Most people in the malware authoring business probably at least understand the consequences of what they do, even if they don't care.
This I can understand.
You need the money to pay the bills... You don't know and never see the people affected... "It's their own fault... Shouldn't have run that executable... Should be running better antivirus... Stupid users..."
I can see folks either not caring or simply rationalizing it away... People do that for various things on a daily basis...
But not thinking about your actions at all? I can't understand being that oblivious to what I was doing.
Yeah... Seems to me that the late teens/early 20's are when most people get all activist and start trying to save the world.
I remember when I was just finishing up highschool and heading into college... Was fairly active in politics and various student organizations. Showed up to rallies, donated time and money, volunteered...
My son is going through that same stage right now. He's obsessed with politics and he's decided he wants to become a journalist.
Maybe that's not as typical as I think it is... But it seems to me that many (most?) people are thinking about ethics to some degree when they're 20.
Hell, for a lot of folks I think that's about the time they start thinking about ethics seriously for the first time. That's about the time you're looking at your first "real" job... Developing some "real" relationships... Out on your own and having to make ends meet... Seems to me that a lot of folks are off on their own for the first time around age 20, and having to make a lot of those tough decisions for themselves for the first time.
Most of my movies are standard definition DVDs. I have a single TV in my house that can do HD... But, aside from the occasional HD television program, have nothing HD to watch on it.
Most of the stuff I get from Netflix is older titles that, frankly, are more like VHS quality than DVD.
So my question is: Is firewall and anti-virus really not that effective and if so how do bots get around firewall and anti-virus?
Nope, they're not.
A firewall attempts to block unsolicited incoming connections to your network. It will keep somebody from bringing up your shared files and printers from the Internet... But it doesn't keep you from downloading/installing/running anything. A firewall really doesn't do a whole lot to protect you against viruses and most malware.
Antivirus software will attempt to protect you against the stuff it knows about. New stuff, that arrives before a definition update, isn't going to be detected. And many viruses and malware are designed to hide from and/or disable antivirus software. It's very common to see machines with perfectly good antivirus software that are thoroughly riddled with malware of various types.
Neither a firewall nor antivirus software is going to keep you safe - at least not all by themselves.
So make it a persistent state. Every computer lab on campus had a 'deep freeze' piece of software installed.
You HAD to save your files to your shared drive. If you rebooted the PC, the entire PC was reimaged back to a 'clean' state.
I'm sure such software works for Linux (if not just get a Live CD/LiveUSB).
Disable executable access for anything running on a shared drive and there shouldn't be anyway for them to permanently do any damage.
No matter how they screw a computer up, a reboot will fix it.
The problem with stuff like Deep Freeze (and its friends) is that it's still software. Software is mutable. Which means that a virus or a bored user or whatever can, potentially, bypass that security. And then you're hosed again.
I much prefer using live CDs in places that are going to see a lot of abuse - usually without any local storage at all.
A nice compromise for a business environment is a terminal server and some thin clients. You can lock down the individual sessions pretty thoroughly... Only retain changes to specific documents and folders... And the client is completely disposable.
A well-designed system is going to mitigate the effects of stupid users.
If I plug in some faulty equipment in my office I'm likely going to trip a breaker... My office might go dark - hell the entire floor might go dark. But, unless the electrical guys have done a spectacularly bad job, I'm probably not going to burn down the building.
Similarly, doing something stupid on my workstation should not bring down the entire building.
It might kill my workstation... It might get my particular workgroup/subnet/segment/whatever shut down... But it should not take out the entire network.
If you really want to be sure you avoid being part of a botnet, then yes, Windows is not one of the choices you have. It cant be secured, its like going down the rapids in a colander while trying to plug the holes with cabbage.
Thing is, though, *everyone* running Windows treats it as holey, exploitable and generally unsafe. So they apply every security mechanism they can, they bother to audit things, and generally treat it as a dangerous thing that needs attention.
No they don't.
Your average home user has never updated or patched anything. And they've probably got a cable/DSL modem plugged directly into their computer. Just be glad XP SP2 and newer has a built-in firewall, because that's probably all the protection they've got. That, and whatever trial antivirus came with the computer, and expired a year ago.
Your average small business is about the same... Except that they'll have a dozen computers behind a $50 router with an unsecured WLAN.
When you get into medium-sized businesses you'll probably see a "computer guy" taking care of things... They'll generally be running Windows Update, probably have working antivirus of some kind... But the odds of them actually being properly administered and maintained are still pretty slim.
It isn't until you get up into the enterprise-y stuff that you start seeing people actually devote the necessary resources to keeping the network secure. And even then there's still plenty of room to screw things up.
Google has the most to lose because they are a company and China is a country.
Google will make its profit, but not as much as if it would have if it stayed in China.
Of course Google also gets to look like the good guy... Tried to stand up for freedom and was smacked down by the mean ol' Chinese government... May actually get them some new customers that they might not have had before. At the very least all this press is good advertising.
You're probably right... They're losing access to a huge market... But it's still possible that Google will wind up doing pretty well after all this. Sure, they'll lose some income... But how much were they spending (not just in money) to keep things up and running in China? Obviously Google thinks the cost outweighs the benefit.
China will make itself whatever its government wants it to become where Google is around or not.
