I'm a bit sad not to see System Shock on that list. I still see it as one of the keystone games that took the action genre to the next level, from the "shoot everything" story-light (*cough*Doom*cough*) to something with more depth and character development.
What everyone predicted has happened.
The servers fail just after the game is released, tens (hundreds?) of thousands of customers are highly unsatisfied, not to say irate.
This is already a PR disaster, should the servers keep failing (whatever the reasons - the people don't care if your servers are to weak to handle the load or if some/b/tards decide to DDOS them for "pool's closed" - they only care that they cannot play the game they BOUGHT) it will become a massive one.
Oh, and since Silent Hunter 5 was already cracked I suspect a crack for Assassin's Creed 2 won't be long.
So in a way, Ubisoft, you decided to ignore the warnings, now your tears, they taste delicious.
Hmmmm.....
Pay big bucks to legally play a game that puts me at the publisher's fickle mercy and demands constant internet access - and bandwith - responding with draconian punishment if I fail to provide this.
OR
Pay nothing and get an illegal copy that works fine from the word "GO"
DRM, that is Digital Right Management, is actually three evils in one.
First of all, many publishers view DRM as a way to manage (read increase) their rights while reducing the rights of the consumers, i.e. restrict the resale, activation limits, remote killswitches etc.
Secondly, many legitimate consumers find DRM annoying - they purchased a product but cannot use it as they see fit - be it that cannot transfer their music CD to their MP3 player, or play that game without contacting the publisher's master server.
And thirdly DRM is an excellent excuse NOT purchase something, but rather obtain it illegally. After all, stealing from a "nice company" does feel wrong. Screwing some corporate morloch that does its best to screw you feels much less wrong.
Long ago I did not mind ads. Sure, I did not click any significant number of them, but I did neither mind those banners and whatnot being displayed. This changed as they became more and more intrusive and obnoxious. Blinking in bright colors; pop-up; pop-under; pop-in-front-of-the-actual-webpage; punch-the-monkey; you-are-the-100000000st-visitor; *brrrring**brrriiing*-now-with-sound. So I decided to to what I had to do; these "guests" had outstayed their welcome, and now I showed them the door.
The article is quite biased anti-piracy, pro DRM.
Instead of taking a balanced close look at the causes of piracy the same old (pro-piracy) arguments are assembled into strawmen and then quickly ripped apart. When the focus turns to DRM there is a lot of handwaving and chanting "if I don't want it to be true it will not be".
A shame really.
Ah, the good old Baid and Switch trick, but this time done in reverse.
First they try to force-feed us with some outright horrible DRM, and now they try to sell us a slighly lighter variant of this DRM as an "improvement".
I promised myself never to buy a DRM laden "can't ever resell" game. That's also the reason why I never bought HL2 or Bioshock. If I BUY a game I want to OWN it, and not only be able to install and/or play the game at the publisher's pleasure.
...... Even if you can get logged in, multiplayer matchmaking doesn't find enough players for games......... My assumption is that this is the result of lots of new XBLA users logging in with Christmas 360s.
So your theory is that because of a lot of new players, Microsoft can't find enough players for games? Would you care to rethink that theory?
Or it could be that countless new XBLA users are repeatedly trying to long onto Xbox Live, creating something like a distributed denial of service effect, which not only makes long-ins next to impossible, but also makes it difficult to stay logged in and finally negatively affects other services, like servers and match-maker too. Care to rethink your reply?
No, we are talking about Half-Life 2's Portal
on
The Importance of Portal
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
Well, I'd love to read their e-mails following this disaster.
Because, short of an employee going to the press with the documents and contracts, this is the worst thing that could have happened to them. Those e-mails not only document that they have been lying about the Mivii incident, but also they document most of the currently running and planned operations. I suspect we will soon have a list of compromised bittorrent trackers, e-mule and other P2P servers, as well as the associated IPs and IP ranges. We have a list of all websites that have been registered for potential future use, and from there the data spreads even further. We have the nicknames commonly used by them, we have detailed statistics over each and every of their activities. We have connections between them and the media companies.
This could really put a big dent into both the "credibility" of the RIAA and MPAA as well as turn public opinion. Though I admit, I feel a bit of sympathy for the poor sobs involved - most likely they gonna be unemployed by the end of the month.
According to the.nfo one of their employees had the presence of mind to forward all e-mail to their Gmail account. I guess all that e-mail protection stuff got in the way or something.
