In the western US there have been a number of archeological sites showing that the Native Americans did indeed have precursors who lived in the area prior to them. Different cultures, different physiological characteristics, the whole works. Look it up.
The real difference here is that they completely killed off their precursors. The Europeans (ie. "whitey") only killed of a bunch of them and stole their land, etc.
You're over estimating the intelligence of the average slashdotter. Plus most of those who do have the skills to actually build something usable as a stereo/video component, consider the dollar value of their time to be substantially greater than "nearly nothing."
They don't have to find you. If it appears that you are unavailable, intentionally or otherwise, and the plaintiff has made a serious effort to contact/locate you, you can be served by publication. Which means that if the court thinks you are in Los Angeles, CA, then all they have to do is put a small add in the classifieds (public notices) in a major LA paper, and then you've been served. Regardless of whether you've ever been in California or not. And yes you will by default if you don't show up for your court date.
But my point is, is that Flash isn't a tool for Computer Scientists. Computer Scientists would use design tools, simulators, compilers, etc. But not Flash. And yet, even in CS degree course tracks, you will find courses on how to use certain kinds of tools/OSes/apps as introductory classes. Makes sense once in a while to teach people some of the techniques to more handily utilize a tool.
Not that far they haven't. The reason more devices run on rechargables is because the devices have reduced their power usage. It's not because the batteries are massively better.
Maybe he's kind of smart, so writing this code may take him, say, 5 minutes. So his time is worth $1/min. It's not brain surgeon value of time, but it's sure better than burger flipper. And when it comes down to it, it's a one time cost instead of a recurring cost.
Look around. Nobody here cares if it's illegal. I mean for fucks sake, how many times has Taco posted about how "computers have changed the way content is distributed and the recording/television/movie industry has to learn to deal with it." It would be funny as hell to see a large group of people get together to dupe slashdot content elsewhere.
We all know that
anything readable by a machine is readable by a human (ie cracker) in some shape or form and therefore is crackable.
Yes, but you are missing an important point: if the people creating the obfuscated code are orders of magnitude more intelligent than the crackers, it is impossible for them to create protection that can't be broken. Unfortunately for the industries that want this kind of protection, the really really smart people typically don't get into computing.
Or why does he think that the bnetd developers are any more capable of improving the battle.net software. Doesn't anybody bother to think anymore? The developers are Blizzard have been dealing with the load and associated issues for years, and they obviously would explore the various techniques and methods that would be proper to use. The bnetd developers have been focusing on just getting their software to work. How many of them actually have the experience and knowledge to deal with the situation that battle.net faces daily. It's more than just a software problem, there's the whole network side of the problem to be addressed. As in switches, routers, load balancing, etc. that have absolutely nothing to do with any kind of programmatic issues.
By wheeling out the laywers from the word go, they alienate the very developers who could actually think, and come up with some way to aid them in the future.
Yeah. They should keep in mind that the only people who can come up with software solutions are the slashdot community. Not the people who write the software in the first place.
Actually, having played a lot of Quake over the years, I can tell you that there comes a point, that no matter how well you played, it's not fun when the other team is cheating. It would kind of be like playing tug of war with a Peterbuilt: for 99.9999% of the population it's just a pointless exercise in defeat, and no matter what you do, you can't have any effect on the outcome of the contest.
If you Never trust the client. then you absolutely cannot create an online game. At some point you have to trust the client. And there is absolutely no way to prevent someone from hacking the client for auto-aim, auto-dodge, etc. And if somebody wants to spend the time, it becomes ever more difficult to detect the difference between a person using a highly advanced auto-aim and a good player.
Rewriting any kind of IP/UDP/TCP level stack is just stupid. The overhead that you incur, on the local system, is measured in microseconds. It's the activity "out there" on the net that starts adding the hundreds of milliseconds. At the software level, on the local machine, there just isn't much you can do to fix external network problems. For dialup users you have the issues of your modem collectiong data until it gets a full buffer for compression and error correction (and the buffer size can't typically be determined programatically.) These are hardware issues and software won't fix it.