You seem to think that a government can miraculously transform itself into anything it wants, and automatically be successful. That is not true.
Sure, the Chinese government is pretty damn stable. It is unlikely to topple because of this Google thing. And they'll release plenty of propaganda that will likely make them look even better in the eyes of the Chinese public...
But this has to hurt their international image. They're so repressive that Google couldn't even do business with them. I'm sure plenty of other companies will think twice before opening offices in China.
There are probably plenty of citizens who've gotten used to Google, and will feel its absence as well. Not to mention the folks who were employed by Google.
I don't honestly believe that any of that will amount to a whole hell of a lot... Google's just a search engine, I doubt if they'll have that much of an impact... But there will be an impact. Both within China and without.
Of course Google is trying to impose "American Values" on China. As it stands, they can't gain enough power to control things there. If China becomes more like America, then Google (and other companies) will have a bigger say in the government, and will be able to make more money.
Yes, obviously. It can't possibly have anything to do with Google's value coming from allowing people access to information and Chinese government's power coming from denying people access to information.
Yes, Google's value comes from allowing people access to information. And their revenue comes from the ads they show. And folks buy ads on Google because of the eyes they bring. And Google's got lots of eyes on its page because of its value.
So, ultimately, allowing people access to information earns Google money.
You can talk about doing no evil and information wanting to be free and whatever else... But, as a publicly traded company, Google's primary interest is making money. So of course they're interested in changing Chinese culture, as much as possible, to earn themselves more money.
We here in the West think that free and open access to information is a good thing, so we view Google's actions as altruistic to a certain degree. In China, free and open access to information is viewed as dangerous, so they view Google's actions as nothing more than an attempt to change their culture purely to make money.
Clearly, this is not about Chinese government wanting to keep its Ministry of Truth running and Google being a threat to that, but instead it's about Google trying to control Chinese government.
I guess every puppetmaster's worst nightmare is for the strings to get cut...
Since when does Google, or the United States, get to decide how China is governed?
Granted, from my standpoint, things look pretty oppressive over there. I'm not just talking about their information security policies either... There's plenty of human rights issues. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there.
But isn't it up to the Chinese people to decide how they want to be governed?
Yes, to my eyes over here in the West, they look like they're being oppressed. But how do the folks in China feel? Are they unhappy enough to actually rebel against the government and create something new?
But the government has all the tanks and guns and stuff! Surely any attempt at revolution would just fail utterly, right? We ought to roll in there with our tanks and guns and put in a shiny new democracy, right?
What about those 386 PCs that had a turbo button that would allow it to run at twice the speed (66 MHz instead of 33 MHz)? Nobody ever turned it off, so why have the button in the first place?
For older games built for 33MHz processors that utilized the clock rate for timing.
Yup. I had a bunch of games like that. Used to be fun when someone else was playing, to hit the turbo button on them... Instant GAME OVER.
Yes, invisibility is "cool", and I wouldn't mind an invisibility cloak for myself. But I can't immediately think of who would benefit the general public by having invisibility. Especially among the military, the police, criminals or terrorists (all of them sometimes interchangeable).
What practical use does invisibility have, other than as a weapon?
It could be useful to hide some things that are generally considered an eyesore... You probably wouldn't want to render the thing completely invisible from every angle, but you could greatly reduce the visual impact of the bathrooms at some scenic park for example. Or those green electrical boxes they've got scattered around town. It could make for some interesting furniture and decorating options. You could make materials transparent or translucent without actually using glass/plastic/whatever.
I don't see how losing due to reputation has anything to with a victory that decimates your forces.
Since we're already being pedantic...
Decimate means to lose exactly 10% of your forces. It was a punishment used by the Romans. They'd kill every 10th soldier.
It was a frightening punishment because anyone could be on the receiving end. Your odds were one in ten that you would wind up dead. Didn't much matter your rank or station in life or anything. But it still left 90% of the people alive, which was more than enough to get the job done.
A pyrrhic victory is, by definition, a victory that basically destroys you. It reduces your forces by such an amount that, if it were to be repeated, you'd have nothing left. Basically losses around 50% or more.
So, if you were decimated, you would be doing significantly better than a pyrrhic victory.
I totally get your point, but I don't see why a game company can't write a game for linux and, just like how apt makes sure that you have dependencies installed or Windows programs make sure you have dependencies installed, do a simple check and if you don't have XYZ installed, simply go out and have the installer download it?
They certainly could, if they wanted to. And plenty of developers for Linux do exactly this on a daily basis.
I think the bigger reasons for the lack of Linux games are 1) Windows 90% market share and 2) the fact that most games use DirectX.
When you double-click on the icon on your desktop you can see that it starts up steam. You will be prompted for a username & password if it isn't saved. You can see it running down in the system tray.
Then you get the assorted pop-up notices telling you that various friends are playing certain games. And you've got the whole IM thing going on with your friends list.
It seems fairly obvious to me that the Steam client is talking to stuff on the Internet.
Regardless of what is or isn't obvious, it seems to me that you should do a little research before buying a product. Once it comes time to actually run a game through Steam, it doesn't seem to me that anyone should be terribly surprised that it wants to phone home.
I download a game from Blizzard, I don't need to be running some special piece game management software in order tom play, I just click on the icon.
And?