And the password of said account was *drumroll* blahbob.
"Often, if the company's debts exceed its assets, then at the completion of bankruptcy the company's owners (stockholders) all end up with nothing; all their rights and interests are terminated and the company's creditors end up with ownership of the newly reorganized company."
And as the debts are by far greater than the assets, Darl & SCO won't be able to pay up. Chapter 11 only prevents the immediate liquidation, but Novell will end up owning SCO (and the stockholders - including Darl - will end up emptyhanded, with nothing). So either way, SCO is now as good as done for.
A few vital pointers:
First of all, I'd recommend using a serial as the core method for authenticating your software. Preferrably a key somehow based on the name & e-mail address should be used, having your name on "the record" is a deterrence to casually releasing the key on the net.
I do not know if you plan to offer a "trial/demo" functionality (something I'd recommend, as try-before-you-buy is always good) but if you do then I'd suggest an additional "hardware-fingerprint-hash", displayed when he installed the trial version, of maybe six letters that the user is asked to add in his activation e-mail. Make no issue out of it if he wants to re-activate the key using a different hash, only if there are over two or three dozend of activations from the same user you should raise a red flag and take a deeper look why he changes his PCs that often.
As an additional defence against piracy be certain to monitor the "Serialz" websites and maintain a blacklist based on the serials that appear there (and to put the heat on the guy who purchased that serial). Release updates on a regular basis, and include the blacklist in them. Also, with each update, slightly alternate the way your program checks the serial against the username, and make sure "old" executional files are not compatible with the new updated version, so if they want to bypass the serial check, they at least have to do it over and over again with each update. I'd use a slightly sloppy way to check for serials, i.e. a way that allows slightly more serials than it should, to make it harder to create a keygen (and to create headaches for said keygen once the key is used for a newer version). Alternatively do only a partial check on the serial upon entry / program launch, and perform additional check if certain important functions are used. Throw an obscure error message if the initial check is passed but the laters checks are failed (usually sign that someone tried to crack the program, bypassed the initial check, but failed to crack the later checks). Recommend that the user contact the creator for a bug report, for the offside chance that a legitimate user manages to fudge up his serial "just right" to trip it. Once a keygen surfaces (that is a once, not a if) change the key-generation scheme in the next major revision, be sure to apologize for the inconvenience caused for your registered users (both in the update and e-mailing them) and send them new keys.
We are just lucky that the Microsoft WGA mechanism has worked so flawlessly in the past.
Not a single hickkup or false positive, no issues at all with genuine copies being correctly authenticated and...
Wait, what do you mean "Today is not not opposite day"?
For those nay-sayers that whine "But we aren't trained SARs experts. We won't know a shadow from an actual plane.":
We do not need to. If it looks like a plane, like somthing plowed through the trees, or (let's hope not) a big crater - Flag it! I spend some time looking at what I can only describe as "only lots of bloody landscape and even more bloody landscape", sometimes roads, sometimes a couple of trees or even a forest, but nothing that even remotely looked like a plane or remains of a plane. And thus the real SARs experts don't have to spend maybe 1/10 of the time looking at the same boring landscape and conclude, "nope he aint here". Of course we are far less efficient, but in the end we save the SARs experts time, because, ya know, they don't have to waste their time looking at nothing, but can concentrate at more promising pictures.
From the site...began to plot their dastardly plans...
Come one, who can avoid imaging those Villians twiddling their beards in glee, in anticipation of their devious dastardly deeds.
The reason for the necessity for self-deletion is simple:
First, allowing the worms to run actually pushes you deeper into the "black" area - you keep using the hosts bandwith etc. even after the job is done - seeing the rapid spread of worms, most vulnerable machines should be patched up within (even pessimistically speaking) 1-2 months. Having the worm self-delete after a while, possibly displaying a little message of "Hi, you were vulnerable to lots of exploits. I have patched you and now deleted myself. Please run an up-to-date virus scanner to make sure I am gone. And please be more careful in the future, I might have been an evil worm or trojan instead." after deletion might raise user-awareness. Also it reinforces the "do no evil" thought behind writing such worms.
And secondly, having the worms stay offers no benefit. While more exploits appear on a weekly basis, there are few feasible ways for a worm to keep "up to date". Integrating the worm into a network (like the Bot-nets) to recieve updates creates the threat of exploitation - i.e. if a malicious hacker manages to compromise the C&C structure by reverse-engineering the worm he'd gain control over hundreds of thousands of machines. Setting up a web-page for the worm to query for updates creates a legal problem as well as the technical of keeping the website running. Also if the website is compromised, similar issues of hostile takeover like with the bot-net loom. So there is no benefit of keeping the worm running after its job (patch the machine, "charging" the owner for this service by using his bandwith and CPU for a while to search for additional vulnerable machines) is done.
