They took money ('donations') for access to the site. That makes it a crime. With max 2 years in the can, plus any damages to the studios/software companies.
But you are right, the case does have lots of question marks. Basically it'a test case for Finland. If it ultimately goes nowhere, expect tighter laws as an answer.
- Finreactor (the finnish siten in question) admins solicted for 'donations' - in other words, took money for access to torrent trackers. Also the tracker required registration, and kept 'ratios' for each user. Heck, the *bank account number* of the site was in plain view asking for donations directly to the bank account of the admins. In other words, the activity was very very stupid.
- By Finnish law, the crime becomes 'tekijänoikeusrikos' instead of 'rikkomus' when money is involved. The difference is that for the lesser crime, maximum penalty is just fines - and I doubt police could even get search warrants for the lesser offense.
But in this case since money is involved, and prosecution will claim that there was a goal for financial gain, and it becomes a bigger crime (max 2 years in the can). And suddenly it's easy for the police to get all the details they need from ISPs & search warrants for the busts.
So in other words: Taking money (even if it's just 'donations' to cover tracker bandwidth) is a nice way to get your ass in jail.
The case does have few murky details - they cannot prosecute everyone (over 10000 users supposedly), and distributing the.torrents themselves is a gray area thing. Admins definitely facilitated copyright violations, but... how illegal that is? Can they be strung up for what their users did? It's a test case for P2P in Finland. I think the fact that the admins took money for access to the site will nail their asses for *something*, but the rest is still up in the air.
Yup, it was expected to be moderated as 'funny'. TCO studies are generally worthless, unless we are talking about making an actual study of the actual costs of a specific deployment, and note that the results only relate to that specific case. There are so many variables that differ from deployment to deployment that a general TCO study is a worthess piece of paper with two pages of footnotes that you have to take into account - and which rapidly make the whole study worthless.
I've seen many cases where going open source (or mostly open source) obiviously would save truckload of cash. I've also seen cases where getting Windows-based system is the most cost-effective solution - even long term. And for the zealots: I'm talking of an example situation like this:
Small company, less than 10 employees, half dozen windows desktops. Currently sharing stuff using ad-hoc windows filesharing, no 'server', backups totally nonexistant. No skilled workers that could administrate something more complex than a toaster oven. Best solution is to add a cheapo windows server with work files all centrally located on the server with RAID setup & tape backup.
Yes, one could argue a situation where open source could do the same thing cheaper, but the quickest, easiest and most cost-effective way to get things working IN THE REAL WORLD is to drop in a low cost windows setup.
Same thing with 100 employees using 98/NT/2K on desktops and bunch of decomposing old NT Boxes as servers? I'd consider a linux-based system in a heartbeat - maybe even on the desktops depending on the required tasks, as you are going to have to do a major rework of the whole system anyway, and you will need one or two full-time admins ANYWAY - trying to save so that you wouldn't need the 2nd that would spend his days re-imaging borked windows desktops (lost productivity) of the clueles lusers would bring considerable savings on top of the licensing costs.
A random study indicates that the actual cost of the licenses themselves is roughly 36% of the total cost of setup and maintenance of 250-seat corporate deployment.
Nobody wants to own a computer that gets to scrape the remains off the 'main table'. Ports suck.
If Mac OS X wants to be a gaming platform, it requires *native* titles that sell computers. Something no other platform can offer (unless it comes as a port 6-12 months later).
As long as all the titles are late ports from games seen on other platforms, nobody is interested really. Heck, as long as 99% of games are late ports instead of simultaneous release ports, it's clear nobody takes the platform seriously as a gaming platform, so why should gamers do it?
I used to own two 'port platforms' back in the dark ages. First one was MSX (well, MSX2 actually) that got cubic assload of crappy ports from games - from Sinclair Spectrum 48, a MUCH worse computer that looked like a toy compared to what MSX2 could do.
