In a way, it might. Cracking games is a long standing tradition and quite a bit of fun.
Gave up on video games myself a long time ago, but I still remember the joy of circumventing copy protection. I bought a copy of Zork once, it came on a floppy that was copy protected. The secret to copying it was to cut a small hole in the top left side of the disk before putting it in. This allowed copying to happen.
Mind you, I was never any good at Zork and got eaten continuously by Grues. I wanted a copy because I had a bad habit of throwing disks for games across the room when I lost. As far as I was concerned, I was buying the game, not the disk, and it was abominable that people were not allowing me to enjoy the game in the manner of my choosing (watching it fly when it beat me). Having a copy was about having a backup, and who were they to tell me no?/me fondly remembers the soft feel of floppies, the slight texture on the 5.5s, the way they used to soar...
Copy II PC was the program I used to copy write protected floppies. I think Wizardry was the first one where I needed to use this. I assumed I was going to be just as bad as I was with Zork and made copies before I played the game. It took me a couple weeks to get down how to use Copy II PC - while I wanted to play the game, I did not want it to end prematurely in a fiasco.
For whatever reason, one of the Wizardry games was protected against Copy II PC, and that made me leave it on the shelf until something better came along. I think it sat there for a year until I got a copy of PC Tools, which I used for making copies and also hex editing. It was with Pool of Radiance where I really learned to shine with that one, tanking around with a party of people with 18 for all their attributes and all sorts of weapons. I am not sure if you can call it playing the game once you have screwed with all the internals, I remember it did not take me long to get bored with the game itself but I was always fascinated by what I could do with the saved game files.
Purhased a lot of games that I really hated just to screw with them. I had no interest in any of the flight simulator games that were popular back then, or the SSI simulators like Panzer Commander, or any of the Sierra games (that came along later), or things like Ancient Art of War. I would buy them to add them to a library, and would spend my time screwing with the disks and data files. I probably spent as much money on floppies as I did on actual games, if you can believe that.
Fun times. If I was a kid again, I would probably buy a copy of this game just to hack it. Hoping there are others who share the same POV.
Something tells me, if I were to ask you to read that document, you would not understand it yourself. In all likelihood, your lawyer would not have advised you about the possible implications of that clause since it is simply something that is not done.
People working for me have left to go to Google several times in the past, we had one black week once where 6 guys left within days of each other, all heading for Google. Not all of them are with that company anymore, and I have heard tell of the offers they received. $120k in stock options granted the first day, with a relatively short vesting period (I think it was about a year, but can't remember exactly).
This is the way things are supposed to work in Silicon Valley. I am never keen on options, I was granted a good number of them in the 90s and saw a lot of value vanish overnight when the bubble burst. But you should be able to lose value based on performance of the market, but an option is an option. It does not make sense that you are contributing to the growth of the company based on this compensation, and that it can be stripped from you.
Buyback clauses like this are almost certainly non-enforceable, especially since the employee has to pay taxes on the options during the time of his / her employment (at least in California). It would be like saying that the company has the right to take back your paycheck, they are measured as compensation and should rightfully belong to the employee without additional considerations.
I have a strong feeling this is not going to stand and we will be hearing about this matter for a long time.
Well, something tells me this is in response to legal activity. There are surely going to be new laws, probably not ones specifically in response to hacking activity, but others that allow various governments all sorts of access to records to track down hackers.
This will cause 'innovation' in the hacking scene, where people adapt to the new laws and develop new technologies that circumvent them and make them more challenging to implement. Hackers are simply going to go further 'underground' and be harder to track.
This, in turn, it going to lead to a number of high profile hacks of large services who have not matured in terms of how they secure their services. This will make the news, government officials will make unfortunate comments that draw the attention of various hacker groups, who will lash out through their newly developed anonymity.
In turn, this is going to result in new laws... stop me if you heard this before.
Well, that's just it, I don't think it's a form of plasma on the sabers (or that it cannot be). It has to be something projected through a crystalline substance. The heat of plasma is enough to cut through steel, a crystal would melt because of the intense heat it would require to generate it. Not to mention the fact that the saber itself would be incredibly hot to handle.
You know, I don't agree, but I think we are getting there.
Bill Gates may be coming back to Microsoft, now that investors are calling for Ballmer to go away.
Imagine the hardcore tech geek drama if he makes some dramatic return and restores the company to the glory of it's previous hegemony based on vendor relationships and partner dealings. Just like Steve did...
Kosovo certainly falls under their charter, because that war threatened the stability of member nations.
