I don't work in PC support. I work in PC repairs. I replace motherboards, PSUs, CPUs, do basic troubleshooting... still grunt work, but at least I'm not telling someone's grandma how to use Outlook over the phone. Some of it is work under warranty (which is then covered by the manufacturer of the component/machine), some of it is billed to the customer - especially software problems, as MS doesn't know what a 'Warranty' is.
Yes, I commonly get to reinstall windows / fix up borked installs / remove spyware / remove viruses. People pay for it, and the pay is surprisingly good. Some just don't have the time or the knowledge to mess with all that crap. They just want their word/IE/Outlook working and their kids silent playing games on the PCs. Same stuff that most of Slashdot readers have to go and do for their friends/relatives. I get paid for that same stuff! *grin*
Not that different from a corporate IT support tech. Except that the guy asking for repairs/support is paying for it, and you better give him good service, or the next computer he buys is from the store down the road. In corporate IT support you can be an asshole as long as your boss won't whack you for it, but when the guy with the borked PC is ultimately who feeds you, it doesn't matter if you feel like he's a big moron. You just shut up. Tell him to come back in couple of days and fix his totally borked computer. At least one gets good laughs on what sometimes is found on the PCs. (all confidential stuff of course)
In fact, I positively love MS. They indirectly give me food to the table (and fund my PC upgrade habit, and then some) by pushing showelware that requires constant updating. Sorting out windows issues is actually pretty easy once you know the stuff. I'd hate to see the day when MS puts out an OS that works perfectly, never needs updates and cannot be infected with viruses & spyware. Because at that point I'd be down to just replacing the crap quality chinese-made PC parts that fail left and right:)
Yup. Well our policy is that a warez windows won't prevent us from repairing any *hardware* faults. If needed, we take a separate HDD, replace customer HDD, install windows & all drivers & all updates and work from there to make sure everything works. If everything is running fine using a legal install, the customer HDD goes back in (assuming HDD test software says its not damaged). Then we return the machine saying 'No hardware fault found, pay testing fee. Your warez windows is hosed. If you want us to replace it with a legal copy, make sure nothing important is on drive C and pay this much for the legal copy + installation fee. Or if you want to save stuff from drive C, pay this fee for backup work on top of it'. Installation fee naturally covers OS install, all updates, all driver upgrades and full testing to make sure it really works.
Some pay. Some don't. Most understand perfectly when we say that they should ask their updates and operating system support from whoever gave them the (pirated) operating system:)
Those with money who just want the damn thing working pay happily as long as we make sure their box is running again. Sells many Windows licenses.
But hey, at least the Next Generation of Dell crap-o-boxes will be more secure, with XP+SP2 preinstalled.
It will take years for the XP without SP2 to 'die out' from the wild - in fact due to wildly distributed pirate copies, it will never go away. But over time the number of non-SP2 XPs will go down past certain threshold and past that any outbreaks that require a non-firewalled Windows will be so small that it's irrelevant.
Now all we'd need after SP2 is out is a good blaster-type worm that does not announce itself by causing reboots, and instead will sit quietly spreading until certain time has passed and *boom* it nukes the windows install. Outcry will be huge, but the general population will hear 'install the xp sp2' until their ears bleed and that'd be good for the defense of the general masses of computers in the long term.
Irrelevant. Once SP2 final is out, a new keychanger will be around within a day or two. Nobody is just bothering with it right now because MS could just block the volume keys in the next build.
(And obiviously a new corporate edition of WinXP+SP2 with working volume license key will be out - probably even faster than the SP2 installer)
But way too many warez windows user is *still* using the first Devils0wn release with a blacklisted key. No SP1 for j00. Perfect host for all kinds of viral stuff...
Even MS knows it cannot prevent it completely, but by making it hard for the joe average user they are selling new licenses. Like when a joe sixpack goes 'updates don't work *again*? And if I don't update, my comp will be hosed this time next week? I need to bother my brother's kid again and let him to mess up my computer while installing some new warez version? BAH I go buy original.'
