IF Valve is, indeed, running such an experiment, it's pretty unlikely that Gabe Newell (or anyone at Valve) would immediately fess up to it to some unknown joker on the Internet - WHILE they're trying to catch people.
However, this is a pretty neat idea - since Valve knows that people are going to pirate the game, the proactive step of CONTROLLING the version that gets pirated by modding it so that they can track it anthen releasing it BEFORE anyone else can do the same pretty much ensures that they'll get the personal info (name, credit card #, address, etc.) of lots of pirates, and then they can choose what to do with that info.
The first option that comes to mind is emotionally satisfying to but a horrible business plan - they COULD use that personal info to PERMANENTLY BAN that person from using Steam/HL2, ever. Although that might make Gabe & crew feel good for a few minutes... they just potentially lost ($50 x #_of_pirates).
The second option, which is BOTH emotionally satisfying AND a good business plan, BUT is ALSO only quasi-moral and barely legal, is to use that personal info to contact the pirates directly and extort^H^H^H^H^H^H encourage them to buy a legal copy immediately, otherwise Valve will turn their info over to the authorities for prosecution. This not only "sticks it to the pirates" but also generates additional revenue (($50 x #_of_pirates) - ($50 x #_of_stupid_pirates)). Heck, if they went the extortion^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H encouragement route, why not "encourage" them to buy the $90 package instead?:)
The third, and most likely option, would be to turn all of that personal info over to the authorities and make a huge example out of all of them, thus instilling the Fear of Valve into all pirates everywhere, which would hopefully reduce the number of pirates and create a Utopian society for all.
All that said, though, I doubt there's any truth to the story, since, again, it kind of defeats the purpose of having a sting-operation if you TELL EVERYONE you're running a sting!:)
I don't mean to troll, but pose a serious question: do we really WANT to have "this kind" of people influence our elections? "This kind" being the kind of person who doesn't care enough about his/her freedom, rights, or ability to affect the course of our nation and collective destiny, but rather is only motiviated by the opportunity to get a "free lottery ticket"?!
It is CERTAINLY their right to vote, and I encourage and support that, and yes would even fight and die to defend that right; HOWEVER, I tremble to think of the havoc that would be wrought on our system of government if this type of selfish, self-absorbed, unthinking nit-wits were lured to the polls (at great expense to the tax-payers) in order to cast their selfish, self-absorbed, un-thought-out "opinions" in the form of a vote cast only to get a chance at "free" money.
Frankly, I don't see any widespread legitimate reason why ANY American who has the RIGHT to vote CAN'T vote; if this type of citizen is disenfranchised in any way, it is a SELF-EMPOSED disenfranchisement, and THAT's a right we need to support too - the right NOT to vote.
Except that Cisco has no real incentive to find bugs in their code, whereas a cracker does. Motivation makes a huge difference. And why would Cisco need to do strict audits on their code? Nobody outside the company will ever see it. Right?
Wrong. FOR EXAMPLE, Cisco goes after numerous certifications for their devices, such as FIPS 140-2 for their crypto and Common Criteria for their IA features. Both of these certifications require an in-depth code-review to be performed by an accreditated testing laboratory.
Now, granted, the source code for IOS (or for any other mature software application or OS) is *HUGE*, and thus the code reviews for these types of certification efforts are in reality targetted to only the source code that implements the major features of interest to that particular certification... but (as a FIPS and CC consultant) I have seen these code reviews (for certain unnamed vendor(s)) get waaaaaaaay out of scope when the source code of interest was just plain BAD: when a problem is found the lab tells the vendor what to fix, but when the code is very messy or buggy I've seen the lab personnel say "Gack! This code is so bad, we don't trust that your fixes to this particular code will provide ANY security, because the rest of the code is probably equally bad! We're going to need 6 more months and $100,000 more in order to fully review ALL of your code." THAT is when you know that the whole certification effort is f00bar.:)
Jakob Boeskov, the purported "CEO" of "Empire North", is a satirist. Here is a link to his personal homepage, along with an explanation of the FAKE GPS Sniper Rifle (emphasis is mine):
"Giant balloon sculptures, voodoo-cursed technology and blueprints for hi-tech weapons smuggled into Chinas first international weapons fair - in the world of Jakob S. Boeskov the amazing meets the political in a unique mix.
Coming from a background in comics, Copenhagen based artist Jakob S. Boeskov seems destined to work with satire and pastiche. Using a palette of different media such as web, paintings, writings, 3D drawings and animations, as well as collaborations with musicians, writers, voodoo priests (!) and industrial designers he "hacks and bends" media, reality and technology to give a startling and shocking view of life in the 21st century.
