Check out DSLExtreme I've been with them for a couple years now, and have been very happy with them. They have fairly good tech support, and they stay the hell out of my way. And, a 1.5/256 line is $49.95/month, with static IP and a month-to-month subscription. The only thing you have to remember to do is tell them to turn off the port 25 filter on your IP, if you plan to run your own mail server.
I think that the people you are looking at, are those people on the cusp between not needing broadband, and needing it. First off, who pays $20/month for dialup anymore? Even before I switched, I had a good ISP for $10/month, they aren't hard to find. And when it was just email and quick surfing, a second phone line wasn't needed. However, once I got addicted, and started playing online games, I moved into that middle realm. I was online enough that it created problems with tying up the phone line, and the speed was starting to be noticeable. At that point, it was time to start looking into broadband, though I couldn't get it at the time. So, I did the whole 2 phone lines and dial-up account thing. And, it wasn't terrible: ~$25/month for the line and ~$10/month for the ISP, so $35/month total. Cheaper that broadband at the time (this was a couple years ago). Eventually though, I got DSL for $50/month and haven't looked back. Considering that I play Wolfenstien: ET constantly, spend a lot of time online, and run my own server, the broadband is justified. But, for people like my girlfriend's parents, who can barely turn the computer on, let alone do anything fancy with it, dial-up is just fine, and no second line is needed.
Point taken, though I tend to belive that most of the people that are still on dial-up, are also the type of people that just aren't ready to get rid of the land line completly. But, as always, there will be exceptions.
Ok, why is this a suprise to anyone? Many users do nothing more than look at a few pages and send/receive email. For them, that is the internet, that's all they want and care about. So, for those the people, there is no reason to pay the extra for broad band. When you can get dial-up for US$10/month a month, or less if you are willing to put up with ads, and basic broadband starts at US$30/month, is it really worth it to get your email a second or two faster?
I just wonder if these things will be as shoddy as Jaz drives were? At my work we used to use Jaz drives to make images of machines onto, which we would then burn to CD. The problem is, after about a month's use the cardtridges would start failing. Granted we probably used them a lot more than most places would, given that we would fill them up, and then erase them at least once a day; however, its was still a very expensive way to make images. In the end we ditched the removable media and set up a network to do our imaging over, which has saved us a ton of money, and countless man-hours of screwing with failing cardtridges. I wonder if the new cardtridges will be any better?
Personally, this is what I have tried to do. However, I generally expect that as a product ages, its price tends to go down, CD's just don't seem to do this. Having been stuck in the 80's, musically, now for quite some time, I tend to look at the prices of CD's of artists I like from time to time, and am shocked to see them at $15 or more. While I will grant that the distributor needs to make money on the sale, I simply will not pay that much for a CD, new or old. So, the end result, I do without. I only listen to CD's in the car during my commute to and from work, and can put up with not having anything new. Also, half my drive is covered by a radio station that isn't horrible, and one that used to be ok but is starting to suck. The radio station's problems can mostly be blamed on the trend towards more talk and less music. Afterall, when a radio annoucer says, "comming up this hour" followed by snippets of three songs, and they aren't kidding, those three songs will be the only ones you hear for an hour on this station; there is a problem, in my view.
In all, I think the RIAA labels are just facing the results of more competition, in the form of games and movies (I know that I don't listen to music much at home), and also people not spending as much on luxury goods right now. Also, as someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, the buying from conversion, from tape to CD has probably just about ended, so sales are going to go down. Now, should this absolve P2P and piracy for its role, no. But, I somehow doubt that dumping millions of dollars into chasing down the pirates is going to have a very good ROI. Even ignoring the PR aspect, are they ever going to recover that money? I doubt it, the pirates will simply fold up shop, move to a different street corner, and re-open. There may be a short term slump in piracy, but long term it won't matter. Better yet, they are also educating people in how to pirate along the way. Personally, I had only heard of Napster in passing, before it became national news. And it was in one of the articles about the Napster case that I read about Audiogalaxy, Kazaa, etc. Also unknown to me at the time. I have to wonder how many pirates got their start thanks to those articles?