Some software that I install from CD works without the disc, some requires the disc to be inserted, some of it requires an active subscription and monthly payments.
Different pieces of software, from different developers, with different publishers will behave differently. Why is this a surprise to anyone?
"This game cannot be started in Offline Mode" can happen. Why? becasue your master ^H^H^H^H^H^H Steam isn't up to date.
See the catch 22 there?
No, I don't.
If Steam isn't up to date, update it. Where's the catch 22?
Or are you suggesting that you've got no Internet, and Steam is insisting on an update, but you can't go online to get it? In which case, how does Steam know it needs an update? Is it just malfunctioning? Hmmm... And no other piece of software has ever malfunctioned before, right?
Steam has many problems.
I don't know if I'd say it has "many" problems...
At least I haven't personally run in to "many" problems...
It seems to me that folks like to exaggerate the issues with Steam because they just don't like DRM in general.
But, yes, Steam has problems. As does pretty much every other piece of software out there. You don't need a DRM platform like Steam to render your games unplayable. All it takes is a bit of flaky code. I've run in to that plenty of times, from plenty of different developers.
Most of these new DRM systems seems designed to stop people from sharing games with friends or brothers, not to stop piracy, piracy is just the scapegoat.
want to pay for more copies of the game.
Diablo II had really trivial copy protection. It was very easy to bypass, and I did just that. We had a single copy of the game that we shared between three computers in my house. And then we discovered multi-player...
Multi-player was crazy fun, but the three of us couldn't be on-line at the same time because we only had the one CD-key. So we ran out and bought two more discs.
Steam is another DRM system, the model that most (not all) users want, one where things "just work", and add features and enough convenience, to make for the lost of control. So is a good deal.
Steam is, in my opinion, DRM done right.
Yes, it's still DRM. And if you're fundamentally opposed to DRM then you're going to hate it just because it's DRM. But if, instead, you're looking for a way to play your video games legally without having to jump through all sorts of bizarre hoops... Steam is a good deal.
Most game publishers release games that are a "bad deal", the idea of releasing something that is worth buying escape then, focus on "screw" customers releasing the minimun product to the maximun price.
One of the things that I like about Steam is access to the marketplace. There's tons of good stuff on there relatively cheap. Older titles that I never got around to playing... Independent titles I've never heard of... For $5 or $10... And then there's weekly sales that drop the price of more expensive/current games down into the $10-$20 range... And sometimes there'll be a "free weekend" where you can try out some new game for a couple days without paying a cent.
The end result is that Steam not only is a nice DRM platform... But it gives me ample opportunities to make sure the games I'm buying are a good deal.
Incidentally, DRM and commercial control is one of the main reasons, I believe, that there are so few commercial games released for Linux.
I disagree.
I think the main reason you don't see a whole lot of commercial games released on Linux is the lack of uniformity.
Consoles are a popular platform for gaming because it is pretty much going to just work. The console's hardware is going to be pretty much identical from one machine to the next. You don't have to worry about CPU speed or background tasks or anything else. It's an Xbox 360 - aside from the HDD, it's going to be identical to any other Xbox 360.
With a Windows computer, you've got less uniformity... The CPU, RAM, GPU, sound, etc. can all be different. But at least the OS is going to make some predictable things available... You know that you can call on an assortment of libraries and APIs that are pretty much guaranteed to be there. There's still the issue of making sure your drivers are up-to-date... But at least the OS is fairly predictable. Mostly.
With a Linux machine... Well... You can't honestly count on much of anything. Is there even a GUI? If so, is it GNOME? KDE? Not only do you have to worry about whether the drivers are up-to-date, but you also have to wonder about the kernel and all the assorted libraries.
Obviously a lot of that can be overcome - and is, on a fairly routine basis by all the folks writing software for Linux. But a game developer faced with the choice of supporting a platform with zero unpredictability to worry about, or supporting a platform with tons of unpredictability... Well, obviously they like the predictable.
And this is why DRM is here to stay. Nobody else cares.
Pretty much.
As long as folks are more-or-less able to play their games, they're happy. If it freezes or crashes or does weird things now and again... Oh well. It's just a game, after all.
And if it gets annoying enough, most real gamers know enough to locate a no-CD crack.
So they'll keep buying the stuff, no matter how invasive the DRM is.
Respectable stores like Steam will warn you about the types of DRM used by the game in clear terms
Steam only warns about the additional/external DRM, not about itself. There is no "Warning: to play this game you need to be logged in on Steam and have the game fully updated"
A very large reason for this is the fact that it's rather obvious that you need to have Steam running and be logged in to play. They don't really need to warn you of that. It'd be kind of like warning you that you need to turn on your computer before you can play it.
As far as the updating goes... Every game I've got has an option to control how the game is updated. I can tell it to only update manually if I want to. Yes, the default is to update automatically. Yes, that has bit me in the ass once or twice when an update went bad. But generally speaking that's a very nice feature.
You can also play in "offline" mode which keeps Steam from updating your games as well.
Don't you think that's already been tried? A woman sat on the floor of Congress and testified that her car accelerated to 90 miles an hour, she could not get it to stop (even when shifting to neutral), and when she called Toyota she wasted several hours & received no resolution. Toyota denied the problem existed for YEARS.
