best case MD could claim they were merely pretending to be on a public "offending" server exploiting a flaw other hackers were using. Their software then had a "bug" that caused the bandwidth spike.
On the other hand, the fact that they were an "investigator" essentially planting evidence on a private server of an established, honest media company trying to follow the law is a bad start. At that point the fact that the attack occurred over the holiday weekend, they were not available to fix it, and they did damage trying to access the files they put there illegally after access was denyed by the owners puts them in a world of hurt.
The FBI investigation should wipe out a good chunk of the lawsuits from the **AA and probably spark thousands more charges.
because 250k for a few songs or movies goes on your credit report. The new bankruptcy laws allow the courts to keep certain judgments even after you lose everything. How's not ever buying a house, not getting ANY bank loans for school, or car, your credit report stopping you from a good job, etc... that's far worse "punishment" and without nearly the same level of evidence of a criminal trial.
this has nothing to do with copyright. They were illegally accessing a computer system save as Kevin Mitnick by hosting files for their commercial purpose. Then they set their servers up to crash the host if the host cleaned up the files. This was a planned, automatic, structured attack designed to look like an "accident". People have gone to jail for putting SETI clients on machines at their workplace.... hell yeah they've finally been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Smart lawyers should be watching this case to disallow ALL evidence gathered by this company as well.. this all but proves they gathered the information against all those people sued illegally... this should be fun!
Wait until tomorrow afternoon and lock all the employees and directors in their offices under "house arrest" until this is settled. if this was really a corporate sponsored attack they need to find a way to arrest the ENTIRE company just to make a point that this won't be tolerated. In some ways it's economic vigilante terrorism.
much better article. All the public really needs is a good replacement for the current Wi-Fi in the 700MHz range so we can get better coverage. We don't really need the FCC to "protect" us, just put the tools out there for the free market to use! The sliver of spectrum that is wi-fi is phenomenally successful why are they not working with that success?
they're getting their knob polished by somebody high up. This seems to be a complex way to replace what people are ALREADY doing with regular Wi-Fi. Sort of holding the bandwidth to the public hostage until some corporation agrees to their demands. They just can't understand true freedom that's already found a way out. The internet is "self censoring" in that I can only get what I look for. Sure there are problems with porn pop-ups and spam, but it can be limited on the user end.
that's exactly what this is. Or they'd just make the bandwidth "unlicensed" like 2.4 or 5.0, set the power and interference requirements and let the current Wi-fi manufactures go at it.
This is the typical neo-republi-crat method of dealing with freedom to sell it off under "contract".
google seems to be doing very well with that model.
What would be more beneficial would be for the FCC to just put the 25MHz out there as "unlicensed" and let the free market worry about free access. Perhaps they could adjust the rules to be more business friendly... "B" class units with higher power for more range instead of "C" class home units. The filtering restriction is childish. The FCC still doesn't comprehend how the Wi-Fi revolution has changed things. Manufactures have come together and built out lots of structure with table scraps of bandwidth. Why does the FCC treat that success as a "problem" that some company and exclusive contract has to fix?
not really, Intel's Atom is just like MS extending XP for the eeePC. The low-end player is almost in reach of the bottom of the market leader so the market leader is stepping back with a "new" version of "old" technology to under price the chasers from the market and keep the profit margins for new stuff as long as they can.
Atom is not out-of-order or superscalar. That was the trade off they made to get it really small and cheap. Via's new chip is much faster than what they currently sell and happens to be low wattage too. It is more matched to the eeePC than the old-model celerons they use now.
The new movie is good. Really good, but a bit campy. This one wasn't "better" than the others but it wasn't worse either. It's not the same.. the directors and producers have grown up and wanted to have fun. That's exactly what they did.
Personally, I don't think movie goers really give a darn about any movies. We have 14 24x7 movie channels available all the time and we're just numb to good, fun movies. I don't think this will do as good as it deserves, simply because we're so over saturated, and that's sad. Hopefully it will do well enough they continue but in a smaller, less expensive format. The $200M blockbuster days are all but over and Hollywood hasn't seemed to get a clue to scale back.