Don't worry, Pax Americanum will be comming to your country soon! Afterall, we have to hand Iraq back to the Iraqi's on the 30th of June, the government will need a new war to keep the peon's attention focused on.
I'll have to admit that, like you, I was going on memory. So, I've looked in to it a bit, its in John. Mark seems to gloss over the whole thing, sufficing to say that a centurion claimed him to be dead. One would tend to expect that the centurion knew what he was talking about, and would have verified the death somehow. Luke says the guard was coverted by Jesus's "death" so this does lend credence to the idea that he let a faking man off the cross. Matthew seems to just gloss over it as well.
So, to some extent, I do stand corrected, the spear incident is only in one of the gospels, the rest of the gospels sort of ignoring the time between the death and burial; though I still stand by the fact that Roman soldiers knew about killing people, and would have been very likely to spot someone faking death. Or, at the very least, would have taken measures to make sure that he was really dead.
Take another of the (infinite) other possibilities: Jesus didn't die. Evidence: death by crucifixion takes many time (even days), Jesus was only about three hours. Compare it to "death and resurrection". Which theory is more simple?
Just to be nit-picky on this possible explanation: If we accept the bible's account of the crucifixtion as correct, one of the guards sunk a spear pretty deep into the side of Jesus, to make sure he was dead. Now, it could be argued that this is either:
a) a lie to add veracity to the story.
b) The guard was already a convert (if the history channel thingy I watch is to be believed, he converted later in life), and so he didn't do a lot of damage with the spear (it's just a flesh wound).
A is a possibility, but there isn't much to back it up. Consider that the romans had been killing people for quite a while, they were probably pretty good at spotting fakers. B is also unlikely, in that, sticking a spear in someone, and not killing them, is a tough thing to do in 40-odd AD. Between infection, blood loss, and major organ damage, the victim is not very likly to survive.
So, back to the simple theroy drawing board.
Actually, the Canadian comedy group that I found, and really like, is Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie. Funny stuff, though I may just like it because they do stuff about computers and tech support. Also, the song about burning the White House down is just great.
agnosticism is a cop-out, a type of atheism for cowards. either you believe, or you don't, and if you don't believe you're a type of atheist.
Agnosticism is hardly a "cop out". Its simply a matter of not choosing one of the established religions.
My own beliefs, for example, run somewhere along the general Christian mythology, though I tend to view Jesus more as a mixture of a prophet and metaphorical stories. However, unlike many Christians, I believe that the Muslums, Jews, Bhudists, Shintos, and Hindi are not hell bound. In fact, quite contrary to the teaching of most churches, I tend to believe that we are judged by our actions and our thoughts.
Now, part of this comes from the belief that all religions are man-made. (insert diety here) simply planted the basics in all of us, but some fool people got it into thier head to organize it, hence we have religion. And, of course, since such organizations only exist as long as they have people feeding them, the organization uses the fear of a bad afterlife to keep people feeding it. Better yet, they set up a system whereby they indoctrinate children before they are old enough to think about the religion critcally (thankfully this is falling apart).
So, basically, my view is that most religions are right and wrong at the same time. If they teach things like treating others well, and generally being good/nice, then they have that part right; however, when they teach that they are the only way and/or abandoning them will end you up in the negative outcome for the religion, they are wrong. Religions only exist to control people, and maintain themselves, if you get anything else out of it, you are lucky and and would probably do better on your own.
So, this brings us back to agnosticism. I am an agnostic, I do not choose any of the pre-defined religions, because they are all just man-made organizations to control people and propagate themselves at the expense of thier followers. However, I do believe in a diety and an afterlife, I just don't attach a specific name or mythology to it. This is not exactly a "cop out" as you put it, its is the result of looking at religion critically, and realizing that all religions are BS.
You're plobably right, but Plextor drives have always treated me well, same with everyone else I know. And, I'm willing to pay a few extra bucks for a solid brand.
I know it hurts, but eventually, you have to let go.
In fact, where I work we recently threw away the last of our 8" disks. We have also stopped supporting the Concurrent DOS version of our product and hope to be able to put the OS/2 (IBM not Mac) version of our product on the unsupported list in another year or two.