So, obviously, the solution is to steal a new car from Toyota - right? You get a working vehicle, the original problem still remains, but you feel morally justified because the company tried to screw you first - right?
Or do you prefer the current hearings with lawyers involved who are trying to make Toyota bear responsibility for their defective products and actually fix the problem?
Technically... But not really. I mean, good luck watching anything on YouTube without Flash installed. Which is what we're talking about here - video playback. If you want to play back video on the web these days, you're basically stuck installing Flash. Yeah, a couple sites here and there use QuickTime or something else... But it's generally flash.
There is no optional addon to play h.264. The support for the video is built into the browser, and once it's built in the browser cannot be redistributed due to patents.
Support for h.264 might be built into the browser, but it isn't built into HTML5. HTML5 has a <video> tag, which will then pass that video on to whatever the browser/OS supports. In this case it would be browser-native h.264. On some other platform it might be QuickTime, or Flash, or whatever.
And, considering the defect rate on 360s and the poor warranty, I'm not sure I'd really argue with you on the ethics/morality of it.
a corporation like Bank of America that stole 1500 billion in bailout funds from our wallets.
Stole? Or was it handed to them on a golden platter with no requirements or restrictions or oversight?
I didn't cry when Saddam Hussein was hung dead.
Granted, he seemed to be a pretty bad guy. Maybe he deserved to be hung, I don't know enough to say. But considering the violence, death, and bloodshed that has resulted from our intervention I'm not sure we actually did a good thing there.
...and in response to your PS below, because I don't feel like clicking "reply to this" again...
If a corporation Screws you, I consider it acceptable to screw them right back.
While it may feel good... And may be justifiable... The problem with this is that it doesn't actually fix the problem.
Sure, maybe you get your money's worth in the end... But Microsoft is still selling a product with a 33% failure rate and Toyota is still selling cars with defective parts.
Which is why I suggested originally that perhaps it was a conversation better had with someone in technical support or with a lawyer - with the intent of coercing the company into fixing the actual problem.
(1) Clean, clean, clean the prematurely (less than 2 years) dead X360 so it looks new. (2) Buy new one from microsoft.com. (3) Put old unit in new box. (4) Return for refund because "it doesn't turn on". Get refund. (5) If MS refuses, then provide tracking to credit card. They will Force a refund per the contract MS signed with the credit company.
Done.
As you say, this is theft.
You can argue that it's a faulty product and you're entitled to your money's worth and whatnot... But that seems more like a discussion you should be having with technical support, over their warranty. Or maybe with some lawyer.
I just did this with a USB drive that went "click click click" before finally spinning up. i.e. It was almost dead before I ever used it!
Not trying to tell you that you're wrong here... But it's entirely possible that the USB port you happened to be using had insufficient power.
My USB HDD does something similar if I plug it into an under-powered USB port or if I use too long a USB cable. Sounds for all the world like a dead drive. But if I plug it in to a good port or use a shorter cable it spins up just fine.
I bought a new one, put broken drive in new box, and returned it a few days later saying, "This doesn't work." Done.
I've got a co-worker who does this all the time.
We had a bad thunderstorm a while back and the power supply blew on his fancy TV. He bought a new one, put the bad one in the box, and returned it.
Last year he bought a new artificial Christmas tree from SAM's Club... Put his old, smaller tree in the box, and returned it.
I do this everytime a corporation tries to screw me. They almost-never succeed.
Generally speaking, they aren't trying to screw you. It can certainly seem unfair when you're bit in the ass by their return policies... And it may not be a very fair policy in the first place... But they aren't generally actually trying to screw you.
I used to work at Electronic's Boutique back in the day. When I started there they had a virtually "no questions asked" return policy. You could even return a game if you didn't like it.
So we'd have customers basically using us for free rentals. They'd buy a game, play it, beat it, return it, and get something else for no charge. And then do the same thing with that.
So then we stipulated that it was only on non-working merchandise... And folks just lied and said it didn't work on their system.
Then we stipulated that you could only return non-working merchandise for another copy of the same thing. And folks would tell us that they bought it was a gift and had been purchased for the wrong system.
So we stipulated that it had to be un-opened merchandise. And folks will just use somebody's shrink wrap machine to repackage the game and make it look un-opened.
The end result of all this is that somebody who has a legitimate reason to return a game to the store is going to have one hell of a hard time accomplishing that. And they're going to feel like they're being screwed. But it isn't that the company wants to screw them... It's that so many people screwed the company over the years that there's no way for anyone to win at this point.
This is why the use of encryption is a must. Sending email is like sending a postcard, except that copies of it are made and stored for perusal by government officials and ISP employees.
Yup.
I routinely have clients asking me about security and encryption and VPNs and keyloggers and all this stuff... And then they'll be sending truly critical and confidential business information in plaintext through a Hotmail account.
Had one client convinced they'd been "hacked" because some confidential information made it out into the hands of folks who shouldn't have had it... Now, some employee obviously shared that information with someone they shouldn't have... But nobody hacked anything. Turns out everyone knew everyone else's Yahoo email passwords. They just logged in and forwarded a copy of the email.
The fanciest locks in the world aren't going to save you if you leave your doors open all the time, or give away keys to anyone who walks by.
Slashdot Mirror
Shocking. People still use ICQ?