This happens pretty damn often - I work at PC repairs and when we get warez windows PC which is unpatched, we clearly say that either you buy a windows license, or all of the non-hardware problems you have are yours. We won't touch it. Certain age group tends to take their PC back and either live with the problems or get the new warez version, but those who don't care if it costs 100$ for an OEM WinXP tend to fork out money and ask us to fix the damn thing for good. They have used a pirated copy earlier because they felt that the 100$ was 'wasted money' - pirated copy worked just as fine. As soon as it suddenly doesn't work just as fine, they see value in tossing the 100$ at MS.
Correction; You had a zonealarm that was set up wrong.
Blocking port 445 from inbound traffic secures the computer against this worm.
Also the failure to install a critical patch that has been out for two weeks is called 'stupidity'. Using a windows box connected to the net is already something close to extreme sports. Doing so without regular windowsupdate visits is like extreme sports blindfolded without a helmet. You are *bound* to get hurt.
Your worm-infested box could be spewing crap that is using up our bandwidth.
Tho I admit firewall before the windoze box will eliminate most of the stuff, and if you don't use IE, that should eliminate most of the other attack vectors.
Your own fault disabling the Crypto service. Without it the winupdate cannot verify the signatures. Those stupid 'xp optimization guides' commonly tell you that disabling it is a good idea...
This will be a hit. I know first N-Cage was a dog, but look;
- It no longer looks stupid - You can hotswap cards (upto 256MB MMC cards) - Its a *full series60 phone for 199$ with upto 256MB memory for apps/MP3s*. Web browsing, email, downloadable Symbian apps...
While the screen is still small, considering that you previously had to pay 400$+ for these features I think its a great deal. Lack of triband sucks for US guys, but I honestly could not care less.
I was already 'sold' on the first one as a cheap phone with good feature set, but the 'sidetalking' issue killed it for me personally and I skipped it when it became obivious that an improved version was coming. It just looked stupid and I didn't feel like using a HandsFree-kit. Nokia fixed the major issues, is selling it cheaply considering the feature set as a *phone*, and as a bonus it has some promising titles incoming. Those buying it as a 'gaming machine' first may be disappointed. I'm looking at a phone that has some added features, and as such I'm happy with what I see.
Or could someone else point out a comparable phone for 199$? If we ignore triband, what other phone at that price offers all the non-game features that N-Cage QD has? Please enlighten me!
Common joe sixpack timeshifts. He will continue to timeshift.
The moment his new toy says 'no can do' over timeshifting, every damn consumer organization will be all over this crap.
And all the nerds will dump their TV & just leech the shows off the net. Heck, most non-US people already do so since local channels are years behind. And there will always be people who will decrypt/remove flags to encode the stuff to a downloadable format.
You kill timeshifting -> you kill TV. And if you can timeshift, you can copy. TV is already dying (viewership going down/fragmenting). Adding extra crap to limit your viewing will *not* add viewers.
In Finland we pay similar levy, and nobody is talking about removing it even as they propose completely moronic new Copyright law based on the recent EU directive that, for example, makes it illegal to circumvent a copy protection to make a legal backup copy.
They want to have their cake *and* eat it too. And politicians are too clueless to stop it.
Both Germany and Japan had already lost the war when the atom bombs were dropped. It did not 'win the war'.
However, Japanese were too proud to surrender, so without the bombs, a lot of people would have died in a bloody amphibious landing on mainland Japan. History is written by the victorious side, so 'Atom Bomb won the WW2' is a common myth, but they could have just scrapped the project and taken the losses from the invasion of Japan. However, after spending all that money, it was important to show technological might over *Russia* to avoid them from overrunning the whole europe. And hey, it saved lots of bloodshed - sure, the bombs killed a ton of civilians, but in the grand scheme of things it most likely saved way more by speeding up the surrender.
Germany was already gone when the bombs were dropped. It wasn't the atomic bomb that won the war vs Germany. It was the superior mass production capabilities of the US and Russia that just out-produced Germany. Germans had better R&D on conventional arms, but it didn't matter when for ever single (superior) tank they had operational, allies could toss in dozens of (lesser) tanks. Toss in air superiority & mass bombings of the german industry to the stone age and the lack of reliable oil supplies after losses in the east, and that was pretty much game over for Germany. Had Germans built the first A-bomb, things *might* have worked out differently - vaporizing London and few divisions off the front lines could have changed a lot of things. Good for us that they never got that far.