Best thing you can do at this point is buy a drive which supports all formats. For example, Plextor's PX-708A works on basically all formats, and can be had for about than US$200. This is the direction I plan on going, when I get around to buying a DVD burner (can't justify the cost at the moment).
I'd bet they are going after the gamers to buy stock, since serious investors wouldn't touch this stock, except as a high-risk long-shot. Seriously, as near as I can tell thier only product, at this point, is hype. If anything, the name Phantom for thier console is fitting, as its nothing more than a Phantom of some marketer's imagination.
Better yet, they are planning to try an enter a market that is, arguably, saturated. We have 3 major consoles out at the moment, with the top 2 dominating sales. Is some unknown fourth really going to get much market share? Moreover, will the game developers make many games for it, let alone must-have exclusives? I doubt it, most likely Infinium is going to do the same thing the dotcom's did: raise a ton of capital and then piss it away on a bad business strategy.
Agreed, the current setup of most MMORPGS leaves a lot to be desired. The problem is, how else can it be done? That's not a very easy question to answer. One of the thoughts I had, when I started considering the Diablo as an MMORPG idea was to have some randomization in the world. For example, have the main world map be roughly static, with monster spawns changing occasionally (though not drastically; heck, might go so far as to setup an actual ecology, and have the system track it; though that might be over the top), and then have players be able to find random dungeons, and tie those dungeons to the level of the character finding them. Further, only the player who found them, and anyone in thier party (assuming some sort of party system) woud be able to enter the dungeon. Along with that, the dungeon layout should be randomized, ala Diablo 2, with maybe a few puzzles and some sort of minor plot inside. The plots would have to be thin, and almost invariably combat oriented (rescue damsel in distress, eradicate monster menace, recover artifact for religious orgaization, etc.). Lastly, have the dungeon disapper after some amount of time if the character ignores it.
It would still be a level treadmill to some extent, but at least you wouldn't have to spend forever camping the exact same spawn point as every other character of about the same level.
Maybe its just me, but after having read through the FAQ on Flagship's site, I would swear I smell another MMORPG comming. They mention that they intend to have hundreds of hours of play, and they want to leverage the community aspect of MMOG's. I have a feeling that, what we are going to see is a game that is similar, but legally distinct from, Diablo done as an MMORPG. So, instead of just hacking your way through a dungeon, hoping the next treasure drop gives you a cooler weapon, now you will get to spend countless hours working with a practice dummy, so that you don't get hosed in the first room of the first dungeon. Then, get a slightly better weapon, and spend the next hundred hours camping a spawn point, so that you can move into the next area.
Maybe its just me, but I seem to believe that 300 hours of skill tredmilling and 5 hours of killing monsters does not equate to hundreds of hours of game play. More correctly, its hunreds of hours of setup do that you can play the game for 5 hours.
Boy, the writters really had to dig deep fot this idea. Then again, this might just be a way for Hollywood to make everyone think that all the laws that they are buying are really good for the average citizen.
I can see the episode already:
*Two lawyers sitting in a cafe*
Lawyer 1 : Well, looks like they finally broke up that piracy ring
Lawyer 2 : Wow, I would have thought that with all of the consumer protection laws that were passed in the early 2000's that people would have given up trying to steal music.
Lawyer 1: Nope, seems that some people never learn that piracy is bad. After all, its the reason the economy crahsed in 2010.
Lawyer 2: Its a good thing that the Digital Rights Act of 2013 was passed. It was only by allowing the record labels the right to raid homes, and confiscate pirates computers that we managed to end that black time.
Lawyer 1: Yes, and the extension of copyrights to 1000 years was just the right thing to do, afterall, the creators should be allowed to gain the benifits of thier work.
Laywer 2: And don't forget about clearing up the whole problem with analog copies, allowing that to continue could have had seroius side effects.
Lawyer 1: Yes, indeed. If only people had realized earlier that they have no right, or valid reason to make any copy, we might have avoided the whole crash of 2010.
*break for commercial*
Well, if the game can be moddified, it might be possible to make it display naked women for all of the characters in the game, so your friend should then pay attention to the screen. Then again, he might still hose your squad, but in a whole different fashion.