My wife loves it. Won't use anything else. I'm just glad Pidgin has ICQ support...
Most people in the malware authoring business probably at least understand the consequences of what they do, even if they don't care.
This I can understand.
You need the money to pay the bills... You don't know and never see the people affected... "It's their own fault... Shouldn't have run that executable... Should be running better antivirus... Stupid users..."
I can see folks either not caring or simply rationalizing it away... People do that for various things on a daily basis...
But not thinking about your actions at all? I can't understand being that oblivious to what I was doing.
Funny, I did think about ethics when I was 20.
Yeah... Seems to me that the late teens/early 20's are when most people get all activist and start trying to save the world.
I remember when I was just finishing up highschool and heading into college... Was fairly active in politics and various student organizations. Showed up to rallies, donated time and money, volunteered...
My son is going through that same stage right now. He's obsessed with politics and he's decided he wants to become a journalist.
Maybe that's not as typical as I think it is... But it seems to me that many (most?) people are thinking about ethics to some degree when they're 20.
Hell, for a lot of folks I think that's about the time they start thinking about ethics seriously for the first time. That's about the time you're looking at your first "real" job... Developing some "real" relationships... Out on your own and having to make ends meet... Seems to me that a lot of folks are off on their own for the first time around age 20, and having to make a lot of those tough decisions for themselves for the first time.
But without any hope of HD, whats the point?
Most of the stuff I watch these days is not HD.
Most of my movies are standard definition DVDs. I have a single TV in my house that can do HD... But, aside from the occasional HD television program, have nothing HD to watch on it.
Most of the stuff I get from Netflix is older titles that, frankly, are more like VHS quality than DVD.
So my question is: Is firewall and anti-virus really not that effective and if so how do bots get around firewall and anti-virus?
Nope, they're not.
A firewall attempts to block unsolicited incoming connections to your network. It will keep somebody from bringing up your shared files and printers from the Internet... But it doesn't keep you from downloading/installing/running anything. A firewall really doesn't do a whole lot to protect you against viruses and most malware.
Antivirus software will attempt to protect you against the stuff it knows about. New stuff, that arrives before a definition update, isn't going to be detected. And many viruses and malware are designed to hide from and/or disable antivirus software. It's very common to see machines with perfectly good antivirus software that are thoroughly riddled with malware of various types.
Neither a firewall nor antivirus software is going to keep you safe - at least not all by themselves.
So make it a persistent state. Every computer lab on campus had a 'deep freeze' piece of software installed.
You HAD to save your files to your shared drive. If you rebooted the PC, the entire PC was reimaged back to a 'clean' state.
I'm sure such software works for Linux (if not just get a Live CD/LiveUSB).
Disable executable access for anything running on a shared drive and there shouldn't be anyway for them to permanently do any damage.
No matter how they screw a computer up, a reboot will fix it.
The problem with stuff like Deep Freeze (and its friends) is that it's still software. Software is mutable. Which means that a virus or a bored user or whatever can, potentially, bypass that security. And then you're hosed again.
I much prefer using live CDs in places that are going to see a lot of abuse - usually without any local storage at all.
A nice compromise for a business environment is a terminal server and some thin clients. You can lock down the individual sessions pretty thoroughly... Only retain changes to specific documents and folders... And the client is completely disposable.
Competent users maybe?
You can't blame everything on the users.
A well-designed system is going to mitigate the effects of stupid users.
If I plug in some faulty equipment in my office I'm likely going to trip a breaker... My office might go dark - hell the entire floor might go dark. But, unless the electrical guys have done a spectacularly bad job, I'm probably not going to burn down the building.
Similarly, doing something stupid on my workstation should not bring down the entire building.
It might kill my workstation... It might get my particular workgroup/subnet/segment/whatever shut down... But it should not take out the entire network.
Thing is, though, *everyone* running Windows treats it as holey, exploitable and generally unsafe. So they apply every security mechanism they can, they bother to audit things, and generally treat it as a dangerous thing that needs attention.
No they don't.
Your average home user has never updated or patched anything. And they've probably got a cable/DSL modem plugged directly into their computer. Just be glad XP SP2 and newer has a built-in firewall, because that's probably all the protection they've got. That, and whatever trial antivirus came with the computer, and expired a year ago.
Your average small business is about the same... Except that they'll have a dozen computers behind a $50 router with an unsecured WLAN.
When you get into medium-sized businesses you'll probably see a "computer guy" taking care of things... They'll generally be running Windows Update, probably have working antivirus of some kind... But the odds of them actually being properly administered and maintained are still pretty slim.
It isn't until you get up into the enterprise-y stuff that you start seeing people actually devote the necessary resources to keeping the network secure. And even then there's still plenty of room to screw things up.
Google has the most to lose because they are a company and China is a country.
Google will make its profit, but not as much as if it would have if it stayed in China.
Of course Google also gets to look like the good guy... Tried to stand up for freedom and was smacked down by the mean ol' Chinese government... May actually get them some new customers that they might not have had before. At the very least all this press is good advertising.
You're probably right... They're losing access to a huge market... But it's still possible that Google will wind up doing pretty well after all this. Sure, they'll lose some income... But how much were they spending (not just in money) to keep things up and running in China? Obviously Google thinks the cost outweighs the benefit.