As both of the respondents have noted, in game registration without a connection to the server is an issue. One solution would be easily addressed by using a key generation/verification algorithm as most people would assume. Then generate 250 million keys, and dispose of 99.99% of them. Thus you can validate the keys, still without a hacker being able to reverse engineer your algorithm and create a keygen that works online.
Alternately you could have multipart keys. A string of letters and numbers 30 characters long is a lot of key space. Part of it could be used for local validation, and part of it could be generated algorithmless and stored as part of a table for use online.
And finally, you just print the keys on a little sticker and paste that sticker on your jewel case. It doesn't have to be burned into the CDs at all.
But on the other hand, look at the problem from a practical perspective. Suppose that global warming is "false" (ie. we're not causing it).
Suppose that there is in actuality an unknown process that tends toward ice. Lots and lots of ice. Our emissions, etc. are preventing the eventual complete and total freezing of the globe.
It's as possible as global warming and for all we know about the processes in motion, it can be fully reality.
I suppose that their keys are not particularly strong.
If they are smart their keys will just be random strings. No algorithm involved. Think about it. Ultimately the smartest thing for a vendor such as Blizzard, id, etc. to do is just make a huge table that says key such and such is valid or not valid.
Start with, say, 1 Gig of table. Go through it and randomly set 1 million bits. For each bit position in the table generate a key or just use a number to represent that bit. Print those numbers on little labels and ship them with your CD. When a client returns that number to your server look in the table to see if it's bit is set. If not, then the key is invalid. With 1 Gig of table space, you have 8 billion+ possible keys. If your game is going to be an all time best seller, say 30 million copies, you are using much less than 1% of your key space. Since there's no algorithm involved (assuming you used a good RNG initially) there is no attack (statistical or reverse engineering) that will compromise your keys. (Short of having your server hacked.)
Slashdot Mirror
The problem I have is that it doesn't use my OS' standard APIs to interface with the rest of the system. It has nothing to do with being free or not.
Well shit. If the fact that you didn't get modded up 'Funny' doesn't demonstrate that the mods on /. are screwed, I don't know what would prove that.
In the western US there have been a number of archeological sites showing that the Native Americans did indeed have precursors who lived in the area prior to them. Different cultures, different physiological characteristics, the whole works. Look it up.
The real difference here is that they completely killed off their precursors. The Europeans (ie. "whitey") only killed of a bunch of them and stole their land, etc.
Prove it.
Of course he values his time at $0. He's in mensa isn't he?
You're over estimating the intelligence of the average slashdotter. Plus most of those who do have the skills to actually build something usable as a stereo/video component, consider the dollar value of their time to be substantially greater than "nearly nothing."
They don't have to find you. If it appears that you are unavailable, intentionally or otherwise, and the plaintiff has made a serious effort to contact/locate you, you can be served by publication. Which means that if the court thinks you are in Los Angeles, CA, then all they have to do is put a small add in the classifieds (public notices) in a major LA paper, and then you've been served. Regardless of whether you've ever been in California or not. And yes you will by default if you don't show up for your court date.
Little Bobbie changes his posts retroactively all the time. Generally without mentioning it.
But my point is, is that Flash isn't a tool for Computer Scientists. Computer Scientists would use design tools, simulators, compilers, etc. But not Flash. And yet, even in CS degree course tracks, you will find courses on how to use certain kinds of tools/OSes/apps as introductory classes. Makes sense once in a while to teach people some of the techniques to more handily utilize a tool.
Flash really isn't a tool for "Computer Scientists." It's for web designers, content producers, etc. So your argument is somewhat specious.
Which, regardless of whether mozilla loves SVGs or not, is still an accurate statement.
Not that far they haven't. The reason more devices run on rechargables is because the devices have reduced their power usage. It's not because the batteries are massively better.
Maybe he's kind of smart, so writing this code may take him, say, 5 minutes. So his time is worth $1/min. It's not brain surgeon value of time, but it's sure better than burger flipper. And when it comes down to it, it's a one time cost instead of a recurring cost.