Yup, saw it, actually liked it, best Final Fantasy in a long time. But it sounds like they are being even more direct this time, but just taking one of thier interactive movies for a game console and takeing the interactive part out of it.
So basically, what they are doing is just re-releasing FF7, without all the annoying bits where you have to fiddle with the controller.
Ok, its a cheap shot, but was FF7 much more than an interactive movie to begin with? Seems that this is just a logical progression. Take the most successful itteration of the series, improve the graphics and take the last drops of "game" out of it.
Just download the.asx file (This is the file that launches the streaming video) to your hard-drive, and open it in notepad. With just a little bit of brain power you should be able to figure out where the actual movie resides (Its in plain text, and the file is really short). From there its trivial to either put it directly into your browser, though this tends to lauch it as streaming video (for me), or put a link to it in a short HTML file, open said HTML file in your choosen browser, Right-Click and save the file. Then watch at your lesiure locally.
Actually this makes me wonder:
Ok, first off, this system is going to have to have a central database of some sort, otherwise they wouldn't be able to protect new content. So, what's to stop me from figuring out the URL/IP of said DB server, and redirecting traffic to it (on my network) to another computer (or the same one) and having a program respond to the request with the "It's OK to share signal"?
Better yet, this thing is probably going to operate on some specific port, just re-configure my router to take all traffic on that port and re-direct it to a program that sends the right signal.
Or, build a semi-firewall, ala ZoneAlarm which controls access based on file name/hash, when a request goes out from the program just catch it and send back the all's well response.
All these solutions are predicated on the ability to figure out the all clear signal, but with a sniffer catching the traffic going both ways, is this really going to be that hard?
I think this is going to be another protection scheme that is eaiser to defeat than it was to design.
Of course, the upshot of this is, once a few people do it, one of them is going to post it on Kazza. Heck, this will probably reach the same level as 0-day hacks. Those that have the ability to circumvent this wall will compete to be the first to post it to the internet, just to get the recognition for doing so. Also, this really is a small world we live in today, someone outside the US will probably rip and post the shows, and those of us living in the Incorporated States of America will be able to download and enjoy.
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Check out DSLExtreme I've been with them for a couple years now, and have been very happy with them. They have fairly good tech support, and they stay the hell out of my way. And, a 1.5/256 line is $49.95/month, with static IP and a month-to-month subscription. The only thing you have to remember to do is tell them to turn off the port 25 filter on your IP, if you plan to run your own mail server.
I think that the people you are looking at, are those people on the cusp between not needing broadband, and needing it. First off, who pays $20/month for dialup anymore? Even before I switched, I had a good ISP for $10/month, they aren't hard to find. And when it was just email and quick surfing, a second phone line wasn't needed. However, once I got addicted, and started playing online games, I moved into that middle realm. I was online enough that it created problems with tying up the phone line, and the speed was starting to be noticeable. At that point, it was time to start looking into broadband, though I couldn't get it at the time. So, I did the whole 2 phone lines and dial-up account thing. And, it wasn't terrible: ~$25/month for the line and ~$10/month for the ISP, so $35/month total. Cheaper that broadband at the time (this was a couple years ago). Eventually though, I got DSL for $50/month and haven't looked back. Considering that I play Wolfenstien: ET constantly, spend a lot of time online, and run my own server, the broadband is justified. But, for people like my girlfriend's parents, who can barely turn the computer on, let alone do anything fancy with it, dial-up is just fine, and no second line is needed.
Point taken, though I tend to belive that most of the people that are still on dial-up, are also the type of people that just aren't ready to get rid of the land line completly. But, as always, there will be exceptions.
Ok, why is this a suprise to anyone? Many users do nothing more than look at a few pages and send/receive email. For them, that is the internet, that's all they want and care about. So, for those the people, there is no reason to pay the extra for broad band. When you can get dial-up for US$10/month a month, or less if you are willing to put up with ads, and basic broadband starts at US$30/month, is it really worth it to get your email a second or two faster?
I just wonder if these things will be as shoddy as Jaz drives were? At my work we used to use Jaz drives to make images of machines onto, which we would then burn to CD. The problem is, after about a month's use the cardtridges would start failing. Granted we probably used them a lot more than most places would, given that we would fill them up, and then erase them at least once a day; however, its was still a very expensive way to make images. In the end we ditched the removable media and set up a network to do our imaging over, which has saved us a ton of money, and countless man-hours of screwing with failing cardtridges. I wonder if the new cardtridges will be any better?