Later I got to curse crappy Atari ST->Amiga ports on my Amiga - most of the games were done to the lowest common denominator (Atari ST), and took zero advantage of Amiga's abilities. Only later in Amiga's life, when ST was dead and buried, some real Amiga games were made.
So now I only buy platforms that are *native* to the games. So PC and PS2 at the moment. Yes, I'm missing some 'XBox exclusives', but not enough of them to make me too sad. I did consider GameCube for a moment due to some great firstparty Nintendo titles, but sadly game pricing policies in Finland nuked that idea. I'm not buying 149 euro (or even worse, now 99 euro) console and then pay *75 euros+* per game. Too rich for my blood.
PS2 has both nice exclusive titles, and being the base platform for most multiplatform titles (being the crappiest of the consoles right now) means that games are usually developed on PS2 first, and then we get half-assed Cube/XBox ports from there...
So, get companies to fund native OS X game development. Might be Difficult(tm)
No, but basically issuing press releases (okay, 'leaking info') and making loud noises that you are 'considering your options' is pretty close.
Have you ever worked in a retail store where you sell something expensive (so there is room to discuss the price)? Ever seen people that talk to their friends loudly how they can get this and that cheaper from store X? They are doing the same thing - basically trying to poke out a more favourable price by making noises how they might skip the deal in front of them and head to the competitor's store.
Of course most sales people know what the real price is across the area, so these guys usually end up looking like morons and not gaining anything out of their babble, but people keep trying.
In the case of MS, everyone knows they are more expensive, so babbling on how you are going to go for the competition (linux) is just a method of trying to extort a fat discount - and we all know the prices have PLENTY of headroom in them...
No. MS is all about having a dominating market share.
They will cut prices. Just wait and see. They are quite aware that their competition has a pricetag of 0$* (*not including support), and once some major defections occur, they will carefully calculate what is the 'right price' for Windows so it will be competitive with Linux. The actual cost of the licenses is just part of the equation. Support, training and application customization costs are much larger pieces. Right now the jury is still out what actually IS cheaper. Linux offers unlimited customization (you get the source), but admin/training/support costs are a huge question mark.
So, MS will say 'screw it, no discount for j00', then someone actually switches, and MS will carefully monitor what the actual costs in real-world example were, and prices Windows competitively to retain marketshare.
If you can squeeze extra discounts from MS by saying that you are 'looking into' Linux and/or Mac OS X, why not say it? Sure, you may have to conduct a small inquiry into the feasibility and do some cost calculations. Peanuts compared to what you can save by extorting MS like this.
MS is getting exactly what they deserve. They went into panic mode over few big customers and gave deep discounts, and now all sizeable customers are filing for same discounts by issuing vague statements how they are 'looking into' linux.
So, either in the long run the MS software gets cheaper, or at some point MS says 'screw it, go linux if you are not happy with our prices' - obiviously assuming they'd still stick to windows. Then some big name actually goes thru with the switch... and we get some real world data on the actual costs. At which point MS will bring down it's prices and/or otherwise sweetens the deal to stay competitive.
Those gasping on 500$ high-end cards - you should note that you can't BUY EM anywhere. 6800GTs, X800 XTs and 6800 Ultras are still constantly out of stock. Yes, if you dont care about warranties or the exact brand, you can probably find some model somewhere, but if you want, say, a certain model, its more likely than not that it's out of stock everywhere.
So, if 500$ is too much for a videocard, why these things seem to be selling like hotcakes? Maybe the average slashdot crowd is so out of touch with their uber P200Mhz MMX linux boxes that they haven't noticed how the technology has advanced.
Yes, I do admit the manufacturing runs are somewhat small on the high end models, but at the same time I think that the manufacturers were caught off-guard on how popular the new nVidia offering would turn out to be. At the same time ATI seems to have problems manufacturing enough working X800 XT chips - X800pros are commonly available, but the faster XT models are still rare as hell.