Sudan is a little different. It's possible I am confused and thinking about UN troops, but I have been told that NATO is involved in the split over there.
Actually, their mission and charter are quite clear and they have been very active in combat zones throughout the world for a long time. Most recently, they have been dealing with combat in Sudan.
I just don't understand why they are going after anonymous specifically, of how the actions of that group applies to their charter. What is so special about Anon that they get targetted like this?
Unless I completely missed some mostrously epic hack - wtf is NATO doing chasing these guys? Where in the NATO charter does it say track down delinquents engaging in electronic forms of protest?
I could understand Interpol or some law enforcement agency, since the worst of what Anonymous accomplishes seems to be network intrusion. But I thought NATO was all about stopping aggression against member states. When did Anonymous graduate to that level?
People have made much of the metaphore that Apple is like being a Catholic while using a PC is like being a Protestant.
I personally think being an Apple fan is more like being one of the Old Believers in Russia. It's not so much that you do it their way, it's that doing it another way is 'dire.'
I am sure the BIAA (the religious version of the RIAA) is all over this to prevent unauthorized copies. Codices are notoriously easy to copy and distribute amongst various followings and there's going to be a need for new laws to prevent religion from undergoing the same thing we saw wih the music industry.
Codex sharing is just plain wrong, it costs people jobs and we need to take action against it before it gets out of hand.
The reporter does a fine job of pointing out the actual context. Slashdot is the group making accusations of absurdity. BC has edited the page to remove the point about wifi already.
What I really want to know is why universities think they need to be involved in a discussion about copyright protection anyway. I know they are targets of the predatory RIAA and this is a CYA move, but one might think Boston College would be above the fracas, have a clear and accurate understanding of the law, and inform people appropriately. This sounds like off the hip advice from an older systems admin with no understanding of what copyright really means in an online context.
My user number appears to be lower than yours, so I cannot claim to be a n00b, but I try to maintain appearances for the sake of arguing pointless opinions that are neither actionable or informative.
Given that most machines have more than 128 MB of ram these days, it is reasonable to dedicate more memory to an IDE than it was in 1999.
In regards to load time, I generally load eclipse once every few months and leave it running in between. Thus, this is not a big deal for me, and probably not for most people.
Big difference in commerce with China in the 1800s and 1993.
Offering a country the chance to cash in on trillions of dollars of revenue could generally be called an award. If that's not something you are comfortable with, no problem, it just makes me wonder what to call it when Democracy protestors are being run over with tanks. Should we call that a state action against insurgents?
This is a very reactionary post and does not belong on the front page of Slashdot. There are a lot of options to address the issues the author brings up and the premise of the article is misleading. Also, the author clearly references Windows development issues, which means he lacks essential open source credibility and should be shunned by the community.
I mean:
- How about Eclipse as an IDE? That should be better than emacs and textmate for most things.
- How about MAMP with SPMPT for Postgres? You could also script start and stop scripts for redis in MAMP similar to the ones that exist for memcached.
- While fink, macports and homebrew all do suck in their own special way (homebrew is a little suckier), what's to stop you from writing your own ports for them? Isn't this the way rpms caught on, where people knew how to compile them in the first place?
Maybe the polyphany of OSX package managers leads to issues but the same issues have existed in the Linux world for years and it's taken a lot of effort to resolve them. People took the time to resolve them, and that's what lead to a better system. You can't criticize "Mac culture" for offering the same opportunities available to linux users, sorry you don't feel the need to contribute.
- As far as file systems go, so help me, most competent developers can deal with this pretty easily. Since the author cites 'grown up' developers in his article, I guess that means grown ups are too lazy to do something about file systems when writing applications. Like make applications for linux and BSD and ignore windows altogether, or use a windows machine for creating windows applications.
Sadly, this will never happen, no matter how much we wish it would occur.
The last time China had protests in support of Democracy, they ran over protestors with tanks. The US response was to award them with most favored trading partner status, and now they make all our tennis shoes.
Slashdot Mirror
Worked for the Phantom game console.
In a way, it might. Cracking games is a long standing tradition and quite a bit of fun.
Gave up on video games myself a long time ago, but I still remember the joy of circumventing copy protection. I bought a copy of Zork once, it came on a floppy that was copy protected. The secret to copying it was to cut a small hole in the top left side of the disk before putting it in. This allowed copying to happen.