The movie delivered on the Indiana Jones franchise. It's very campy and 1950's. (which is what both Lucas and Speilberg consider the glory days of this genere) It didn't try to be quite as "spiritual" as "Last Crusade" but still was very nostalgic. They packed probably too many plot ideas in too little time (not all really worked, but hey it's clearly the last one), but editing was done very well to keep the plot moving quickly. I walked away thinking well done, they didn't ruin the franchise and opened some big doors for a new different one. My favorite is still Last Crusade (as I was too young to have an opinion on Raiders) but this one is probably second. It was lacking in quantity of critters but it covered the basics of IJ critterdom. It lacked the globe trotting feel of the others, but it's 1957, the world got a whole bunch smaller. And that's really the point of the movie if there is one. Right from the opening scene (GL's mitts are all over that one!), you're not in the "adventure" world of the 1930's all the blank spots are filled in on the map now. Guys like Indy are becoming rare.
The previews give nothing away to the plot of the story. They pulled this story off quite well.
better answer is that it's already built in to FireFox 3! All you need is the manager plug in SQLite Manager and you can make your own entries right from the browser. Even includes create and browse which seems to be all this guy wants.
It's also a real SQL database so when the time comes to grow again (and it will) simple SQL commands will be able to transfer your data to whatever new format you'll be needing.
It took less time to get the plug-in, install it, and make a new database and table than it did to type in this post!
except that tells you nothing about if FEATURES exist. In fact it's down right deceiving in the case of things like Intel integrated graphics.
In Visa's case there should have only been #1 and #2. #1= run all of Vista's features, out of the box right now. #2= run them a little faster. That's it.
Specs should meet and achieve or go home. Vista is such a joke precisely because Microsoft caved to Intel and OEMS and allowed "toy" computers from 3 years ago to be sold as "latest and greatest".
good point, the main factor of PC games that makes them interesting is persistence. That a game world data can stay grow and ebb and change as you play it. It's got gigabytes of space and no time limit when you hit the reset button. The real push on PCs should be for persistent games... ones that stay available all the time and you just check in to see how they're doing.
how about a virtual machine environment! Linux has pretty good ones now. Then you could run the game under KVM or Xen or VMware with all your other stuff running or from just the bare minimum. Sure it's a little extra overhead, but the compatibility would be great as nobody would write games to hardware, only to the virtual machine. Granted it would put a damper on the next Crysis, but only 1 of 100 titles are like that, the rest are like the Sims and just want to run anywhere they can.
the solution is to "glue" the standards down and make all the libraries atomic to the version. If you want Game2002 it will take x libraries. Make them open source and let the community pull them forward for new versions of the hardware. The community is great at emulation and this would be a chinch for them. New games will run with new libraries and mixing will be prohibited.
The real problem is that game makers cheat because of things like copy protection. Relying on OS hacks and bugs to make their precious game "secure" and when those are fixed, the code doesn't actually work correctly. The only way around that would be to pre-announce that any DRM scheme would be void in 3 years and we Open Source the tools so games can be run on new hardware... after all, how many games do people care about after 3 years that don't get constant updates? (which could charge money and add features to the new DRM model) That would help with abandon ware as well.
I'd differ. The spec should be the minimum to play at good quality and it's the game maker's butt to target the platform, not expect you to buy more hardware. Take low-average hardware right now... 1.8-2.0 dual core, 2GB ram, DX10/OpenGL 3 with the proper addons in a low end card and draw the line. Then expect game makers to hold to it for a "good" experience. No playing with more ram or cpu or gpu... it needs to just work at a quality level. Sure if you have something faster, maybe allow higher resolutions or more polygons, etc. but the game must be PLAYABLE at the bottom of the spec. In reality, game makers do it now, but they all pick different numbers and it's a moving target trying to one-up for slightly faster hardware. The current games have wiped the common PC gamer with only a "$1000" laptop or PC out the door... that would be why nobody gives a damn about PC games anymore except die-hards.