And, newsflash, that latest chip in that 6800GT trounces P4 in complexity and transistor count, and it takes immense amounts of cash to develop these things. And unlike intel, they can't shift bazillion of them to businesses buying by the thousands while upgrading huge piles of desktops. So, obiviously, they are going to skim the profit from somewhere. High end buyers are funding those 200$ cheap-o-cards. Midrange stuff costs pretty much what it costs to manufacture one of these, and the development costs are covered by the high end models.
For those penny-pinchers who outright can't afford the latest stuff - it's STILL amazing how impressive cards you can get at 50$ today. Radeon 9200 is comparable to GeForce 3 - a card that totally dominated only about three years ago. When you count out the cost of the memory chips on the card, the actual graphics chip turns out to be damn cheap.
Which also explains the general upward trend in graphics card prices - the next gen stuff is commonly shipped with 256MB onboard memory, compared to last year's 128MB. And that's GDDR3 on the high end models - expensive, difficult to obtain...
But hey, at least it was rendered in a DAMN good resolution, and those shader tricks to get the stuff they call 'water' and 'grass' look so cool were impressive.
When you install an antivirus app, it should damn well protect the system from virii.
Current norton AV commonly gets ganked by viruses. As in it appears to be working perfectly fine, reporting 0 viruses, but underneath you can have a huge mess.
Mostly this is due to '0 day infections' - viruses that enter before norton provides an update, and by the time update becomes available, Norton on the machine has been rendered 'harmless' by the virus.
How hard it is to make an AV program that makes noise if something tries to disable/uninstall/neuter it? Ah, that would most likely require you to run as a limited user instead of Administrator:)
Actually, it's still there. They hide all links to it, but if you check City of Heroes account page, it has still an option to buy game CD-key online and use a downloadable client.
As a guy who gets to clean up these pieces of junk daily, the number of trojans around is growing. Earlier it was maybe one a week. Two or three if there was a major outbreak. Now its 1-2 a day. Good business as clueless lusers pay OK amounts for cleanup as long as they dont have to do the dreaded reinstall that their compaq/hp/dell support line offered as a solution.
Whats annoying is that some of these buggers can really mess up the system. Simple 'pop in cd / go to free online web scanner and clean up' no longer works in some cases... Symantec should concentrate more on making their crappy AV software work better and resist disabling by virii better and stop issuing more sensationalist press releases.
Its way too common to get a virus-filled computer with norton internet security installed. Some bug had just killed the whole AV software, leaving an empty 'shell' up that keeps telling the user everything is fine. They usually wake up when their ISP cuts their line and tells them to clean up and call back when their system is secured.
It's obiviously a challenge, but considering that most IE vulnerabilities are linked to the tight coupling of OS and browser (and the stupid ActiveX), Firefox offers fewer points of attack for the l33t hax0rs to poke holes at. Yes, there will be vulnerabilities, but I expect a lot fewer than with MS products.
All Mozilla/Firefox now needs is a good update system. Normal users have already been teached by MS that everything magically gets updated via Windows Update. Not so with the browser - if they use something other than IE.
Yes, advanced users hate autoupdates. So what, they can always be disabled. Firefox and Mozilla need builtin autoupdaters that at least point the user to a page when a new update is available. Or preferrably just go ahead and do the update by default. That way people can browse safely even as new exploits crop up.
Anarchy Online already has billboards advertising Alienware computers:)
(This is a tie-in to a marketing campaing related to the launch of AO expansion titled 'Alien Invasion')
I doubt any gamer would mind much for (paid) advertising in the form of (animated) billboards or 'holograms' in first person shooter levels, but the stuff should *fit the theme*. Futuristic shooter such as Unreal Tournament would be easy - just stick in some billboards to suitable levels, but if someone would start selling McDonalds stuff by planting ingame ads into something like Everquest, gamers would go berserk over it...
It all depends how it's done. I think Sims Online and The Sims 2 also have somekinda marketing/product placement deals already set up.