Mind you, I was never any good at Zork and got eaten continuously by Grues. I wanted a copy because I had a bad habit of throwing disks for games across the room when I lost. As far as I was concerned, I was buying the game, not the disk, and it was abominable that people were not allowing me to enjoy the game in the manner of my choosing (watching it fly when it beat me). Having a copy was about having a backup, and who were they to tell me no? /me fondly remembers the soft feel of floppies, the slight texture on the 5.5s, the way they used to soar...
Copy II PC was the program I used to copy write protected floppies. I think Wizardry was the first one where I needed to use this. I assumed I was going to be just as bad as I was with Zork and made copies before I played the game. It took me a couple weeks to get down how to use Copy II PC - while I wanted to play the game, I did not want it to end prematurely in a fiasco.
For whatever reason, one of the Wizardry games was protected against Copy II PC, and that made me leave it on the shelf until something better came along. I think it sat there for a year until I got a copy of PC Tools, which I used for making copies and also hex editing. It was with Pool of Radiance where I really learned to shine with that one, tanking around with a party of people with 18 for all their attributes and all sorts of weapons. I am not sure if you can call it playing the game once you have screwed with all the internals, I remember it did not take me long to get bored with the game itself but I was always fascinated by what I could do with the saved game files.
Purhased a lot of games that I really hated just to screw with them. I had no interest in any of the flight simulator games that were popular back then, or the SSI simulators like Panzer Commander, or any of the Sierra games (that came along later), or things like Ancient Art of War. I would buy them to add them to a library, and would spend my time screwing with the disks and data files. I probably spent as much money on floppies as I did on actual games, if you can believe that.
Fun times. If I was a kid again, I would probably buy a copy of this game just to hack it. Hoping there are others who share the same POV.
Something tells me, if I were to ask you to read that document, you would not understand it yourself. In all likelihood, your lawyer would not have advised you about the possible implications of that clause since it is simply something that is not done.
People working for me have left to go to Google several times in the past, we had one black week once where 6 guys left within days of each other, all heading for Google. Not all of them are with that company anymore, and I have heard tell of the offers they received. $120k in stock options granted the first day, with a relatively short vesting period (I think it was about a year, but can't remember exactly).
This is the way things are supposed to work in Silicon Valley. I am never keen on options, I was granted a good number of them in the 90s and saw a lot of value vanish overnight when the bubble burst. But you should be able to lose value based on performance of the market, but an option is an option. It does not make sense that you are contributing to the growth of the company based on this compensation, and that it can be stripped from you.
Buyback clauses like this are almost certainly non-enforceable, especially since the employee has to pay taxes on the options during the time of his / her employment (at least in California). It would be like saying that the company has the right to take back your paycheck, they are measured as compensation and should rightfully belong to the employee without additional considerations.
I have a strong feeling this is not going to stand and we will be hearing about this matter for a long time.
Well, something tells me this is in response to legal activity. There are surely going to be new laws, probably not ones specifically in response to hacking activity, but others that allow various governments all sorts of access to records to track down hackers.
This will cause 'innovation' in the hacking scene, where people adapt to the new laws and develop new technologies that circumvent them and make them more challenging to implement. Hackers are simply going to go further 'underground' and be harder to track.
This, in turn, it going to lead to a number of high profile hacks of large services who have not matured in terms of how they secure their services. This will make the news, government officials will make unfortunate comments that draw the attention of various hacker groups, who will lash out through their newly developed anonymity.
In turn, this is going to result in new laws... stop me if you heard this before.
Well, that's just it, I don't think it's a form of plasma on the sabers (or that it cannot be). It has to be something projected through a crystalline substance. The heat of plasma is enough to cut through steel, a crystal would melt because of the intense heat it would require to generate it. Not to mention the fact that the saber itself would be incredibly hot to handle.
You know, I don't agree, but I think we are getting there.
Bill Gates may be coming back to Microsoft, now that investors are calling for Ballmer to go away.
Imagine the hardcore tech geek drama if he makes some dramatic return and restores the company to the glory of it's previous hegemony based on vendor relationships and partner dealings. Just like Steve did...
Kosovo certainly falls under their charter, because that war threatened the stability of member nations.
Sudan is a little different. It's possible I am confused and thinking about UN troops, but I have been told that NATO is involved in the split over there.
Actually, their mission and charter are quite clear and they have been very active in combat zones throughout the world for a long time. Most recently, they have been dealing with combat in Sudan.
I just don't understand why they are going after anonymous specifically, of how the actions of that group applies to their charter. What is so special about Anon that they get targetted like this?