I recall reading a quite interesting article on this topic a while ago while doing research for a university seminar I had to hold.
The big crux is that the "worm" needs to show negative behaviour, i.e. exploit it's host bandwith and CPU cycles, at least for a while, to gain sufficient impact to "infect & patch" vulnerable machines. It would turn into a battle of the worms, where "grey" worms attempt to infect as many machines as possible, plug the security holes, seek new machines to "infect and patch" and then, after a while, self-delete themselves - while the "black" worms, attempt almost the same, only that they do not self-delete but instead continue to exploit their host. Most machines that become victims of rootkits or worms are actually patched up once infected, to avoid losing the machine to competing malware.
IANAL, but both the store and the Officer in question will be in hot water.
Against the store he might press False Imprisonment and Harrasment charges - after all, preventing them from leaving the parking lot by standing in front of the car and blocking the door of the cars (so neither forward nor backwards movement was possible) for no other reason than him refusing a bag-check (he did not have to allow in the first place). Bad idea.
Against the officer, he may both press charges for False Arrest (not showing ID is not a valid grounds for arrest, then doing the switcheroo with changing "impeding duty" won't work either). Also he did not get read his rights, big no-no there.
Lawyers are like sharks in the US, I hear. And there's lots of blood in the water now.
Hehe, well, a good author uses every means necessary to convey his message. I feel packing my message about patchwork and spaghetti-code like this really created the right atmosphere;)
(hmmm... I guess this is the equivalent of "let's try this... *boom*... I meant to do that")
Startrek has a problem. Wait, before you gather your torches and pitchforks hear me out.
The problem is: Startrek is really old. That is not said that it is bad - I quite enjoyed TOS when it ran on TV, and I rather liked most of the "sequels" (like TNG, DS9, Voyager, etc.) to a certain degree. I loved the movies. But Startrek, or rather the Startrek universe has become the equivalent of really old code. The kind of code that was written when C was at it's peak and because the application was good and functional it just has been extended and rewritten over the time. And now you are standing in from of 50k lines of code, some in C, some in C++, some ported from C to C++, all written by several dozens of different editors (with different styles and paradigms) with over the last two decades. And someone had the bright idea to use assembler to squeeze some out some MS from an inner loop. Short, a demonic cross between a patchwork quilt made from used yarn and spaghetti-code. And now you are supposed to implement that new shining feature - without breaking anything.
The Startrek universe is riddled with minor and major plotholes and inconsistencies. Of course, many of the got patched and re-patched when the popped up, but every time a new story is added to the canon some more or less obscure fact will exist to prove the inverse. Of course, the tools to patch them up exist - including the dreaded RETCON - but still there is too much too contradictory information.
So what would you, the programmer do, if faced with the demonic code mentioned earlier and the prospect of managing it for the next forseeable future. Use the well-know way and write on or be bold and pull the plug and start from (almost) scratch?
Yes, Comcast ist offering unlimited* service. Please note the asterix.
As helpfully pointed out a while ago in marketing speech an asterix negates the word it stands after.
And honestly who would buy "a (usually) really fast internet connection for a flat fee no matter how much or long you surf, but actually we'll throttle the thing to a crawl if you download too much."
My recommendation (IANAL): Tell them (first via phone, then via postal mail) that you paid for an unmetered account with speed X and that you consider this kind of traffic shaping and throttling as a breach of contract on their side. Reserve yourself the right to sue in a small claims court. Demand that they either restore the service to full functionality (i.e. no traffic shaping and throttling) or reduce your monthly fees by a significant amount (50% or so). Be sure to mention legal uses of Bittorrent (FOS like Linux, Demo Software, Patches, that online video on demand store that uses BT) that are affected. If all that does not help, send them an immediate cancellation of your subscription citing their breach and contract and failure to rectify the issue, stop paying, and look for a new ISP.
I hope everybody that had invested in SCO stocks has some kind of "sell" option certificate - otherwise his investments will melt like snow in the desert. During a heatwave. With several hot air blow-driers pointed at it.