Personally, this is what I have tried to do. However, I generally expect that as a product ages, its price tends to go down, CD's just don't seem to do this. Having been stuck in the 80's, musically, now for quite some time, I tend to look at the prices of CD's of artists I like from time to time, and am shocked to see them at $15 or more. While I will grant that the distributor needs to make money on the sale, I simply will not pay that much for a CD, new or old. So, the end result, I do without. I only listen to CD's in the car during my commute to and from work, and can put up with not having anything new. Also, half my drive is covered by a radio station that isn't horrible, and one that used to be ok but is starting to suck. The radio station's problems can mostly be blamed on the trend towards more talk and less music. Afterall, when a radio annoucer says, "comming up this hour" followed by snippets of three songs, and they aren't kidding, those three songs will be the only ones you hear for an hour on this station; there is a problem, in my view.
In all, I think the RIAA labels are just facing the results of more competition, in the form of games and movies (I know that I don't listen to music much at home), and also people not spending as much on luxury goods right now. Also, as someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, the buying from conversion, from tape to CD has probably just about ended, so sales are going to go down. Now, should this absolve P2P and piracy for its role, no. But, I somehow doubt that dumping millions of dollars into chasing down the pirates is going to have a very good ROI. Even ignoring the PR aspect, are they ever going to recover that money? I doubt it, the pirates will simply fold up shop, move to a different street corner, and re-open. There may be a short term slump in piracy, but long term it won't matter. Better yet, they are also educating people in how to pirate along the way. Personally, I had only heard of Napster in passing, before it became national news. And it was in one of the articles about the Napster case that I read about Audiogalaxy, Kazaa, etc. Also unknown to me at the time. I have to wonder how many pirates got their start thanks to those articles?
Don't worry, Pax Americanum will be comming to your country soon! Afterall, we have to hand Iraq back to the Iraqi's on the 30th of June, the government will need a new war to keep the peon's attention focused on.
I'll have to admit that, like you, I was going on memory. So, I've looked in to it a bit, its in John. Mark seems to gloss over the whole thing, sufficing to say that a centurion claimed him to be dead. One would tend to expect that the centurion knew what he was talking about, and would have verified the death somehow. Luke says the guard was coverted by Jesus's "death" so this does lend credence to the idea that he let a faking man off the cross. Matthew seems to just gloss over it as well.
So, to some extent, I do stand corrected, the spear incident is only in one of the gospels, the rest of the gospels sort of ignoring the time between the death and burial; though I still stand by the fact that Roman soldiers knew about killing people, and would have been very likely to spot someone faking death. Or, at the very least, would have taken measures to make sure that he was really dead.
Take another of the (infinite) other possibilities: Jesus didn't die. Evidence: death by crucifixion takes many time (even days), Jesus was only about three hours. Compare it to "death and resurrection". Which theory is more simple?
Just to be nit-picky on this possible explanation: If we accept the bible's account of the crucifixtion as correct, one of the guards sunk a spear pretty deep into the side of Jesus, to make sure he was dead. Now, it could be argued that this is either:
a) a lie to add veracity to the story.
b) The guard was already a convert (if the history channel thingy I watch is to be believed, he converted later in life), and so he didn't do a lot of damage with the spear (it's just a flesh wound).
A is a possibility, but there isn't much to back it up. Consider that the romans had been killing people for quite a while, they were probably pretty good at spotting fakers. B is also unlikely, in that, sticking a spear in someone, and not killing them, is a tough thing to do in 40-odd AD. Between infection, blood loss, and major organ damage, the victim is not very likly to survive.
So, back to the simple theroy drawing board.
Actually, the Canadian comedy group that I found, and really like, is Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie. Funny stuff, though I may just like it because they do stuff about computers and tech support. Also, the song about burning the White House down is just great.
agnosticism is a cop-out, a type of atheism for cowards. either you believe, or you don't, and if you don't believe you're a type of atheist.