Yep, at least two titles have not yet been fully and completely cracked;
Toca Race Driver 2 Soldiers: Heroes of World War II
Both with StarForce, Both from Codemasters. They are probably the only two games using all features of Starforce, apparently making them pain to crack.
I really considered buying Soldiers, but after hearing that there may or may not be incompatibilities with CDRW/DVDRW drives reading the original disc (playing the game), I decided against it, as I only have Plextor 708A DVDRW drive and older Plextor 1210S CDRW drive. No 'reader only' drive at all. Until I hear that the paid original game absolutely positivitely works on my drives, I'm not interested. Plenty of other (fully paid, original) games to play that do not use such invasive protections.
I do give StarForce devs props - it's been a while since the last game before these two that has survived over a week uncracked.
Overall PC gaming will go more towards online-authenticated accounts/CD-Keys - like with MMORPGs and online shooters. In the perfect world anyone would be free to spread the game content around, but to actually play the game, you would have to have online account to authenticate, and only way to open one is via CD key off original box (or CD key purchased online from the developer/distributor). Sadly this doesn't work as long as offline play has to be possible. Internet is popping up everywhere, so I expect this to slowly change. In 5-10 years any PC without active internet connection is probably considered such a lame duck that they don't matter anymore.
Must have been a borked installation to begin with. I've upgraded dozens of 98s, MEs, 2000s and XPs with that CD. Zero problems - as long as I have removed all spyware/virus crap BEFORE doing the update.
Re:'Flaws' Not that big of a deal
on
Latest SP2 News
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· Score: 1
Heh.
SP2 makes XP a lot more secure. Critically more secure, if we are talking about updating a system that has not been fed it's daily ration of hotfixes from windows update.
Slashdot Mirror
Finreactor
Basically registered-user-only finnish 'suprnova clone'. With ratios and other 'pseudo-l33t' stuff.
Basically they nabbed bunch of teens or barely-18 clueless idiots.
See my other post.
They took money ('donations') for access to the site. That makes it a crime. With max 2 years in the can, plus any damages to the studios/software companies.
But you are right, the case does have lots of question marks. Basically it'a test case for Finland. If it ultimately goes nowhere, expect tighter laws as an answer.
- Finreactor (the finnish siten in question) admins solicted for 'donations' - in other words, took money for access to torrent trackers. Also the tracker required registration, and kept 'ratios' for each user. Heck, the *bank account number* of the site was in plain view asking for donations directly to the bank account of the admins. In other words, the activity was very very stupid.
.torrents themselves is a gray area thing. Admins definitely facilitated copyright violations, but... how illegal that is? Can they be strung up for what their users did? It's a test case for P2P in Finland. I think the fact that the admins took money for access to the site will nail their asses for *something*, but the rest is still up in the air.
- By Finnish law, the crime becomes 'tekijänoikeusrikos' instead of 'rikkomus' when money is involved. The difference is that for the lesser crime, maximum penalty is just fines - and I doubt police could even get search warrants for the lesser offense.
But in this case since money is involved, and prosecution will claim that there was a goal for financial gain, and it becomes a bigger crime (max 2 years in the can). And suddenly it's easy for the police to get all the details they need from ISPs & search warrants for the busts.
So in other words: Taking money (even if it's just 'donations' to cover tracker bandwidth) is a nice way to get your ass in jail.
The case does have few murky details - they cannot prosecute everyone (over 10000 users supposedly), and distributing the
Yup, it was expected to be moderated as 'funny'. TCO studies are generally worthless, unless we are talking about making an actual study of the actual costs of a specific deployment, and note that the results only relate to that specific case. There are so many variables that differ from deployment to deployment that a general TCO study is a worthess piece of paper with two pages of footnotes that you have to take into account - and which rapidly make the whole study worthless.