So, one could say that the bomb did NOT prevent from making us all japanese/german speakers. However, it might have saved lots of europeans from speaking russian. The existence of the bomb definitely stopped Russia from overrunning western europe to 'top up' WW2.
Of course none of this has nothing to do with Einstein's theories & the satellite in question...
The guy who decided this was a great idea was smart. By the time it comes down, he won't be around to take blame for his smart plan, and most likely his immediate children wont be either. It's Someone Else's Problem(tm)! Thinking further into the future would require too many brain cells and/or would demand convincing stupid beancounters that they should spend crapload of money to actually *fix* the issue instead of pushing it to future generations.
A view that is so common in our society today. It's *so* much fun to find yourself in crappy situations during your workday all the time, caused by the same mentality - "Out of sight, out of mind" and "Whew, got rid of the problem for now. Next time it's someone else's problem". Yeah, you can try spending time finding out who's to blame, but usually the idiot has covered his tracks well enough so that it's not worth the effort - easier just to permanently handle the situation (or, like lots of people enjoy to do - push it back so it becomes YET AGAIN someone else's problem)
GTA3 was laggy only if you had crappy computer AND couldnt figure out to turn off the 'motion blur' effect.
There were no noticeable control problems once you remapped the keys - in fact it worked better than PS2 because of mouse aiming. Sure, walking around was bit clumsy, but it was not dramatically changed in GTA:VC either.
There were couple of bugs. There was a patch. Bugs go byebye.
This is a nice article based on wrong assumptions.
Yes, there has been some spectacular flops in PC MMO space right now. And some big name cancellations (Mythica, for example). This is not due to PC MMOs dying. This is just normal market saturation.
For single player games you pick it up, you whack it for a week or two - or maybe a month if it's REALLY good, and maybe return once or twice later to replay it a bit.
For MMOs, you realistically have time for a single game. Period. Either you catass your way to victory by spending every waking free-time hour playing the single MMO game, or you will be forever n00b in the game(s) of your choice, whining how everyone else is more powerful than you. You cannot *possibly* play two MMOs - you couldn't dedicate enough time to either of them to actually prosper in the game.
So, the beancounters have not yet figured it out - there is room for only a very limited number of successfull MMOs. Maybe 5-10, with some of them bit marginal or with non-mainstream subject matter.
For consoles, none of these basic assumptions change. There are no MMO overload for consoles - yet. So it seems that the market is 'exploding' & growing much faster than PC MMO market. Well duh - thats new market vs mature market.
Until they offer a keyboard with every console, MMOs will never be huge on gaming consoles. Online gaming yes, actual massive online games with dozens/hundreds cooperating - no chance in hell without a keyboard.
Even with customized scripts/bots, multiple accounts/PC:s & web-based tools its almost a 2nd job to run a successful online guild for raids & other high end stuff in most MMOs. With a keyboard. It's *hard* to communicate and coordinate with hundreds of people.
Now try the same thing with just voice comms and no keyboard on a console. Nope, won't fly.
We'll see plenty of persistent world Diablo wannabes and other abominations on Consoles, and the online gaming market on consoles will grow. It won't kill off PC, and it won't move MMO players from PC to consoles. Never. Ever. At least until a console comes with keyboard standard.
Not to mention - TVs suck for displaying text. Another downside for the consoles.
Um, taking screenshots based on keywords typed in by users is WAY different than monitoring vs. breakins or filtering based on URLs (blocking software).
XBox Live style addtion to next-gen DirectX (Oh, sorry, XNA). This translates to OS-level CD-Key checks and other 'game calls home to see if it may run'-features for *SURE*. Next we get to pay monthly fees for simple head-to-head gaming.
And developers will scream in joy and jump into the bandwagon. Especially if same libraries are used in XBox2, so porting PCXBox2 will be easy.
Oh, and we get XBox controllers to PC. Well, on some level it's good - lots of great console-style games suck on PC due to non-standard joypads and/or keyboard-based controls. However, the day they start making PC First Person Shooters that *require* a crappy gamepad to play is the day I go berserk and feed the stupid joypad to the MS loonies.
Any manual counting procedure which does not randomly recount at least a sample of the counted votes to verify vs. malicious 'human errors' is flawed.