Unless I completely missed some mostrously epic hack - wtf is NATO doing chasing these guys? Where in the NATO charter does it say track down delinquents engaging in electronic forms of protest?
I could understand Interpol or some law enforcement agency, since the worst of what Anonymous accomplishes seems to be network intrusion. But I thought NATO was all about stopping aggression against member states. When did Anonymous graduate to that level?
I think you mean, it is funny how the Slashdot community will bash any OS and debate endlessly over the virtures of any alternative.
I fail to see any real preference in all the endless debates, just lots and lots of bickering that accomplishes nothing.
The question is what kind of religion.
People have made much of the metaphore that Apple is like being a Catholic while using a PC is like being a Protestant.
I personally think being an Apple fan is more like being one of the Old Believers in Russia. It's not so much that you do it their way, it's that doing it another way is 'dire.'
Now if you said, for an average wage of about $7 daily, I would have felt for you.
More likely, Apple will simply include a feature in the next update that makes it impossible for this to work.
I like my Mac and my iPod, but not the closed garden I am allowed to use them in.
Or we found him living in a mansion outside Islamisbad and killed him after a firefight.
Not sure what the motivation for making this up would be. There are likely going to be reprisals for this act.
File an anti-trust complaint and break up the monopoly. That is what those laws are for.
For a little extra money, you can get a seat in my biplane, with the extra wings.
HEY NOW
Wordpress is great for some jobs, Drupal is perfect for most others.
Let them live together in peace, there is no reason to start an Open Source Content Management System war.
I am sure the BIAA (the religious version of the RIAA) is all over this to prevent unauthorized copies. Codices are notoriously easy to copy and distribute amongst various followings and there's going to be a need for new laws to prevent religion from undergoing the same thing we saw wih the music industry.
Codex sharing is just plain wrong, it costs people jobs and we need to take action against it before it gets out of hand.
The reporter does a fine job of pointing out the actual context. Slashdot is the group making accusations of absurdity. BC has edited the page to remove the point about wifi already.
What I really want to know is why universities think they need to be involved in a discussion about copyright protection anyway. I know they are targets of the predatory RIAA and this is a CYA move, but one might think Boston College would be above the fracas, have a clear and accurate understanding of the law, and inform people appropriately. This sounds like off the hip advice from an older systems admin with no understanding of what copyright really means in an online context.
Keep the keyboard out of your mouth and htis will occur less frequently.
Why thank you!
My user number appears to be lower than yours, so I cannot claim to be a n00b, but I try to maintain appearances for the sake of arguing pointless opinions that are neither actionable or informative.
Given that most machines have more than 128 MB of ram these days, it is reasonable to dedicate more memory to an IDE than it was in 1999.
In regards to load time, I generally load eclipse once every few months and leave it running in between. Thus, this is not a big deal for me, and probably not for most people.
Big difference in commerce with China in the 1800s and 1993.
Offering a country the chance to cash in on trillions of dollars of revenue could generally be called an award. If that's not something you are comfortable with, no problem, it just makes me wonder what to call it when Democracy protestors are being run over with tanks. Should we call that a state action against insurgents?
Um, ahem...
This is a very reactionary post and does not belong on the front page of Slashdot. There are a lot of options to address the issues the author brings up and the premise of the article is misleading. Also, the author clearly references Windows development issues, which means he lacks essential open source credibility and should be shunned by the community.
I mean:
- How about Eclipse as an IDE? That should be better than emacs and textmate for most things.
- How about MAMP with SPMPT for Postgres? You could also script start and stop scripts for redis in MAMP similar to the ones that exist for memcached.
- While fink, macports and homebrew all do suck in their own special way (homebrew is a little suckier), what's to stop you from writing your own ports for them? Isn't this the way rpms caught on, where people knew how to compile them in the first place?
Maybe the polyphany of OSX package managers leads to issues but the same issues have existed in the Linux world for years and it's taken a lot of effort to resolve them. People took the time to resolve them, and that's what lead to a better system. You can't criticize "Mac culture" for offering the same opportunities available to linux users, sorry you don't feel the need to contribute.
- As far as file systems go, so help me, most competent developers can deal with this pretty easily. Since the author cites 'grown up' developers in his article, I guess that means grown ups are too lazy to do something about file systems when writing applications. Like make applications for linux and BSD and ignore windows altogether, or use a windows machine for creating windows applications.
Sadly, this will never happen, no matter how much we wish it would occur.
The last time China had protests in support of Democracy, they ran over protestors with tanks. The US response was to award them with most favored trading partner status, and now they make all our tennis shoes.