China will make itself whatever its government wants it to become where Google is around or not.
You seem to think that a government can miraculously transform itself into anything it wants, and automatically be successful. That is not true.
Sure, the Chinese government is pretty damn stable. It is unlikely to topple because of this Google thing. And they'll release plenty of propaganda that will likely make them look even better in the eyes of the Chinese public...
But this has to hurt their international image. They're so repressive that Google couldn't even do business with them. I'm sure plenty of other companies will think twice before opening offices in China.
There are probably plenty of citizens who've gotten used to Google, and will feel its absence as well. Not to mention the folks who were employed by Google.
I don't honestly believe that any of that will amount to a whole hell of a lot... Google's just a search engine, I doubt if they'll have that much of an impact... But there will be an impact. Both within China and without.
Yes, obviously. It can't possibly have anything to do with Google's value coming from allowing people access to information and Chinese government's power coming from denying people access to information.
Yes, Google's value comes from allowing people access to information. And their revenue comes from the ads they show. And folks buy ads on Google because of the eyes they bring. And Google's got lots of eyes on its page because of its value.
So, ultimately, allowing people access to information earns Google money.
You can talk about doing no evil and information wanting to be free and whatever else... But, as a publicly traded company, Google's primary interest is making money. So of course they're interested in changing Chinese culture, as much as possible, to earn themselves more money.
We here in the West think that free and open access to information is a good thing, so we view Google's actions as altruistic to a certain degree. In China, free and open access to information is viewed as dangerous, so they view Google's actions as nothing more than an attempt to change their culture purely to make money.
Clearly, this is not about Chinese government wanting to keep its Ministry of Truth running and Google being a threat to that, but instead it's about Google trying to control Chinese government.
I guess every puppetmaster's worst nightmare is for the strings to get cut...
Since when does Google, or the United States, get to decide how China is governed?
Granted, from my standpoint, things look pretty oppressive over there. I'm not just talking about their information security policies either... There's plenty of human rights issues. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there.
But isn't it up to the Chinese people to decide how they want to be governed?
Yes, to my eyes over here in the West, they look like they're being oppressed. But how do the folks in China feel? Are they unhappy enough to actually rebel against the government and create something new?
But the government has all the tanks and guns and stuff! Surely any attempt at revolution would just fail utterly, right? We ought to roll in there with our tanks and guns and put in a shiny new democracy, right?
What about those 386 PCs that had a turbo button that would allow it to run at twice the speed (66 MHz instead of 33 MHz)? Nobody ever turned it off, so why have the button in the first place?
For older games built for 33MHz processors that utilized the clock rate for timing.
Yup. I had a bunch of games like that. Used to be fun when someone else was playing, to hit the turbo button on them... Instant GAME OVER.
Yes, invisibility is "cool", and I wouldn't mind an invisibility cloak for myself. But I can't immediately think of who would benefit the general public by having invisibility. Especially among the military, the police, criminals or terrorists (all of them sometimes interchangeable).
What practical use does invisibility have, other than as a weapon?
It could be useful to hide some things that are generally considered an eyesore... You probably wouldn't want to render the thing completely invisible from every angle, but you could greatly reduce the visual impact of the bathrooms at some scenic park for example. Or those green electrical boxes they've got scattered around town. It could make for some interesting furniture and decorating options. You could make materials transparent or translucent without actually using glass/plastic/whatever.
I don't see how losing due to reputation has anything to with a victory that decimates your forces.
Since we're already being pedantic...
Decimate means to lose exactly 10% of your forces. It was a punishment used by the Romans. They'd kill every 10th soldier.
It was a frightening punishment because anyone could be on the receiving end. Your odds were one in ten that you would wind up dead. Didn't much matter your rank or station in life or anything. But it still left 90% of the people alive, which was more than enough to get the job done.
A pyrrhic victory is, by definition, a victory that basically destroys you. It reduces your forces by such an amount that, if it were to be repeated, you'd have nothing left. Basically losses around 50% or more.
So, if you were decimated, you would be doing significantly better than a pyrrhic victory.
I totally get your point, but I don't see why a game company can't write a game for linux and, just like how apt makes sure that you have dependencies installed or Windows programs make sure you have dependencies installed, do a simple check and if you don't have XYZ installed, simply go out and have the installer download it?
They certainly could, if they wanted to. And plenty of developers for Linux do exactly this on a daily basis.
I think the bigger reasons for the lack of Linux games are 1) Windows 90% market share and 2) the fact that most games use DirectX.
Which is why they don't want to.
no it's not obvious.
I think it's fairly obvious.
When you double-click on the icon on your desktop you can see that it starts up steam. You will be prompted for a username & password if it isn't saved. You can see it running down in the system tray.
Then you get the assorted pop-up notices telling you that various friends are playing certain games. And you've got the whole IM thing going on with your friends list.
It seems fairly obvious to me that the Steam client is talking to stuff on the Internet.
Regardless of what is or isn't obvious, it seems to me that you should do a little research before buying a product. Once it comes time to actually run a game through Steam, it doesn't seem to me that anyone should be terribly surprised that it wants to phone home.
I download a game from Blizzard, I don't need to be running some special piece game management software in order tom play, I just click on the icon.
And?