Agnosticism is hardly a "cop out". Its simply a matter of not choosing one of the established religions.
My own beliefs, for example, run somewhere along the general Christian mythology, though I tend to view Jesus more as a mixture of a prophet and metaphorical stories. However, unlike many Christians, I believe that the Muslums, Jews, Bhudists, Shintos, and Hindi are not hell bound. In fact, quite contrary to the teaching of most churches, I tend to believe that we are judged by our actions and our thoughts.
Now, part of this comes from the belief that all religions are man-made. (insert diety here) simply planted the basics in all of us, but some fool people got it into thier head to organize it, hence we have religion. And, of course, since such organizations only exist as long as they have people feeding them, the organization uses the fear of a bad afterlife to keep people feeding it. Better yet, they set up a system whereby they indoctrinate children before they are old enough to think about the religion critcally (thankfully this is falling apart).
So, basically, my view is that most religions are right and wrong at the same time. If they teach things like treating others well, and generally being good/nice, then they have that part right; however, when they teach that they are the only way and/or abandoning them will end you up in the negative outcome for the religion, they are wrong. Religions only exist to control people, and maintain themselves, if you get anything else out of it, you are lucky and and would probably do better on your own.
So, this brings us back to agnosticism. I am an agnostic, I do not choose any of the pre-defined religions, because they are all just man-made organizations to control people and propagate themselves at the expense of thier followers. However, I do believe in a diety and an afterlife, I just don't attach a specific name or mythology to it. This is not exactly a "cop out" as you put it, its is the result of looking at religion critically, and realizing that all religions are BS.
No, I'm Brian and so is my wife!
You're plobably right, but Plextor drives have always treated me well, same with everyone else I know. And, I'm willing to pay a few extra bucks for a solid brand.
I know it hurts, but eventually, you have to let go.
In fact, where I work we recently threw away the last of our 8" disks. We have also stopped supporting the Concurrent DOS version of our product and hope to be able to put the OS/2 (IBM not Mac) version of our product on the unsupported list in another year or two.
Best thing you can do at this point is buy a drive which supports all formats. For example, Plextor's PX-708A works on basically all formats, and can be had for about than US$200. This is the direction I plan on going, when I get around to buying a DVD burner (can't justify the cost at the moment).
I'd bet they are going after the gamers to buy stock, since serious investors wouldn't touch this stock, except as a high-risk long-shot. Seriously, as near as I can tell thier only product, at this point, is hype. If anything, the name Phantom for thier console is fitting, as its nothing more than a Phantom of some marketer's imagination.
Better yet, they are planning to try an enter a market that is, arguably, saturated. We have 3 major consoles out at the moment, with the top 2 dominating sales. Is some unknown fourth really going to get much market share? Moreover, will the game developers make many games for it, let alone must-have exclusives? I doubt it, most likely Infinium is going to do the same thing the dotcom's did: raise a ton of capital and then piss it away on a bad business strategy.
Agreed, the current setup of most MMORPGS leaves a lot to be desired. The problem is, how else can it be done? That's not a very easy question to answer. One of the thoughts I had, when I started considering the Diablo as an MMORPG idea was to have some randomization in the world. For example, have the main world map be roughly static, with monster spawns changing occasionally (though not drastically; heck, might go so far as to setup an actual ecology, and have the system track it; though that might be over the top), and then have players be able to find random dungeons, and tie those dungeons to the level of the character finding them. Further, only the player who found them, and anyone in thier party (assuming some sort of party system) woud be able to enter the dungeon. Along with that, the dungeon layout should be randomized, ala Diablo 2, with maybe a few puzzles and some sort of minor plot inside. The plots would have to be thin, and almost invariably combat oriented (rescue damsel in distress, eradicate monster menace, recover artifact for religious orgaization, etc.). Lastly, have the dungeon disapper after some amount of time if the character ignores it.
It would still be a level treadmill to some extent, but at least you wouldn't have to spend forever camping the exact same spawn point as every other character of about the same level.