And real human errors tend to be random, so equally distributed among candidates.
Of course any machine systems which do not produce a recountable paper trail (which is used for small verifying recounts to make sure the machines are not ba-roken) is fundamentally flawed.
Pssst... Its called application-level firewalling. If a 'keygen' would start calling home, ZoneAlarm, among other similar applications would ask me if I wish this to happen. Legimate keygens have no reason to call home. So only retards got 'caught' with the thingy in the first place.
Not to mention anyone with half a brain would not download an exe called 'keygen crack'. Either it's a keygen or a crack. It can't be both.
These 'vigilantes' were not very convincing in other ways either. Their 'keygen' has none of the signs of a valid release - not zipped/rarred, no.nfo inside, not listed on reputable release sites as a valid release...
So basically they coded a 'moron trapper', and they scored thousands of IPs of morons. Could someone track people based on those IPs and remove them from the gene pool & improve humanity? Thank you.
"" Here's a few boosts to get your clue train back on track:
2) Anyone with more than a week's experience in software piracy knows not to go to a warez website to get anything. Noobs will try it at first, get sick of the porn ads, redirects, dirty tricks, etc., and then gravitate to where the real distribution takes places: IRC, Usenet, or P2P, including your beloved BitTorrent. Or do you think that BT is used to only distribute Linux distros?""
Heh. Only newbies/lamers use P2P, IRC or Usenet. Granted, they are the most widely used methods of 'distribution' to end users, but most real warez groups only want the respect from their peers, not from the leecher masses. They couldn't care less what happens outside their small circle. There are plenty of parasites who work below them to get the stuff to all the (semi-)public distribution channels, but they usually have little to do with the crackers and the initial distributors.
Sufficiently secured IRC networks are fine for chatting, but the stuff is moved using secure/encrypted FTP.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't work in PC support. I work in PC repairs. I replace motherboards, PSUs, CPUs, do basic troubleshooting... still grunt work, but at least I'm not telling someone's grandma how to use Outlook over the phone. Some of it is work under warranty (which is then covered by the manufacturer of the component/machine), some of it is billed to the customer - especially software problems, as MS doesn't know what a 'Warranty' is.
:)
Yes, I commonly get to reinstall windows / fix up borked installs / remove spyware / remove viruses. People pay for it, and the pay is surprisingly good. Some just don't have the time or the knowledge to mess with all that crap. They just want their word/IE/Outlook working and their kids silent playing games on the PCs. Same stuff that most of Slashdot readers have to go and do for their friends/relatives. I get paid for that same stuff! *grin*
Not that different from a corporate IT support tech. Except that the guy asking for repairs/support is paying for it, and you better give him good service, or the next computer he buys is from the store down the road. In corporate IT support you can be an asshole as long as your boss won't whack you for it, but when the guy with the borked PC is ultimately who feeds you, it doesn't matter if you feel like he's a big moron. You just shut up. Tell him to come back in couple of days and fix his totally borked computer. At least one gets good laughs on what sometimes is found on the PCs. (all confidential stuff of course)
In fact, I positively love MS. They indirectly give me food to the table (and fund my PC upgrade habit, and then some) by pushing showelware that requires constant updating. Sorting out windows issues is actually pretty easy once you know the stuff. I'd hate to see the day when MS puts out an OS that works perfectly, never needs updates and cannot be infected with viruses & spyware. Because at that point I'd be down to just replacing the crap quality chinese-made PC parts that fail left and right
Yup. Well our policy is that a warez windows won't prevent us from repairing any *hardware* faults. If needed, we take a separate HDD, replace customer HDD, install windows & all drivers & all updates and work from there to make sure everything works. If everything is running fine using a legal install, the customer HDD goes back in (assuming HDD test software says its not damaged). Then we return the machine saying 'No hardware fault found, pay testing fee. Your warez windows is hosed. If you want us to replace it with a legal copy, make sure nothing important is on drive C and pay this much for the legal copy + installation fee. Or if you want to save stuff from drive C, pay this fee for backup work on top of it'. Installation fee naturally covers OS install, all updates, all driver upgrades and full testing to make sure it really works.