Some software that I install from CD works without the disc, some requires the disc to be inserted, some of it requires an active subscription and monthly payments.
Different pieces of software, from different developers, with different publishers will behave differently. Why is this a surprise to anyone?
"This game cannot be started in Offline Mode" can happen. Why? becasue your master ^H^H^H^H^H^H Steam isn't up to date.
See the catch 22 there?
No, I don't.
If Steam isn't up to date, update it. Where's the catch 22?
Or are you suggesting that you've got no Internet, and Steam is insisting on an update, but you can't go online to get it? In which case, how does Steam know it needs an update? Is it just malfunctioning? Hmmm... And no other piece of software has ever malfunctioned before, right?
Steam has many problems.
I don't know if I'd say it has "many" problems...
At least I haven't personally run in to "many" problems...
It seems to me that folks like to exaggerate the issues with Steam because they just don't like DRM in general.
But, yes, Steam has problems. As does pretty much every other piece of software out there. You don't need a DRM platform like Steam to render your games unplayable. All it takes is a bit of flaky code. I've run in to that plenty of times, from plenty of different developers.
Most of these new DRM systems seems designed to stop people from sharing games with friends or brothers, not to stop piracy, piracy is just the scapegoat.
want to pay for more copies of the game.
Diablo II had really trivial copy protection. It was very easy to bypass, and I did just that. We had a single copy of the game that we shared between three computers in my house. And then we discovered multi-player...
Multi-player was crazy fun, but the three of us couldn't be on-line at the same time because we only had the one CD-key. So we ran out and bought two more discs.
Steam is another DRM system, the model that most (not all) users want, one where things "just work", and add features and enough convenience, to make for the lost of control. So is a good deal.
Steam is, in my opinion, DRM done right.
Yes, it's still DRM. And if you're fundamentally opposed to DRM then you're going to hate it just because it's DRM. But if, instead, you're looking for a way to play your video games legally without having to jump through all sorts of bizarre hoops... Steam is a good deal.
Most game publishers release games that are a "bad deal", the idea of releasing something that is worth buying escape then, focus on "screw" customers releasing the minimun product to the maximun price.
One of the things that I like about Steam is access to the marketplace. There's tons of good stuff on there relatively cheap. Older titles that I never got around to playing... Independent titles I've never heard of... For $5 or $10... And then there's weekly sales that drop the price of more expensive/current games down into the $10-$20 range... And sometimes there'll be a "free weekend" where you can try out some new game for a couple days without paying a cent.
The end result is that Steam not only is a nice DRM platform... But it gives me ample opportunities to make sure the games I'm buying are a good deal.
Incidentally, DRM and commercial control is one of the main reasons, I believe, that there are so few commercial games released for Linux.
I disagree.
I think the main reason you don't see a whole lot of commercial games released on Linux is the lack of uniformity.
Consoles are a popular platform for gaming because it is pretty much going to just work. The console's hardware is going to be pretty much identical from one machine to the next. You don't have to worry about CPU speed or background tasks or anything else. It's an Xbox 360 - aside from the HDD, it's going to be identical to any other Xbox 360.
With a Windows computer, you've got less uniformity... The CPU, RAM, GPU, sound, etc. can all be different. But at least the OS is going to make some predictable things available... You know that you can call on an assortment of libraries and APIs that are pretty much guaranteed to be there. There's still the issue of making sure your drivers are up-to-date... But at least the OS is fairly predictable. Mostly.
With a Linux machine... Well... You can't honestly count on much of anything. Is there even a GUI? If so, is it GNOME? KDE? Not only do you have to worry about whether the drivers are up-to-date, but you also have to wonder about the kernel and all the assorted libraries.
Obviously a lot of that can be overcome - and is, on a fairly routine basis by all the folks writing software for Linux. But a game developer faced with the choice of supporting a platform with zero unpredictability to worry about, or supporting a platform with tons of unpredictability... Well, obviously they like the predictable.
And this is why DRM is here to stay. Nobody else cares.
Pretty much.
As long as folks are more-or-less able to play their games, they're happy. If it freezes or crashes or does weird things now and again... Oh well. It's just a game, after all.
And if it gets annoying enough, most real gamers know enough to locate a no-CD crack.
So they'll keep buying the stuff, no matter how invasive the DRM is.
Respectable stores like Steam will warn you about the types of DRM used by the game in clear terms
Steam only warns about the additional/external DRM, not about itself. There is no "Warning: to play this game you need to be logged in on Steam and have the game fully updated"
A very large reason for this is the fact that it's rather obvious that you need to have Steam running and be logged in to play. They don't really need to warn you of that. It'd be kind of like warning you that you need to turn on your computer before you can play it.
As far as the updating goes... Every game I've got has an option to control how the game is updated. I can tell it to only update manually if I want to. Yes, the default is to update automatically. Yes, that has bit me in the ass once or twice when an update went bad. But generally speaking that's a very nice feature.
You can also play in "offline" mode which keeps Steam from updating your games as well.
Don't you think that's already been tried? A woman sat on the floor of Congress and testified that her car accelerated to 90 miles an hour, she could not get it to stop (even when shifting to neutral), and when she called Toyota she wasted several hours & received no resolution. Toyota denied the problem existed for YEARS.