SCOX is down nearly 25% pre-market, and I can only guess how far it will fall during the trading hours.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a bit sad not to see System Shock on that list. I still see it as one of the keystone games that took the action genre to the next level, from the "shoot everything" story-light (*cough*Doom*cough*) to something with more depth and character development.
What everyone predicted has happened. /b/tards decide to DDOS them for "pool's closed" - they only care that they cannot play the game they BOUGHT) it will become a massive one.
The servers fail just after the game is released, tens (hundreds?) of thousands of customers are highly unsatisfied, not to say irate.
This is already a PR disaster, should the servers keep failing (whatever the reasons - the people don't care if your servers are to weak to handle the load or if some
Oh, and since Silent Hunter 5 was already cracked I suspect a crack for Assassin's Creed 2 won't be long.
So in a way, Ubisoft, you decided to ignore the warnings, now your tears, they taste delicious.
Hmmmm.....
Pay big bucks to legally play a game that puts me at the publisher's fickle mercy and demands constant internet access - and bandwith - responding with draconian punishment if I fail to provide this.
OR
Pay nothing and get an illegal copy that works fine from the word "GO"
Decisions, decisions...
DRM, that is Digital Right Management, is actually three evils in one.
First of all, many publishers view DRM as a way to manage (read increase) their rights while reducing the rights of the consumers, i.e. restrict the resale, activation limits, remote killswitches etc.
Secondly, many legitimate consumers find DRM annoying - they purchased a product but cannot use it as they see fit - be it that cannot transfer their music CD to their MP3 player, or play that game without contacting the publisher's master server.
And thirdly DRM is an excellent excuse NOT purchase something, but rather obtain it illegally. After all, stealing from a "nice company" does feel wrong. Screwing some corporate morloch that does its best to screw you feels much less wrong.
Long ago I did not mind ads. Sure, I did not click any significant number of them, but I did neither mind those banners and whatnot being displayed. This changed as they became more and more intrusive and obnoxious. Blinking in bright colors; pop-up; pop-under; pop-in-front-of-the-actual-webpage; punch-the-monkey; you-are-the-100000000st-visitor; *brrrring**brrriiing*-now-with-sound. So I decided to to what I had to do; these "guests" had outstayed their welcome, and now I showed them the door.
Or what Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri taught me: Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
The article is quite biased anti-piracy, pro DRM.
Instead of taking a balanced close look at the causes of piracy the same old (pro-piracy) arguments are assembled into strawmen and then quickly ripped apart. When the focus turns to DRM there is a lot of handwaving and chanting "if I don't want it to be true it will not be".
A shame really.
Ah, the good old Baid and Switch trick, but this time done in reverse.
First they try to force-feed us with some outright horrible DRM, and now they try to sell us a slighly lighter variant of this DRM as an "improvement".
I promised myself never to buy a DRM laden "can't ever resell" game. That's also the reason why I never bought HL2 or Bioshock. If I BUY a game I want to OWN it, and not only be able to install and/or play the game at the publisher's pleasure.
So your theory is that because of a lot of new players, Microsoft can't find enough players for games? Would you care to rethink that theory?
Or it could be that countless new XBLA users are repeatedly trying to long onto Xbox Live, creating something like a distributed denial of service effect, which not only makes long-ins next to impossible, but also makes it difficult to stay logged in and finally negatively affects other services, like servers and match-maker too. Care to rethink your reply?It's part of the Orange Box, check out the Wikipedia article.
Well, I'd love to read their e-mails following this disaster.
Because, short of an employee going to the press with the documents and contracts, this is the worst thing that could have happened to them. Those e-mails not only document that they have been lying about the Mivii incident, but also they document most of the currently running and planned operations. I suspect we will soon have a list of compromised bittorrent trackers, e-mule and other P2P servers, as well as the associated IPs and IP ranges. We have a list of all websites that have been registered for potential future use, and from there the data spreads even further. We have the nicknames commonly used by them, we have detailed statistics over each and every of their activities. We have connections between them and the media companies.
This could really put a big dent into both the "credibility" of the RIAA and MPAA as well as turn public opinion. Though I admit, I feel a bit of sympathy for the poor sobs involved - most likely they gonna be unemployed by the end of the month.
According to the .nfo one of their employees had the presence of mind to forward all e-mail to their Gmail account. I guess all that e-mail protection stuff got in the way or something.
And the password of said account was *drumroll* blahbob.
"Often, if the company's debts exceed its assets, then at the completion of bankruptcy the company's owners (stockholders) all end up with nothing; all their rights and interests are terminated and the company's creditors end up with ownership of the newly reorganized company."