:)
Some pay. Some don't. Most understand perfectly when we say that they should ask their updates and operating system support from whoever gave them the (pirated) operating system
Those with money who just want the damn thing working pay happily as long as we make sure their box is running again. Sells many Windows licenses.
But hey, at least the Next Generation of Dell crap-o-boxes will be more secure, with XP+SP2 preinstalled.
It will take years for the XP without SP2 to 'die out' from the wild - in fact due to wildly distributed pirate copies, it will never go away. But over time the number of non-SP2 XPs will go down past certain threshold and past that any outbreaks that require a non-firewalled Windows will be so small that it's irrelevant.
Now all we'd need after SP2 is out is a good blaster-type worm that does not announce itself by causing reboots, and instead will sit quietly spreading until certain time has passed and *boom* it nukes the windows install. Outcry will be huge, but the general population will hear 'install the xp sp2' until their ears bleed and that'd be good for the defense of the general masses of computers in the long term.
Irrelevant. Once SP2 final is out, a new keychanger will be around within a day or two. Nobody is just bothering with it right now because MS could just block the volume keys in the next build.
(And obiviously a new corporate edition of WinXP+SP2 with working volume license key will be out - probably even faster than the SP2 installer)
But way too many warez windows user is *still* using the first Devils0wn release with a blacklisted key. No SP1 for j00. Perfect host for all kinds of viral stuff...
Even MS knows it cannot prevent it completely, but by making it hard for the joe average user they are selling new licenses. Like when a joe sixpack goes 'updates don't work *again*? And if I don't update, my comp will be hosed this time next week? I need to bother my brother's kid again and let him to mess up my computer while installing some new warez version? BAH I go buy original.'
This happens pretty damn often - I work at PC repairs and when we get warez windows PC which is unpatched, we clearly say that either you buy a windows license, or all of the non-hardware problems you have are yours. We won't touch it. Certain age group tends to take their PC back and either live with the problems or get the new warez version, but those who don't care if it costs 100$ for an OEM WinXP tend to fork out money and ask us to fix the damn thing for good. They have used a pirated copy earlier because they felt that the 100$ was 'wasted money' - pirated copy worked just as fine. As soon as it suddenly doesn't work just as fine, they see value in tossing the 100$ at MS.
Correction; You had a zonealarm that was set up wrong.
Blocking port 445 from inbound traffic secures the computer against this worm.
Also the failure to install a critical patch that has been out for two weeks is called 'stupidity'. Using a windows box connected to the net is already something close to extreme sports. Doing so without regular windowsupdate visits is like extreme sports blindfolded without a helmet. You are *bound* to get hurt.
We care.
Your worm-infested box could be spewing crap that is using up our bandwidth.
Tho I admit firewall before the windoze box will eliminate most of the stuff, and if you don't use IE, that should eliminate most of the other attack vectors.
Your own fault disabling the Crypto service. Without it the winupdate cannot verify the signatures. Those stupid 'xp optimization guides' commonly tell you that disabling it is a good idea...
It's a symbian phone. You can install a separate MP3 player.
Lack of radio is slightly annoying tho.
This will be a hit. I know first N-Cage was a dog, but look;
- It no longer looks stupid
- You can hotswap cards (upto 256MB MMC cards)
- Its a *full series60 phone for 199$ with upto 256MB memory for apps/MP3s*. Web browsing, email, downloadable Symbian apps...
While the screen is still small, considering that you previously had to pay 400$+ for these features I think its a great deal. Lack of triband sucks for US guys, but I honestly could not care less.
I was already 'sold' on the first one as a cheap phone with good feature set, but the 'sidetalking' issue killed it for me personally and I skipped it when it became obivious that an improved version was coming. It just looked stupid and I didn't feel like using a HandsFree-kit. Nokia fixed the major issues, is selling it cheaply considering the feature set as a *phone*, and as a bonus it has some promising titles incoming. Those buying it as a 'gaming machine' first may be disappointed. I'm looking at a phone that has some added features, and as such I'm happy with what I see.
Or could someone else point out a comparable phone for 199$? If we ignore triband, what other phone at that price offers all the non-game features that N-Cage QD has? Please enlighten me!
Common joe sixpack timeshifts. He will continue to timeshift.
The moment his new toy says 'no can do' over timeshifting, every damn consumer organization will be all over this crap.