Microsoft was on track with Direct X for just this reason. It was the long drag between windows releases that added the silly "extras" to the spec that made game specs confusing. If there was a separate spec it might work out better. What you have to be careful of are operations like Intel that slink in and want to get DX10 rated with the bare minimum spec implemented mostly in software.. ouch. Unlike other posts, there should be no levels of the year-to-year spec. Go forward, don't allow going back.. There's no reason to break "old" software for no reason. Make the divisions atomic, like other posters said, so you can choose your level of bloat by loading old libraries for old games, but not require old libraries to run new software.... in fact ban them and limit programmers to only their target model year. I'd even backport older years into the spec for old 2D and 3D games already out there to get people used to seeing the numbers. This would work well in the OSS world because companies could focus on new hardware and new specs and let the community pull the old version forward to the new hardware rather than spend time tying up resources.
you gotta be kidding about small builders, sure SOME are good, but in most towns the best builders are quite clueless about gaming. They're good a building cheap computers and networks to run MS office but that's about it. A grading system would be good for this crowd.
I've thought Linux needed this for a while. Some way to rate SDL games and distros on a scale and update the scale every 2 years or so.
that's the difference between Consoles and PCs right there.
When framerates dip in PC games, they just tell you to "buy something faster next month" when framerates dip in Consoles, they adjust the game model to maintain constant rates by "cheating". Consoles play better because game devs work harder with what they got, rather than what "will" be in 6 months.
Slashdot Mirror
best case MD could claim they were merely pretending to be on a public "offending" server exploiting a flaw other hackers were using. Their software then had a "bug" that caused the bandwidth spike.
On the other hand, the fact that they were an "investigator" essentially planting evidence on a private server of an established, honest media company trying to follow the law is a bad start. At that point the fact that the attack occurred over the holiday weekend, they were not available to fix it, and they did damage trying to access the files they put there illegally after access was denyed by the owners puts them in a world of hurt.
The FBI investigation should wipe out a good chunk of the lawsuits from the **AA and probably spark thousands more charges.
because 250k for a few songs or movies goes on your credit report. The new bankruptcy laws allow the courts to keep certain judgments even after you lose everything. How's not ever buying a house, not getting ANY bank loans for school, or car, your credit report stopping you from a good job, etc... that's far worse "punishment" and without nearly the same level of evidence of a criminal trial.
this has nothing to do with copyright. They were illegally accessing a computer system save as Kevin Mitnick by hosting files for their commercial purpose. Then they set their servers up to crash the host if the host cleaned up the files. This was a planned, automatic, structured attack designed to look like an "accident". People have gone to jail for putting SETI clients on machines at their workplace.... hell yeah they've finally been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Smart lawyers should be watching this case to disallow ALL evidence gathered by this company as well.. this all but proves they gathered the information against all those people sued illegally... this should be fun!
lady justice is blind. let's see it proven.
Wait until tomorrow afternoon and lock all the employees and directors in their offices under "house arrest" until this is settled. if this was really a corporate sponsored attack they need to find a way to arrest the ENTIRE company just to make a point that this won't be tolerated. In some ways it's economic vigilante terrorism.
much better article. All the public really needs is a good replacement for the current Wi-Fi in the 700MHz range so we can get better coverage. We don't really need the FCC to "protect" us, just put the tools out there for the free market to use! The sliver of spectrum that is wi-fi is phenomenally successful why are they not working with that success?
they're getting their knob polished by somebody high up. This seems to be a complex way to replace what people are ALREADY doing with regular Wi-Fi. Sort of holding the bandwidth to the public hostage until some corporation agrees to their demands. They just can't understand true freedom that's already found a way out. The internet is "self censoring" in that I can only get what I look for. Sure there are problems with porn pop-ups and spam, but it can be limited on the user end.
that's exactly what this is. Or they'd just make the bandwidth "unlicensed" like 2.4 or 5.0, set the power and interference requirements and let the current Wi-fi manufactures go at it.
This is the typical neo-republi-crat method of dealing with freedom to sell it off under "contract".
google seems to be doing very well with that model.