I've seen many cases where going open source (or mostly open source) obiviously would save truckload of cash. I've also seen cases where getting Windows-based system is the most cost-effective solution - even long term. And for the zealots: I'm talking of an example situation like this:
Small company, less than 10 employees, half dozen windows desktops. Currently sharing stuff using ad-hoc windows filesharing, no 'server', backups totally nonexistant. No skilled workers that could administrate something more complex than a toaster oven. Best solution is to add a cheapo windows server with work files all centrally located on the server with RAID setup & tape backup.
Yes, one could argue a situation where open source could do the same thing cheaper, but the quickest, easiest and most cost-effective way to get things working IN THE REAL WORLD is to drop in a low cost windows setup.
Same thing with 100 employees using 98/NT/2K on desktops and bunch of decomposing old NT Boxes as servers? I'd consider a linux-based system in a heartbeat - maybe even on the desktops depending on the required tasks, as you are going to have to do a major rework of the whole system anyway, and you will need one or two full-time admins ANYWAY - trying to save so that you wouldn't need the 2nd that would spend his days re-imaging borked windows desktops (lost productivity) of the clueles lusers would bring considerable savings on top of the licensing costs.
A random study indicates that the actual cost of the licenses themselves is roughly 36% of the total cost of setup and maintenance of 250-seat corporate deployment.
Nobody wants to own a computer that gets to scrape the remains off the 'main table'. Ports suck.
If Mac OS X wants to be a gaming platform, it requires *native* titles that sell computers. Something no other platform can offer (unless it comes as a port 6-12 months later).
As long as all the titles are late ports from games seen on other platforms, nobody is interested really. Heck, as long as 99% of games are late ports instead of simultaneous release ports, it's clear nobody takes the platform seriously as a gaming platform, so why should gamers do it?
I used to own two 'port platforms' back in the dark ages. First one was MSX (well, MSX2 actually) that got cubic assload of crappy ports from games - from Sinclair Spectrum 48, a MUCH worse computer that looked like a toy compared to what MSX2 could do.
Later I got to curse crappy Atari ST->Amiga ports on my Amiga - most of the games were done to the lowest common denominator (Atari ST), and took zero advantage of Amiga's abilities. Only later in Amiga's life, when ST was dead and buried, some real Amiga games were made.
So now I only buy platforms that are *native* to the games. So PC and PS2 at the moment. Yes, I'm missing some 'XBox exclusives', but not enough of them to make me too sad. I did consider GameCube for a moment due to some great firstparty Nintendo titles, but sadly game pricing policies in Finland nuked that idea. I'm not buying 149 euro (or even worse, now 99 euro) console and then pay *75 euros+* per game. Too rich for my blood.
PS2 has both nice exclusive titles, and being the base platform for most multiplatform titles (being the crappiest of the consoles right now) means that games are usually developed on PS2 first, and then we get half-assed Cube/XBox ports from there...
So, get companies to fund native OS X game development. Might be Difficult(tm)
...from range.
You want to walk around broadcasting data who you are to anyone with a hidden RFID reader?
No, but basically issuing press releases (okay, 'leaking info') and making loud noises that you are 'considering your options' is pretty close.
Have you ever worked in a retail store where you sell something expensive (so there is room to discuss the price)? Ever seen people that talk to their friends loudly how they can get this and that cheaper from store X? They are doing the same thing - basically trying to poke out a more favourable price by making noises how they might skip the deal in front of them and head to the competitor's store.
Of course most sales people know what the real price is across the area, so these guys usually end up looking like morons and not gaining anything out of their babble, but people keep trying.
In the case of MS, everyone knows they are more expensive, so babbling on how you are going to go for the competition (linux) is just a method of trying to extort a fat discount - and we all know the prices have PLENTY of headroom in them...
No. MS is all about having a dominating market share.
They will cut prices. Just wait and see. They are quite aware that their competition has a pricetag of 0$* (*not including support), and once some major defections occur, they will carefully calculate what is the 'right price' for Windows so it will be competitive with Linux. The actual cost of the licenses is just part of the equation. Support, training and application customization costs are much larger pieces. Right now the jury is still out what actually IS cheaper. Linux offers unlimited customization (you get the source), but admin/training/support costs are a huge question mark.