His recent works has been created within the framework of his self-styled "sci-fi art" (or "fictionist") concept where he takes "an imaginary product from the future" and tests it out today, in a real environment. He did this most notably in his MY DOOMSDAY WEAPON project where he created "the most horrible weapon in the world" (- a piece of "pre-crime technology" designed to mark demonstrators with GPS (Global Positioning System) chips "before the crime is committed"). Jakob S. Boeskov brought drawings of this weapon to China Police 2002, Chinas first international weapons fair, where the international weapons dealer elite and greeted this nightmarish weapon with much enthusiasm."
Very interesting - If corroborated, then this data presents a huge stumbling block for the standard evolutionary "Big Bang" theory. As any good evolutionist knows , after the "Big Bang" all the matter in the universe, which had been compressed (through forces and mechanisms unknowable) into a very tiny ball, exploded outward (spherically, with planar tendencies) with tremendous force. All of this random matter eventually coagulated into more and more complicated forms until stars, planets, and the like were formed.
This observation of thousands of galaxies SO FAR OUT from the assumed center of the "Big Bang" doesn't make sense, since the matter comprising those galaxies (being the furthest out from center and thus having the greatest initial velocity and energy), should be the MOST CHAOTIC, not the most ORGANIZED, as they apparently are (being in string formation). Obviously this is not the appropriate forum for an ultra-detailed discussion of the physics in the theorized Big Bang; suffice it to say that this observation stands to flip Big Bang Science upside down and inside out.
This brings to my mind ponderings of the Intelligent Design, or "ID", argument, which you can read more about here at LeaderU. I agree with the ID proponents - the more we learn about the universe, the more obvious it becomes that it takes more "faith" to believe that that universe was created by chance than it does to believe that SOME outside, intelligent force "caused" it to be (the details of which are certainly open to debate).
Nope, if you'll take a CLOSER look at the results from that quere, you will see that ALL of the results are from xenu.net. That's because the first part of the search, "site:xenu.net" tells google to ONLY return results that are within the "xenu.net" domain. It has absolutely nothing to do with your geographic location.
This is a very well-written and interesting editorial... but it's not a scientific article.
Dr. Caplan does an excellent job of pontificating his viewpoint - that Darwin was right and "all those who thump their bible and say there is no proof" are wrong; he very clearly and concisely tells us that the proof of evolution is in our genes, and that every scientist worth his/her salt agrees that there is no other explanation other than Darwinian evolution.
However, not once does he lay out the proof of which he speaks. Whether Dr. Caplan's viewpoint is correct or not, this article is nothing more than an emotionally persuasive argument with no scientific credibility whatsoever. It's well and good to say that there is undeniable evidence of Darwinian evolution in the human genome - that's what most people have been hoping for, searching for; but if such a sweeping statement is going to be made, especially to the rather scientifically ignorant masses that MSNBC and other mainstream media outlets serve, then it must be backed up by the actual evidence in question, lest we fall into the trap of believing a Big Lie that simply gets repeated enough times.
Science is detailed observation of the natural world, and this article offers no such observations, only emotionalism. I would greatly enjoy reading a scientific paper on this subject.
Actually, there IS another major motion picture set in the Blade Runner UNIVERSE (though not technically a "sequel"): Soldier, starring Kurt Russel and written by David Webb Peoples, the writer of Blade Runner. See this info at the IMDB (also quoted below):
Writer David Peoples has said that Solider is a "side-quel" to Blade Runner (which he also wrote) because it takes place in the same universe and in fact the vehicles used by the Blade Runners, spinners, are also used in Solider.
All of this is not, of course, to negate your point, which is that Hollywood has a habit of screwing up perfectly wonderful movies with sequels-that-never-should-have-been.
> I find it strange that these companies are based
> on the US in the first place.
> Why wouldn't they move to another country where
> no limits to satellite image resolution exist?
Are you implying that the USA is the ONLY country that restricts public access to satellite data? Because if you are, you're completely off-base. If, on the other hand, you're implying that a business operated out of another country can get unlimited access to any US satellite data they desire, you're STILL completely off-base.
The US Fed Gov't has National Security concerns about other countries benefiting from OUR satellite technology and intelligence, so they restrict (or, restrictED) public consumption to relatively low-res (and thus tactically insignificant) data. It doesn't matter WHERE a business is located - if the Fed doesn't grant them access to data, they aren't getting it.
The US has excellent reconaisance and mapping satellites in orbit, but other countries are lagging far behind our level of tech and coverage. Just moving the company to another country doesn't mean that company would get access to the SAME tech in orbit, just under a different flag. If you want hi-res, you get it from the USA; if you want grainy low-res pics, multitudes of nations have acceptable satellites in orbit.
Slashdot Mirror
...would like to welcome our new crab overlords.
IF Valve is, indeed, running such an experiment, it's pretty unlikely that Gabe Newell (or anyone at Valve) would immediately fess up to it to some unknown joker on the Internet - WHILE they're trying to catch people.