So, obviously, the solution is to steal a new car from Toyota - right? You get a working vehicle, the original problem still remains, but you feel morally justified because the company tried to screw you first - right?
Or do you prefer the current hearings with lawyers involved who are trying to make Toyota bear responsibility for their defective products and actually fix the problem?
Very cool. I'll have to check it out.
Flash is an optional addon.
Technically... But not really. I mean, good luck watching anything on YouTube without Flash installed. Which is what we're talking about here - video playback. If you want to play back video on the web these days, you're basically stuck installing Flash. Yeah, a couple sites here and there use QuickTime or something else... But it's generally flash.
There is no optional addon to play h.264. The support for the video is built into the browser, and once it's built in the browser cannot be redistributed due to patents.
Support for h.264 might be built into the browser, but it isn't built into HTML5. HTML5 has a <video> tag, which will then pass that video on to whatever the browser/OS supports. In this case it would be browser-native h.264. On some other platform it might be QuickTime, or Flash, or whatever.
I don't consider it theft
You're the one who said you "might steal one"...
And, considering the defect rate on 360s and the poor warranty, I'm not sure I'd really argue with you on the ethics/morality of it.
a corporation like Bank of America that stole 1500 billion in bailout funds from our wallets.
Stole? Or was it handed to them on a golden platter with no requirements or restrictions or oversight?
I didn't cry when Saddam Hussein was hung dead.
Granted, he seemed to be a pretty bad guy. Maybe he deserved to be hung, I don't know enough to say. But considering the violence, death, and bloodshed that has resulted from our intervention I'm not sure we actually did a good thing there.
If a corporation Screws you, I consider it acceptable to screw them right back.
While it may feel good... And may be justifiable... The problem with this is that it doesn't actually fix the problem.
Sure, maybe you get your money's worth in the end... But Microsoft is still selling a product with a 33% failure rate and Toyota is still selling cars with defective parts.
Which is why I suggested originally that perhaps it was a conversation better had with someone in technical support or with a lawyer - with the intent of coercing the company into fixing the actual problem.
No but I might steal one. Like so:
(1) Clean, clean, clean the prematurely (less than 2 years) dead X360 so it looks new.
(2) Buy new one from microsoft.com.
(3) Put old unit in new box.
(4) Return for refund because "it doesn't turn on". Get refund.
(5) If MS refuses, then provide tracking to credit card. They will Force a refund per the contract MS signed with the credit company.
Done.
As you say, this is theft.
You can argue that it's a faulty product and you're entitled to your money's worth and whatnot... But that seems more like a discussion you should be having with technical support, over their warranty. Or maybe with some lawyer.
I just did this with a USB drive that went "click click click" before finally spinning up. i.e. It was almost dead before I ever used it!
Not trying to tell you that you're wrong here... But it's entirely possible that the USB port you happened to be using had insufficient power.
My USB HDD does something similar if I plug it into an under-powered USB port or if I use too long a USB cable. Sounds for all the world like a dead drive. But if I plug it in to a good port or use a shorter cable it spins up just fine.
I bought a new one, put broken drive in new box, and returned it a few days later saying, "This doesn't work." Done.
I've got a co-worker who does this all the time.
We had a bad thunderstorm a while back and the power supply blew on his fancy TV. He bought a new one, put the bad one in the box, and returned it.
Last year he bought a new artificial Christmas tree from SAM's Club... Put his old, smaller tree in the box, and returned it.
I do this everytime a corporation tries to screw me. They almost-never succeed.
Generally speaking, they aren't trying to screw you. It can certainly seem unfair when you're bit in the ass by their return policies... And it may not be a very fair policy in the first place... But they aren't generally actually trying to screw you.
I used to work at Electronic's Boutique back in the day. When I started there they had a virtually "no questions asked" return policy. You could even return a game if you didn't like it.
So we'd have customers basically using us for free rentals. They'd buy a game, play it, beat it, return it, and get something else for no charge. And then do the same thing with that.
So then we stipulated that it was only on non-working merchandise... And folks just lied and said it didn't work on their system.
Then we stipulated that you could only return non-working merchandise for another copy of the same thing. And folks would tell us that they bought it was a gift and had been purchased for the wrong system.
So we stipulated that it had to be un-opened merchandise. And folks will just use somebody's shrink wrap machine to repackage the game and make it look un-opened.
The end result of all this is that somebody who has a legitimate reason to return a game to the store is going to have one hell of a hard time accomplishing that. And they're going to feel like they're being screwed. But it isn't that the company wants to screw them... It's that so many people screwed the company over the years that there's no way for anyone to win at this point.
This is why the use of encryption is a must. Sending email is like sending a postcard, except that copies of it are made and stored for perusal by government officials and ISP employees.
Yup.
I routinely have clients asking me about security and encryption and VPNs and keyloggers and all this stuff... And then they'll be sending truly critical and confidential business information in plaintext through a Hotmail account.
Had one client convinced they'd been "hacked" because some confidential information made it out into the hands of folks who shouldn't have had it... Now, some employee obviously shared that information with someone they shouldn't have... But nobody hacked anything. Turns out everyone knew everyone else's Yahoo email passwords. They just logged in and forwarded a copy of the email.
The fanciest locks in the world aren't going to save you if you leave your doors open all the time, or give away keys to anyone who walks by.