And as the debts are by far greater than the assets, Darl & SCO won't be able to pay up. Chapter 11 only prevents the immediate liquidation, but Novell will end up owning SCO (and the stockholders - including Darl - will end up emptyhanded, with nothing). So either way, SCO is now as good as done for.
A few vital pointers: First of all, I'd recommend using a serial as the core method for authenticating your software. Preferrably a key somehow based on the name & e-mail address should be used, having your name on "the record" is a deterrence to casually releasing the key on the net. I do not know if you plan to offer a "trial/demo" functionality (something I'd recommend, as try-before-you-buy is always good) but if you do then I'd suggest an additional "hardware-fingerprint-hash", displayed when he installed the trial version, of maybe six letters that the user is asked to add in his activation e-mail. Make no issue out of it if he wants to re-activate the key using a different hash, only if there are over two or three dozend of activations from the same user you should raise a red flag and take a deeper look why he changes his PCs that often. As an additional defence against piracy be certain to monitor the "Serialz" websites and maintain a blacklist based on the serials that appear there (and to put the heat on the guy who purchased that serial). Release updates on a regular basis, and include the blacklist in them. Also, with each update, slightly alternate the way your program checks the serial against the username, and make sure "old" executional files are not compatible with the new updated version, so if they want to bypass the serial check, they at least have to do it over and over again with each update. I'd use a slightly sloppy way to check for serials, i.e. a way that allows slightly more serials than it should, to make it harder to create a keygen (and to create headaches for said keygen once the key is used for a newer version). Alternatively do only a partial check on the serial upon entry / program launch, and perform additional check if certain important functions are used. Throw an obscure error message if the initial check is passed but the laters checks are failed (usually sign that someone tried to crack the program, bypassed the initial check, but failed to crack the later checks). Recommend that the user contact the creator for a bug report, for the offside chance that a legitimate user manages to fudge up his serial "just right" to trip it. Once a keygen surfaces (that is a once, not a if) change the key-generation scheme in the next major revision, be sure to apologize for the inconvenience caused for your registered users (both in the update and e-mailing them) and send them new keys.
We are just lucky that the Microsoft WGA mechanism has worked so flawlessly in the past. ...
Not a single hickkup or false positive, no issues at all with genuine copies being correctly authenticated and
Wait, what do you mean "Today is not not opposite day"?
For those nay-sayers that whine "But we aren't trained SARs experts. We won't know a shadow from an actual plane.":
We do not need to. If it looks like a plane, like somthing plowed through the trees, or (let's hope not) a big crater - Flag it! I spend some time looking at what I can only describe as "only lots of bloody landscape and even more bloody landscape", sometimes roads, sometimes a couple of trees or even a forest, but nothing that even remotely looked like a plane or remains of a plane. And thus the real SARs experts don't have to spend maybe 1/10 of the time looking at the same boring landscape and conclude, "nope he aint here". Of course we are far less efficient, but in the end we save the SARs experts time, because, ya know, they don't have to waste their time looking at nothing, but can concentrate at more promising pictures.
From the site ...began to plot their dastardly plans...
Come one, who can avoid imaging those Villians twiddling their beards in glee, in anticipation of their devious dastardly deeds.
The reason for the necessity for self-deletion is simple:
First, allowing the worms to run actually pushes you deeper into the "black" area - you keep using the hosts bandwith etc. even after the job is done - seeing the rapid spread of worms, most vulnerable machines should be patched up within (even pessimistically speaking) 1-2 months. Having the worm self-delete after a while, possibly displaying a little message of "Hi, you were vulnerable to lots of exploits. I have patched you and now deleted myself. Please run an up-to-date virus scanner to make sure I am gone. And please be more careful in the future, I might have been an evil worm or trojan instead." after deletion might raise user-awareness. Also it reinforces the "do no evil" thought behind writing such worms.
And secondly, having the worms stay offers no benefit. While more exploits appear on a weekly basis, there are few feasible ways for a worm to keep "up to date". Integrating the worm into a network (like the Bot-nets) to recieve updates creates the threat of exploitation - i.e. if a malicious hacker manages to compromise the C&C structure by reverse-engineering the worm he'd gain control over hundreds of thousands of machines. Setting up a web-page for the worm to query for updates creates a legal problem as well as the technical of keeping the website running. Also if the website is compromised, similar issues of hostile takeover like with the bot-net loom. So there is no benefit of keeping the worm running after its job (patch the machine, "charging" the owner for this service by using his bandwith and CPU for a while to search for additional vulnerable machines) is done.