:)
:)
However, this is a pretty neat idea - since Valve knows that people are going to pirate the game, the proactive step of CONTROLLING the version that gets pirated by modding it so that they can track it anthen releasing it BEFORE anyone else can do the same pretty much ensures that they'll get the personal info (name, credit card #, address, etc.) of lots of pirates, and then they can choose what to do with that info.
The first option that comes to mind is emotionally satisfying to but a horrible business plan - they COULD use that personal info to PERMANENTLY BAN that person from using Steam/HL2, ever. Although that might make Gabe & crew feel good for a few minutes... they just potentially lost ($50 x #_of_pirates).
The second option, which is BOTH emotionally satisfying AND a good business plan, BUT is ALSO only quasi-moral and barely legal, is to use that personal info to contact the pirates directly and extort^H^H^H^H^H^H encourage them to buy a legal copy immediately, otherwise Valve will turn their info over to the authorities for prosecution. This not only "sticks it to the pirates" but also generates additional revenue (($50 x #_of_pirates) - ($50 x #_of_stupid_pirates)). Heck, if they went the extortion^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H encouragement route, why not "encourage" them to buy the $90 package instead?
The third, and most likely option, would be to turn all of that personal info over to the authorities and make a huge example out of all of them, thus instilling the Fear of Valve into all pirates everywhere, which would hopefully reduce the number of pirates and create a Utopian society for all.
All that said, though, I doubt there's any truth to the story, since, again, it kind of defeats the purpose of having a sting-operation if you TELL EVERYONE you're running a sting!
I don't mean to troll, but pose a serious question: do we really WANT to have "this kind" of people influence our elections? "This kind" being the kind of person who doesn't care enough about his/her freedom, rights, or ability to affect the course of our nation and collective destiny, but rather is only motiviated by the opportunity to get a "free lottery ticket"?!
It is CERTAINLY their right to vote, and I encourage and support that, and yes would even fight and die to defend that right; HOWEVER, I tremble to think of the havoc that would be wrought on our system of government if this type of selfish, self-absorbed, unthinking nit-wits were lured to the polls (at great expense to the tax-payers) in order to cast their selfish, self-absorbed, un-thought-out "opinions" in the form of a vote cast only to get a chance at "free" money.
Frankly, I don't see any widespread legitimate reason why ANY American who has the RIGHT to vote CAN'T vote; if this type of citizen is disenfranchised in any way, it is a SELF-EMPOSED disenfranchisement, and THAT's a right we need to support too - the right NOT to vote.
Except that Cisco has no real incentive to find bugs in their code, whereas a cracker does. Motivation makes a huge difference. And why would Cisco need to do strict audits on their code? Nobody outside the company will ever see it. Right?
:)
Wrong. FOR EXAMPLE, Cisco goes after numerous certifications for their devices, such as FIPS 140-2 for their crypto and Common Criteria for their IA features. Both of these certifications require an in-depth code-review to be performed by an accreditated testing laboratory.
Now, granted, the source code for IOS (or for any other mature software application or OS) is *HUGE*, and thus the code reviews for these types of certification efforts are in reality targetted to only the source code that implements the major features of interest to that particular certification... but (as a FIPS and CC consultant) I have seen these code reviews (for certain unnamed vendor(s)) get waaaaaaaay out of scope when the source code of interest was just plain BAD: when a problem is found the lab tells the vendor what to fix, but when the code is very messy or buggy I've seen the lab personnel say "Gack! This code is so bad, we don't trust that your fixes to this particular code will provide ANY security, because the rest of the code is probably equally bad! We're going to need 6 more months and $100,000 more in order to fully review ALL of your code." THAT is when you know that the whole certification effort is f00bar.
Jakob Boeskov, the purported "CEO" of "Empire North", is a satirist. Here is a link to his personal homepage, along with an explanation of the FAKE GPS Sniper Rifle (emphasis is mine):
:)
http://www.backfire.dk/JB/indexreal.html
"Giant balloon sculptures, voodoo-cursed technology and blueprints for hi-tech weapons smuggled into Chinas first international weapons fair - in the world of Jakob S. Boeskov the amazing meets the political in a unique mix.
Coming from a background in comics, Copenhagen based artist Jakob S. Boeskov seems destined to work with satire and pastiche. Using a palette of different media such as web, paintings, writings, 3D drawings and animations, as well as collaborations with musicians, writers, voodoo priests (!) and industrial designers he "hacks and bends" media, reality and technology to give a startling and shocking view of life in the 21st century.