And all the nerds will dump their TV & just leech the shows off the net. Heck, most non-US people already do so since local channels are years behind. And there will always be people who will decrypt/remove flags to encode the stuff to a downloadable format.
You kill timeshifting -> you kill TV. And if you can timeshift, you can copy. TV is already dying (viewership going down/fragmenting). Adding extra crap to limit your viewing will *not* add viewers.
Probably not.
In Finland we pay similar levy, and nobody is talking about removing it even as they propose completely moronic new Copyright law based on the recent EU directive that, for example, makes it illegal to circumvent a copy protection to make a legal backup copy.
They want to have their cake *and* eat it too. And politicians are too clueless to stop it.
The article is over an year old. (March 20, *2003*)
Current nVidia drivers are 56.xx series.
'News' indeed...
Both Germany and Japan had already lost the war when the atom bombs were dropped. It did not 'win the war'.
However, Japanese were too proud to surrender, so without the bombs, a lot of people would have died in a bloody amphibious landing on mainland Japan. History is written by the victorious side, so 'Atom Bomb won the WW2' is a common myth, but they could have just scrapped the project and taken the losses from the invasion of Japan. However, after spending all that money, it was important to show technological might over *Russia* to avoid them from overrunning the whole europe. And hey, it saved lots of bloodshed - sure, the bombs killed a ton of civilians, but in the grand scheme of things it most likely saved way more by speeding up the surrender.
Germany was already gone when the bombs were dropped. It wasn't the atomic bomb that won the war vs Germany. It was the superior mass production capabilities of the US and Russia that just out-produced Germany. Germans had better R&D on conventional arms, but it didn't matter when for ever single (superior) tank they had operational, allies could toss in dozens of (lesser) tanks. Toss in air superiority & mass bombings of the german industry to the stone age and the lack of reliable oil supplies after losses in the east, and that was pretty much game over for Germany. Had Germans built the first A-bomb, things *might* have worked out differently - vaporizing London and few divisions off the front lines could have changed a lot of things. Good for us that they never got that far.
So, one could say that the bomb did NOT prevent from making us all japanese/german speakers. However, it might have saved lots of europeans from speaking russian. The existence of the bomb definitely stopped Russia from overrunning western europe to 'top up' WW2.
Of course none of this has nothing to do with Einstein's theories & the satellite in question...
The guy who decided this was a great idea was smart. By the time it comes down, he won't be around to take blame for his smart plan, and most likely his immediate children wont be either. It's Someone Else's Problem(tm)! Thinking further into the future would require too many brain cells and/or would demand convincing stupid beancounters that they should spend crapload of money to actually *fix* the issue instead of pushing it to future generations.
A view that is so common in our society today. It's *so* much fun to find yourself in crappy situations during your workday all the time, caused by the same mentality - "Out of sight, out of mind" and "Whew, got rid of the problem for now. Next time it's someone else's problem". Yeah, you can try spending time finding out who's to blame, but usually the idiot has covered his tracks well enough so that it's not worth the effort - easier just to permanently handle the situation (or, like lots of people enjoy to do - push it back so it becomes YET AGAIN someone else's problem)
GTA3 was laggy only if you had crappy computer AND couldnt figure out to turn off the 'motion blur' effect.
There were no noticeable control problems once you remapped the keys - in fact it worked better than PS2 because of mouse aiming. Sure, walking around was bit clumsy, but it was not dramatically changed in GTA:VC either.
There were couple of bugs. There was a patch. Bugs go byebye.
So, frankly, you are spouting crap.
This is a nice article based on wrong assumptions.
Yes, there has been some spectacular flops in PC MMO space right now. And some big name cancellations (Mythica, for example). This is not due to PC MMOs dying. This is just normal market saturation.
For single player games you pick it up, you whack it for a week or two - or maybe a month if it's REALLY good, and maybe return once or twice later to replay it a bit.
For MMOs, you realistically have time for a single game. Period. Either you catass your way to victory by spending every waking free-time hour playing the single MMO game, or you will be forever n00b in the game(s) of your choice, whining how everyone else is more powerful than you. You cannot *possibly* play two MMOs - you couldn't dedicate enough time to either of them to actually prosper in the game.
