immeadately goes public with Mac vulnerabilites because he (in the past anyway) has claimed that Apple has ignored private disclosures. I've has exactly the same experience (many years ago) so I can support him on this point.
The primary question is: Are the vulnerabilites real? If so, then Maynor has provided a valuable service to the community out of the kindness of his heart. Period. Whining about him not telling Apple first is just whining. When YOU do the work then YOU can choose how to release the info.
I also seriously take umbrage at the notion that immeadiately disclosing vulnerabilites is somehow "unprofessional". Is is MORE professional to leave production environments vulnerable while you're waiting for the vendor to get his act together and send you a patch?
How the hell do you think this works in the Linux world, the world you supposedly come from? Most vulnerabilites are immeadately disclosed on Linux, because open source allows anyone to produce patches quickly, but according to you that is somhow "unprofessional".
At least I can't. The article in question has a giant AT&T ad that pops up and covers almost the entire article, and it doesn't go away when you click it. At least in IE6. Don't post this shit if it's unreadable due to advertising.
Halo 3 is being criticized mainly because it doesn't have in innovations seen in Gears of War or recent PC shooters. The 360 is currently the premiere console for shooters and it's likely to stay that way.
A) Have a records retention policy, and
B) follow that records retention policy. You simply do no grasp how much of hassle this is. Many of these systems were not designed with retention in mind. How the hell do you implement this for IM and text messages? Hell, how do you implement this is Exchange? Exchange, and most mail servers, assume that users can silently delete their own emails. So, in practice, I would have to set up an nearly identical mirror server (it would need a lot more space, pray nobody in your organiztion uses attachments) which maintains copies for THREE years.
Let me drill this in a bit: This legislation requires organizations spend AT LEAST double what they are spending on email now, and AT LEAST three times as much on storage. I consider that a major burden. In fact, in order to meet the letter of the law companies will be required to preserve every bit on every hard drive in the organization with weekly or even daily snapshots over 3 years. That's anywhere between 1095 and 156 times your current storage total.
On top of all this, these retention rules are incredibly easily circumvented. When people are talkng about illegal shit they will simply use outside email servers. For example, this is exactly what happened in the recent AG scandal in the White House. Congress wasn't able to subpoena critical emails because much of the corresponence took place on outside mail servers.
Frankly, I think this whole concept is unfair and absurd. It's akin to requiring oranizations to tap and record every internal phone conversation. And it won't work for the same reasons. Everyone would simply switch to outside phones, cell phones, prepaid, phone booths, etc. for their illegal activity. Most "serious" criminals assume their being watched and do this anyway.
My reading on the Naxalites is that they are typical communist insurgent groups, similar perhaps to Columbia's FARC. Much like in Columbia, India is awash in warring militant groups, with government sponsored militia fighting the communists increasing the violence.
This is a good point rarely made. The primary competitor of /. is digg. Nobody seriously thinks digg has a better discussion system than /. Or at least *I* can't think of any other tech-oriented news sites with a better discussion system.
Example: You go to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk. After purchasing your milk you break out a magnifying glass yo read the fine print on the back of he recipt that informs you by purchasing the milk you have agreed join the store's "Milk Notifification Plan", which costs $100 per week and helpfully informs you when you might be running out of milk, for a term of not less that three years. You have no choice but to pay or to sue the store (and lose, by your legal theory).
Do you think the above scenario is unfair? This is EXACTLY what happens with credit cards, which make extensive use of bullshit licenses. But the difference there is, at least in theory, you have to explictly agree to these terms by signing an agreement (I would argue that credit card agreements are not valid, but that's a different rant). You're arguing that a purchase (or merely walking into the store) should constitute a binding contract for whatever terms the seller wishes to specify.
But as another poster said, this tagging is not needed by Apple for the "upgrade" or any other purpose other than customer tracking. They should presumably already have sales records of all tracks on iTunes. If Apple DRM was a multi-vendor soution like Windows Media there might be an argument here, but they aren't so it isn't.
BTW, Liquid Audio had a scheme very similar to this. Purchased tracks were attached to a "Passport", or encryption token similar to a PGPKey. You couldn't play the tracks without the Passport and the Passport contained lots of personal info, most importantly your SSN and Credit Card number. If you wanted to redistribute the music to others you had to also redistribute the Passport. One feature we were working on would allow you to "lend" tracks to other Liquid Audio users by transferring an expiring (30 days) version of the track to their Passport. The Microsoft Zune had a similar feature.
One advantage of this system is it gave Liquid Audio a complete record of every track purchased. So if a user lost his entire music collection somehow he could simply login to his account online and redownload all the purchased music. Or if he travelled somewhere without his computer he could redownload all his music at a new location.
So it is possible to use DRM to implement useful new features, but Microsoft and Apple don't seem capable of it. And don't blame the labels. Liquid Audio's DRM scheme was designed at the direct behest of the major labels.
There claim is about licensing, not patents. Basically they're claiming that Bulgaria, etc. are breaking nonexistent international licensing agreements. The Russians (obviously) want to make more money in this market and they can't compete directly (noticing the "dumping" comment in the article). They're just whining. What they should do is a little marketing, arguing that "knock offs" are of inferior quality, and strongarming, outright threatening countries that buy AK-47s from others with disfavor. That's the American way. Other nations make M-16 knockoffs, but the US still controls the majority of production.
Not necessarily true. Hacking can get you a long way, but eventually it usually breaks down.
99% of players do not, and will not, compete in tournaments. Perhaps 10% engage in online tournaments. From what I have seem (I don't play XBOX live that much), cheating is insanely rampant in online shooters like Halo and Ghost Recon. I've played maybe about 50 games of Halo and 100 of Ghost Recon, and I would say there was some sort or cheating or "griefing" (if the host was losing he's quit, etc.) in at least half the games I played. I also strongly suspect it's a big factor in MMORPGs, but I haven't played those since Ultima Online.
And that's only taking one of the most known (Pokémon are even more known), but Xenogears or some Tales games shatter your weak argument.
Not to dig here, by are you seriously claiming that ANY Pokemon game has a good story? There are JRPGS with good stories. They are in the distinct minority. MOST JRPGs have lame cookie-cutter plots filled with anime chicles (amnesiac hero, female spellcaster love interest/sidekick, effeminate villan trying to destroy world, blah, blah, blah). Note the key word: MOST. There have been a shitload of JRPGs released for the PS1 and PS2 in recent years, far more than comparable PC releases. That's why it seems like the writing in console RPGS is better, there is simply a bigger field.
If I think about the RPGs that do best in America, it's because they speak more to the "American" experience. Fallout has it's kitschy 1950's style and "Pip-Boy". KOTOR is based on Star Wars, which while basically a religion in the USA, might not have as much impact overseas. And iconic D&D games like Baldur's Gate might not have as much impact for those not familiar with the tabletop game. The gamestyle tends to be slightly different. Part of this is because of console conventions (save points vs. save anywhere), but others are stylistic, like the heavy use of random encounters.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that poor JRPG sales in the USA might not have anything to do with the quality of said games, but of the nature of Japanese and American culture. "Dating sims" are also big in Japan, but the whole idea seems ridiculous to Americans. Most Japanese people think American Football is boring, by Madden is the bestselling game in the USA.
So no, it's not happening anytime soon.