His recent works has been created within the framework of his self-styled "sci-fi art" (or "fictionist") concept where he takes "an imaginary product from the future" and tests it out today, in a real environment. He did this most notably in his MY DOOMSDAY WEAPON project where he created "the most horrible weapon in the world" (- a piece of "pre-crime technology" designed to mark demonstrators with GPS (Global Positioning System) chips "before the crime is committed"). Jakob S. Boeskov brought drawings of this weapon to China Police 2002, Chinas first international weapons fair, where the international weapons dealer elite and greeted this nightmarish weapon with much enthusiasm."
Happy April Fools Day, 11 days late!
Very interesting - If corroborated, then this data presents a huge stumbling block for the standard evolutionary "Big Bang" theory. As any good evolutionist knows , after the "Big Bang" all the matter in the universe, which had been compressed (through forces and mechanisms unknowable) into a very tiny ball, exploded outward (spherically, with planar tendencies) with tremendous force. All of this random matter eventually coagulated into more and more complicated forms until stars, planets, and the like were formed.
This observation of thousands of galaxies SO FAR OUT from the assumed center of the "Big Bang" doesn't make sense, since the matter comprising those galaxies (being the furthest out from center and thus having the greatest initial velocity and energy), should be the MOST CHAOTIC, not the most ORGANIZED, as they apparently are (being in string formation). Obviously this is not the appropriate forum for an ultra-detailed discussion of the physics in the theorized Big Bang; suffice it to say that this observation stands to flip Big Bang Science upside down and inside out.
This brings to my mind ponderings of the Intelligent Design, or "ID", argument, which you can read more about here at LeaderU. I agree with the ID proponents - the more we learn about the universe, the more obvious it becomes that it takes more "faith" to believe that that universe was created by chance than it does to believe that SOME outside, intelligent force "caused" it to be (the details of which are certainly open to debate).
Nope, if you'll take a CLOSER look at the results from that quere, you will see that ALL of the results are from xenu.net. That's because the first part of the search, "site:xenu.net" tells google to ONLY return results that are within the "xenu.net" domain. It has absolutely nothing to do with your geographic location.
This was the THIRD item listed in my google search for "qwk database". :) Google is your friend!
http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/47581.html
Skyreader might work for you: http://www.fix.no/skyreader/skyinfo.htm
Note that development has been discontinued, but it is released under the GPL. Versions are available for DOS4GW, OS/2, Win32, and Linux.
This is a very well-written and interesting editorial... but it's not a scientific article.
Dr. Caplan does an excellent job of pontificating his viewpoint - that Darwin was right and "all those who thump their bible and say there is no proof" are wrong; he very clearly and concisely tells us that the proof of evolution is in our genes, and that every scientist worth his/her salt agrees that there is no other explanation other than Darwinian evolution.
However, not once does he lay out the proof of which he speaks. Whether Dr. Caplan's viewpoint is correct or not, this article is nothing more than an emotionally persuasive argument with no scientific credibility whatsoever. It's well and good to say that there is undeniable evidence of Darwinian evolution in the human genome - that's what most people have been hoping for, searching for; but if such a sweeping statement is going to be made, especially to the rather scientifically ignorant masses that MSNBC and other mainstream media outlets serve, then it must be backed up by the actual evidence in question, lest we fall into the trap of believing a Big Lie that simply gets repeated enough times.
Science is detailed observation of the natural world, and this article offers no such observations, only emotionalism. I would greatly enjoy reading a scientific paper on this subject.
Actually, there IS another major motion picture set in the Blade Runner UNIVERSE (though not technically a "sequel"): Soldier , starring Kurt Russel and written by David Webb Peoples, the writer of Blade Runner. See this info at the IMDB (also quoted below): Writer David Peoples has said that Solider is a "side-quel" to Blade Runner (which he also wrote) because it takes place in the same universe and in fact the vehicles used by the Blade Runners, spinners, are also used in Solider. All of this is not, of course, to negate your point, which is that Hollywood has a habit of screwing up perfectly wonderful movies with sequels-that-never-should-have-been.
> I find it strange that these companies are based
> on the US in the first place.
> Why wouldn't they move to another country where
> no limits to satellite image resolution exist?
Are you implying that the USA is the ONLY country that restricts public access to satellite data? Because if you are, you're completely off-base. If, on the other hand, you're implying that a business operated out of another country can get unlimited access to any US satellite data they desire, you're STILL completely off-base.
The US Fed Gov't has National Security concerns about other countries benefiting from OUR satellite technology and intelligence, so they restrict (or, restrictED) public consumption to relatively low-res (and thus tactically insignificant) data. It doesn't matter WHERE a business is located - if the Fed doesn't grant them access to data, they aren't getting it.
The US has excellent reconaisance and mapping satellites in orbit, but other countries are lagging far behind our level of tech and coverage. Just moving the company to another country doesn't mean that company would get access to the SAME tech in orbit, just under a different flag. If you want hi-res, you get it from the USA; if you want grainy low-res pics, multitudes of nations have acceptable satellites in orbit.