So, the beancounters have not yet figured it out - there is room for only a very limited number of successfull MMOs. Maybe 5-10, with some of them bit marginal or with non-mainstream subject matter.
For consoles, none of these basic assumptions change. There are no MMO overload for consoles - yet. So it seems that the market is 'exploding' & growing much faster than PC MMO market. Well duh - thats new market vs mature market.
Until they offer a keyboard with every console, MMOs will never be huge on gaming consoles. Online gaming yes, actual massive online games with dozens/hundreds cooperating - no chance in hell without a keyboard.
Even with customized scripts/bots, multiple accounts/PC:s & web-based tools its almost a 2nd job to run a successful online guild for raids & other high end stuff in most MMOs. With a keyboard. It's *hard* to communicate and coordinate with hundreds of people.
Now try the same thing with just voice comms and no keyboard on a console. Nope, won't fly.
We'll see plenty of persistent world Diablo wannabes and other abominations on Consoles, and the online gaming market on consoles will grow. It won't kill off PC, and it won't move MMO players from PC to consoles. Never. Ever. At least until a console comes with keyboard standard.
Not to mention - TVs suck for displaying text. Another downside for the consoles.
Um, taking screenshots based on keywords typed in by users is WAY different than monitoring vs. breakins or filtering based on URLs (blocking software).
This is just a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Big brother is truly alive and well... I guess Orwell got it wrong by 20-30 years, but that's irrelevant.
Except if he visits the european one near Paris, or the one in Tokyo...
XBox Live style addtion to next-gen DirectX (Oh, sorry, XNA). This translates to OS-level CD-Key checks and other 'game calls home to see if it may run'-features for *SURE*. Next we get to pay monthly fees for simple head-to-head gaming.
And developers will scream in joy and jump into the bandwagon. Especially if same libraries are used in XBox2, so porting PCXBox2 will be easy.
Oh, and we get XBox controllers to PC. Well, on some level it's good - lots of great console-style games suck on PC due to non-standard joypads and/or keyboard-based controls. However, the day they start making PC First Person Shooters that *require* a crappy gamepad to play is the day I go berserk and feed the stupid joypad to the MS loonies.
Any manual counting procedure which does not randomly recount at least a sample of the counted votes to verify vs. malicious 'human errors' is flawed.
And real human errors tend to be random, so equally distributed among candidates.
Of course any machine systems which do not produce a recountable paper trail (which is used for small verifying recounts to make sure the machines are not ba-roken) is fundamentally flawed.
Pssst... Its called application-level firewalling. If a 'keygen' would start calling home, ZoneAlarm, among other similar applications would ask me if I wish this to happen. Legimate keygens have no reason to call home. So only retards got 'caught' with the thingy in the first place.
.nfo inside, not listed on reputable release sites as a valid release...
Not to mention anyone with half a brain would not download an exe called 'keygen crack'. Either it's a keygen or a crack. It can't be both.
These 'vigilantes' were not very convincing in other ways either. Their 'keygen' has none of the signs of a valid release - not zipped/rarred, no
So basically they coded a 'moron trapper', and they scored thousands of IPs of morons. Could someone track people based on those IPs and remove them from the gene pool & improve humanity? Thank you.
"" Here's a few boosts to get your clue train back on track:
2) Anyone with more than a week's experience in software piracy knows not to go to a warez website to get anything. Noobs will try it at first, get sick of the porn ads, redirects, dirty tricks, etc., and then gravitate to where the real distribution takes places: IRC, Usenet, or P2P, including your beloved BitTorrent. Or do you think that BT is used to only distribute Linux distros?""
Heh. Only newbies/lamers use P2P, IRC or Usenet. Granted, they are the most widely used methods of 'distribution' to end users, but most real warez groups only want the respect from their peers, not from the leecher masses. They couldn't care less what happens outside their small circle. There are plenty of parasites who work below them to get the stuff to all the (semi-)public distribution channels, but they usually have little to do with the crackers and the initial distributors.
Sufficiently secured IRC networks are fine for chatting, but the stuff is moved using secure/encrypted FTP.
Its easier/cheaper to buy off the US courts to throw the book at him.
I also think US laws in the matter are much worse.
Isn't it great when Microsoft keeps pushing a family systems that have a single point of failure?