Er, what?
"Amazon did something horribly crappy, let's not try to find & rescue someone using their site"??? Sorry, but I think that is petty.
I recall reading a quite interesting article on this topic a while ago while doing research for a university seminar I had to hold.
The big crux is that the "worm" needs to show negative behaviour, i.e. exploit it's host bandwith and CPU cycles, at least for a while, to gain sufficient impact to "infect & patch" vulnerable machines. It would turn into a battle of the worms, where "grey" worms attempt to infect as many machines as possible, plug the security holes, seek new machines to "infect and patch" and then, after a while, self-delete themselves - while the "black" worms, attempt almost the same, only that they do not self-delete but instead continue to exploit their host. Most machines that become victims of rootkits or worms are actually patched up once infected, to avoid losing the machine to competing malware.
IANAL, but both the store and the Officer in question will be in hot water.
Against the store he might press False Imprisonment and Harrasment charges - after all, preventing them from leaving the parking lot by standing in front of the car and blocking the door of the cars (so neither forward nor backwards movement was possible) for no other reason than him refusing a bag-check (he did not have to allow in the first place). Bad idea.
Against the officer, he may both press charges for False Arrest (not showing ID is not a valid grounds for arrest, then doing the switcheroo with changing "impeding duty" won't work either). Also he did not get read his rights, big no-no there.
Lawyers are like sharks in the US, I hear. And there's lots of blood in the water now.
Hehe, well, a good author uses every means necessary to convey his message. I feel packing my message about patchwork and spaghetti-code like this really created the right atmosphere ;)
(hmmm... I guess this is the equivalent of "let's try this... *boom*... I meant to do that")
Startrek has a problem. Wait, before you gather your torches and pitchforks hear me out.
The problem is: Startrek is really old. That is not said that it is bad - I quite enjoyed TOS when it ran on TV, and I rather liked most of the "sequels" (like TNG, DS9, Voyager, etc.) to a certain degree. I loved the movies. But Startrek, or rather the Startrek universe has become the equivalent of really old code. The kind of code that was written when C was at it's peak and because the application was good and functional it just has been extended and rewritten over the time. And now you are standing in from of 50k lines of code, some in C, some in C++, some ported from C to C++, all written by several dozens of different editors (with different styles and paradigms) with over the last two decades. And someone had the bright idea to use assembler to squeeze some out some MS from an inner loop. Short, a demonic cross between a patchwork quilt made from used yarn and spaghetti-code. And now you are supposed to implement that new shining feature - without breaking anything.
The Startrek universe is riddled with minor and major plotholes and inconsistencies. Of course, many of the got patched and re-patched when the popped up, but every time a new story is added to the canon some more or less obscure fact will exist to prove the inverse. Of course, the tools to patch them up exist - including the dreaded RETCON - but still there is too much too contradictory information.
So what would you, the programmer do, if faced with the demonic code mentioned earlier and the prospect of managing it for the next forseeable future. Use the well-know way and write on or be bold and pull the plug and start from (almost) scratch?
Yes, Comcast ist offering unlimited* service. Please note the asterix.
As helpfully pointed out a while ago in marketing speech an asterix negates the word it stands after.
And honestly who would buy "a (usually) really fast internet connection for a flat fee no matter how much or long you surf, but actually we'll throttle the thing to a crawl if you download too much."
My recommendation (IANAL): Tell them (first via phone, then via postal mail) that you paid for an unmetered account with speed X and that you consider this kind of traffic shaping and throttling as a breach of contract on their side. Reserve yourself the right to sue in a small claims court. Demand that they either restore the service to full functionality (i.e. no traffic shaping and throttling) or reduce your monthly fees by a significant amount (50% or so). Be sure to mention legal uses of Bittorrent (FOS like Linux, Demo Software, Patches, that online video on demand store that uses BT) that are affected. If all that does not help, send them an immediate cancellation of your subscription citing their breach and contract and failure to rectify the issue, stop paying, and look for a new ISP.
I hope everybody that had invested in SCO stocks has some kind of "sell" option certificate - otherwise his investments will melt like snow in the desert. During a heatwave. With several hot air blow-driers pointed at it.
SCOX is down nearly 25% pre-market, and I can only guess how far it will fall during the trading hours.