So, MS will say 'screw it, no discount for j00', then someone actually switches, and MS will carefully monitor what the actual costs in real-world example were, and prices Windows competitively to retain marketshare.
If you can squeeze extra discounts from MS by saying that you are 'looking into' Linux and/or Mac OS X, why not say it? Sure, you may have to conduct a small inquiry into the feasibility and do some cost calculations. Peanuts compared to what you can save by extorting MS like this.
MS is getting exactly what they deserve. They went into panic mode over few big customers and gave deep discounts, and now all sizeable customers are filing for same discounts by issuing vague statements how they are 'looking into' linux.
So, either in the long run the MS software gets cheaper, or at some point MS says 'screw it, go linux if you are not happy with our prices' - obiviously assuming they'd still stick to windows. Then some big name actually goes thru with the switch... and we get some real world data on the actual costs. At which point MS will bring down it's prices and/or otherwise sweetens the deal to stay competitive.
This ain't rocket science...
Those gasping on 500$ high-end cards - you should note that you can't BUY EM anywhere. 6800GTs, X800 XTs and 6800 Ultras are still constantly out of stock. Yes, if you dont care about warranties or the exact brand, you can probably find some model somewhere, but if you want, say, a certain model, its more likely than not that it's out of stock everywhere.
So, if 500$ is too much for a videocard, why these things seem to be selling like hotcakes? Maybe the average slashdot crowd is so out of touch with their uber P200Mhz MMX linux boxes that they haven't noticed how the technology has advanced.
Yes, I do admit the manufacturing runs are somewhat small on the high end models, but at the same time I think that the manufacturers were caught off-guard on how popular the new nVidia offering would turn out to be. At the same time ATI seems to have problems manufacturing enough working X800 XT chips - X800pros are commonly available, but the faster XT models are still rare as hell.
And, newsflash, that latest chip in that 6800GT trounces P4 in complexity and transistor count, and it takes immense amounts of cash to develop these things. And unlike intel, they can't shift bazillion of them to businesses buying by the thousands while upgrading huge piles of desktops. So, obiviously, they are going to skim the profit from somewhere. High end buyers are funding those 200$ cheap-o-cards. Midrange stuff costs pretty much what it costs to manufacture one of these, and the development costs are covered by the high end models.
For those penny-pinchers who outright can't afford the latest stuff - it's STILL amazing how impressive cards you can get at 50$ today. Radeon 9200 is comparable to GeForce 3 - a card that totally dominated only about three years ago. When you count out the cost of the memory chips on the card, the actual graphics chip turns out to be damn cheap.
Which also explains the general upward trend in graphics card prices - the next gen stuff is commonly shipped with 256MB onboard memory, compared to last year's 128MB. And that's GDDR3 on the high end models - expensive, difficult to obtain...
But hey, at least it was rendered in a DAMN good resolution, and those shader tricks to get the stuff they call 'water' and 'grass' look so cool were impressive.
When you install an antivirus app, it should damn well protect the system from virii.
:)
Current norton AV commonly gets ganked by viruses. As in it appears to be working perfectly fine, reporting 0 viruses, but underneath you can have a huge mess.
Mostly this is due to '0 day infections' - viruses that enter before norton provides an update, and by the time update becomes available, Norton on the machine has been rendered 'harmless' by the virus.
How hard it is to make an AV program that makes noise if something tries to disable/uninstall/neuter it? Ah, that would most likely require you to run as a limited user instead of Administrator
Actually, it's still there. They hide all links to it, but if you check City of Heroes account page, it has still an option to buy game CD-key online and use a downloadable client.
As a guy who gets to clean up these pieces of junk daily, the number of trojans around is growing. Earlier it was maybe one a week. Two or three if there was a major outbreak. Now its 1-2 a day. Good business as clueless lusers pay OK amounts for cleanup as long as they dont have to do the dreaded reinstall that their compaq/hp/dell support line offered as a solution.