Look around. Nobody here cares if it's illegal. I mean for fucks sake, how many times has Taco posted about how "computers have changed the way content is distributed and the recording/television/movie industry has to learn to deal with it." It would be funny as hell to see a large group of people get together to dupe slashdot content elsewhere.
Yes, but you are missing an important point: if the people creating the obfuscated code are orders of magnitude more intelligent than the crackers, it is impossible for them to create protection that can't be broken. Unfortunately for the industries that want this kind of protection, the really really smart people typically don't get into computing.
Or why does he think that the bnetd developers are any more capable of improving the battle.net software. Doesn't anybody bother to think anymore? The developers are Blizzard have been dealing with the load and associated issues for years, and they obviously would explore the various techniques and methods that would be proper to use. The bnetd developers have been focusing on just getting their software to work. How many of them actually have the experience and knowledge to deal with the situation that battle.net faces daily. It's more than just a software problem, there's the whole network side of the problem to be addressed. As in switches, routers, load balancing, etc. that have absolutely nothing to do with any kind of programmatic issues.
Yeah. They should keep in mind that the only people who can come up with software solutions are the slashdot community. Not the people who write the software in the first place.
Actually, having played a lot of Quake over the years, I can tell you that there comes a point, that no matter how well you played, it's not fun when the other team is cheating. It would kind of be like playing tug of war with a Peterbuilt: for 99.9999% of the population it's just a pointless exercise in defeat, and no matter what you do, you can't have any effect on the outcome of the contest.
If you Never trust the client. then you absolutely cannot create an online game. At some point you have to trust the client. And there is absolutely no way to prevent someone from hacking the client for auto-aim, auto-dodge, etc. And if somebody wants to spend the time, it becomes ever more difficult to detect the difference between a person using a highly advanced auto-aim and a good player.
Rewriting any kind of IP/UDP/TCP level stack is just stupid. The overhead that you incur, on the local system, is measured in microseconds. It's the activity "out there" on the net that starts adding the hundreds of milliseconds. At the software level, on the local machine, there just isn't much you can do to fix external network problems. For dialup users you have the issues of your modem collectiong data until it gets a full buffer for compression and error correction (and the buffer size can't typically be determined programatically.) These are hardware issues and software won't fix it.
nethack, et. al, aren't muds.
As both of the respondents have noted, in game registration without a connection to the server is an issue. One solution would be easily addressed by using a key generation/verification algorithm as most people would assume. Then generate 250 million keys, and dispose of 99.99% of them. Thus you can validate the keys, still without a hacker being able to reverse engineer your algorithm and create a keygen that works online.
Alternately you could have multipart keys. A string of letters and numbers 30 characters long is a lot of key space. Part of it could be used for local validation, and part of it could be generated algorithmless and stored as part of a table for use online.
And finally, you just print the keys on a little sticker and paste that sticker on your jewel case. It doesn't have to be burned into the CDs at all.
Suppose that there is in actuality an unknown process that tends toward ice. Lots and lots of ice. Our emissions, etc. are preventing the eventual complete and total freezing of the globe.
It's as possible as global warming and for all we know about the processes in motion, it can be fully reality.
Just to be devils advocate.
If they are smart their keys will just be random strings. No algorithm involved. Think about it. Ultimately the smartest thing for a vendor such as Blizzard, id, etc. to do is just make a huge table that says key such and such is valid or not valid.
Start with, say, 1 Gig of table. Go through it and randomly set 1 million bits. For each bit position in the table generate a key or just use a number to represent that bit. Print those numbers on little labels and ship them with your CD. When a client returns that number to your server look in the table to see if it's bit is set. If not, then the key is invalid. With 1 Gig of table space, you have 8 billion+ possible keys. If your game is going to be an all time best seller, say 30 million copies, you are using much less than 1% of your key space. Since there's no algorithm involved (assuming you used a good RNG initially) there is no attack (statistical or reverse engineering) that will compromise your keys. (Short of having your server hacked.)