Maybe its just me, but after having read through the FAQ on Flagship's site, I would swear I smell another MMORPG comming. They mention that they intend to have hundreds of hours of play, and they want to leverage the community aspect of MMOG's. I have a feeling that, what we are going to see is a game that is similar, but legally distinct from, Diablo done as an MMORPG. So, instead of just hacking your way through a dungeon, hoping the next treasure drop gives you a cooler weapon, now you will get to spend countless hours working with a practice dummy, so that you don't get hosed in the first room of the first dungeon. Then, get a slightly better weapon, and spend the next hundred hours camping a spawn point, so that you can move into the next area.
Maybe its just me, but I seem to believe that 300 hours of skill tredmilling and 5 hours of killing monsters does not equate to hundreds of hours of game play. More correctly, its hunreds of hours of setup do that you can play the game for 5 hours.
Boy, the writters really had to dig deep fot this idea. Then again, this might just be a way for Hollywood to make everyone think that all the laws that they are buying are really good for the average citizen.
I can see the episode already:
*Two lawyers sitting in a cafe*
Lawyer 1 : Well, looks like they finally broke up that piracy ring
Lawyer 2 : Wow, I would have thought that with all of the consumer protection laws that were passed in the early 2000's that people would have given up trying to steal music.
Lawyer 1: Nope, seems that some people never learn that piracy is bad. After all, its the reason the economy crahsed in 2010.
Lawyer 2: Its a good thing that the Digital Rights Act of 2013 was passed. It was only by allowing the record labels the right to raid homes, and confiscate pirates computers that we managed to end that black time.
Lawyer 1: Yes, and the extension of copyrights to 1000 years was just the right thing to do, afterall, the creators should be allowed to gain the benifits of thier work.
Laywer 2: And don't forget about clearing up the whole problem with analog copies, allowing that to continue could have had seroius side effects.
Lawyer 1: Yes, indeed. If only people had realized earlier that they have no right, or valid reason to make any copy, we might have avoided the whole crash of 2010.
*break for commercial*
Or maybe I'm just being cyical today.
Well, if the game can be moddified, it might be possible to make it display naked women for all of the characters in the game, so your friend should then pay attention to the screen. Then again, he might still hose your squad, but in a whole different fashion.
Yup, saw it, actually liked it, best Final Fantasy in a long time. But it sounds like they are being even more direct this time, but just taking one of thier interactive movies for a game console and takeing the interactive part out of it.
So basically, what they are doing is just re-releasing FF7, without all the annoying bits where you have to fiddle with the controller.
Ok, its a cheap shot, but was FF7 much more than an interactive movie to begin with? Seems that this is just a logical progression. Take the most successful itteration of the series, improve the graphics and take the last drops of "game" out of it.
Just download the .asx file (This is the file that launches the streaming video) to your hard-drive, and open it in notepad. With just a little bit of brain power you should be able to figure out where the actual movie resides (Its in plain text, and the file is really short). From there its trivial to either put it directly into your browser, though this tends to lauch it as streaming video (for me), or put a link to it in a short HTML file, open said HTML file in your choosen browser, Right-Click and save the file. Then watch at your lesiure locally.
Actually this makes me wonder:
Ok, first off, this system is going to have to have a central database of some sort, otherwise they wouldn't be able to protect new content. So, what's to stop me from figuring out the URL/IP of said DB server, and redirecting traffic to it (on my network) to another computer (or the same one) and having a program respond to the request with the "It's OK to share signal"?
Better yet, this thing is probably going to operate on some specific port, just re-configure my router to take all traffic on that port and re-direct it to a program that sends the right signal.
Or, build a semi-firewall, ala ZoneAlarm which controls access based on file name/hash, when a request goes out from the program just catch it and send back the all's well response.
All these solutions are predicated on the ability to figure out the all clear signal, but with a sniffer catching the traffic going both ways, is this really going to be that hard?
I think this is going to be another protection scheme that is eaiser to defeat than it was to design.
Of course, the upshot of this is, once a few people do it, one of them is going to post it on Kazza. Heck, this will probably reach the same level as 0-day hacks. Those that have the ability to circumvent this wall will compete to be the first to post it to the internet, just to get the recognition for doing so. Also, this really is a small world we live in today, someone outside the US will probably rip and post the shows, and those of us living in the Incorporated States of America will be able to download and enjoy.