Whats annoying is that some of these buggers can really mess up the system. Simple 'pop in cd / go to free online web scanner and clean up' no longer works in some cases... Symantec should concentrate more on making their crappy AV software work better and resist disabling by virii better and stop issuing more sensationalist press releases.
Its way too common to get a virus-filled computer with norton internet security installed. Some bug had just killed the whole AV software, leaving an empty 'shell' up that keeps telling the user everything is fine. They usually wake up when their ISP cuts their line and tells them to clean up and call back when their system is secured.
It's obiviously a challenge, but considering that most IE vulnerabilities are linked to the tight coupling of OS and browser (and the stupid ActiveX), Firefox offers fewer points of attack for the l33t hax0rs to poke holes at. Yes, there will be vulnerabilities, but I expect a lot fewer than with MS products.
All Mozilla/Firefox now needs is a good update system. Normal users have already been teached by MS that everything magically gets updated via Windows Update. Not so with the browser - if they use something other than IE.
Yes, advanced users hate autoupdates. So what, they can always be disabled. Firefox and Mozilla need builtin autoupdaters that at least point the user to a page when a new update is available. Or preferrably just go ahead and do the update by default. That way people can browse safely even as new exploits crop up.
378 terabytes is a mighty big torrent :)
If you can install from a CD, you can repair from a CD. www.ultimatebootcd.com is a good starting point - bunch of 'boot disks' on one CD.
Rogue Leader on an IMAX screen?
I find your lack of resolution disturbing...
Of course you are missing the small detail that all Doom 3 cutscenes are rendered in realtime.
The coupon also came with gazillion 9600XT cards. So your number is completely false.
Anarchy Online already has billboards advertising Alienware computers :)
(This is a tie-in to a marketing campaing related to the launch of AO expansion titled 'Alien Invasion')
I doubt any gamer would mind much for (paid) advertising in the form of (animated) billboards or 'holograms' in first person shooter levels, but the stuff should *fit the theme*. Futuristic shooter such as Unreal Tournament would be easy - just stick in some billboards to suitable levels, but if someone would start selling McDonalds stuff by planting ingame ads into something like Everquest, gamers would go berserk over it...
It all depends how it's done. I think Sims Online and The Sims 2 also have somekinda marketing/product placement deals already set up.
Yep, at least two titles have not yet been fully and completely cracked;
Toca Race Driver 2
Soldiers: Heroes of World War II
Both with StarForce, Both from Codemasters. They are probably the only two games using all features of Starforce, apparently making them pain to crack.
I really considered buying Soldiers, but after hearing that there may or may not be incompatibilities with CDRW/DVDRW drives reading the original disc (playing the game), I decided against it, as I only have Plextor 708A DVDRW drive and older Plextor 1210S CDRW drive. No 'reader only' drive at all. Until I hear that the paid original game absolutely positivitely works on my drives, I'm not interested. Plenty of other (fully paid, original) games to play that do not use such invasive protections.
I do give StarForce devs props - it's been a while since the last game before these two that has survived over a week uncracked.
Overall PC gaming will go more towards online-authenticated accounts/CD-Keys - like with MMORPGs and online shooters. In the perfect world anyone would be free to spread the game content around, but to actually play the game, you would have to have online account to authenticate, and only way to open one is via CD key off original box (or CD key purchased online from the developer/distributor). Sadly this doesn't work as long as offline play has to be possible. Internet is popping up everywhere, so I expect this to slowly change. In 5-10 years any PC without active internet connection is probably considered such a lame duck that they don't matter anymore.
Must have been a borked installation to begin with. I've upgraded dozens of 98s, MEs, 2000s and XPs with that CD. Zero problems - as long as I have removed all spyware/virus crap BEFORE doing the update.
Heh.
SP2 makes XP a lot more secure. Critically more secure, if we are talking about updating a system that has not been fed it's daily ration of hotfixes from windows update.