What would be more beneficial would be for the FCC to just put the 25MHz out there as "unlicensed" and let the free market worry about free access. Perhaps they could adjust the rules to be more business friendly... "B" class units with higher power for more range instead of "C" class home units. The filtering restriction is childish. The FCC still doesn't comprehend how the Wi-Fi revolution has changed things. Manufactures have come together and built out lots of structure with table scraps of bandwidth. Why does the FCC treat that success as a "problem" that some company and exclusive contract has to fix?
not really, Intel's Atom is just like MS extending XP for the eeePC. The low-end player is almost in reach of the bottom of the market leader so the market leader is stepping back with a "new" version of "old" technology to under price the chasers from the market and keep the profit margins for new stuff as long as they can.
Atom is not out-of-order or superscalar. That was the trade off they made to get it really small and cheap. Via's new chip is much faster than what they currently sell and happens to be low wattage too. It is more matched to the eeePC than the old-model celerons they use now.
it's also part of the NanoITX form factor they've been working on for years. I think even before iPod had a Nano.
imagine a Bewoulf cluster.....
The new movie is good. Really good, but a bit campy. This one wasn't "better" than the others but it wasn't worse either. It's not the same.. the directors and producers have grown up and wanted to have fun. That's exactly what they did.
Personally, I don't think movie goers really give a darn about any movies. We have 14 24x7 movie channels available all the time and we're just numb to good, fun movies. I don't think this will do as good as it deserves, simply because we're so over saturated, and that's sad. Hopefully it will do well enough they continue but in a smaller, less expensive format. The $200M blockbuster days are all but over and Hollywood hasn't seemed to get a clue to scale back.
Saw it at 12:01
The movie delivered on the Indiana Jones franchise. It's very campy and 1950's. (which is what both Lucas and Speilberg consider the glory days of this genere) It didn't try to be quite as "spiritual" as "Last Crusade" but still was very nostalgic. They packed probably too many plot ideas in too little time (not all really worked, but hey it's clearly the last one), but editing was done very well to keep the plot moving quickly. I walked away thinking well done, they didn't ruin the franchise and opened some big doors for a new different one. My favorite is still Last Crusade (as I was too young to have an opinion on Raiders) but this one is probably second. It was lacking in quantity of critters but it covered the basics of IJ critterdom. It lacked the globe trotting feel of the others, but it's 1957, the world got a whole bunch smaller. And that's really the point of the movie if there is one. Right from the opening scene (GL's mitts are all over that one!), you're not in the "adventure" world of the 1930's all the blank spots are filled in on the map now. Guys like Indy are becoming rare.
The previews give nothing away to the plot of the story. They pulled this story off quite well.
SQLite is already included in FireFox 3!
better answer is that it's already built in to FireFox 3! All you need is the manager plug in SQLite Manager and you can make your own entries right from the browser. Even includes create and browse which seems to be all this guy wants.
It's also a real SQL database so when the time comes to grow again (and it will) simple SQL commands will be able to transfer your data to whatever new format you'll be needing.
It took less time to get the plug-in, install it, and make a new database and table than it did to type in this post!
except that tells you nothing about if FEATURES exist. In fact it's down right deceiving in the case of things like Intel integrated graphics.
In Visa's case there should have only been #1 and #2. #1= run all of Vista's features, out of the box right now. #2= run them a little faster. That's it.
Specs should meet and achieve or go home. Vista is such a joke precisely because Microsoft caved to Intel and OEMS and allowed "toy" computers from 3 years ago to be sold as "latest and greatest".
good point, the main factor of PC games that makes them interesting is persistence. That a game world data can stay grow and ebb and change as you play it. It's got gigabytes of space and no time limit when you hit the reset button. The real push on PCs should be for persistent games... ones that stay available all the time and you just check in to see how they're doing.
how about a virtual machine environment! Linux has pretty good ones now. Then you could run the game under KVM or Xen or VMware with all your other stuff running or from just the bare minimum. Sure it's a little extra overhead, but the compatibility would be great as nobody would write games to hardware, only to the virtual machine.
Granted it would put a damper on the next Crysis, but only 1 of 100 titles are like that, the rest are like the Sims and just want to run anywhere they can.
the solution is to "glue" the standards down and make all the libraries atomic to the version. If you want Game2002 it will take x libraries. Make them open source and let the community pull them forward for new versions of the hardware. The community is great at emulation and this would be a chinch for them. New games will run with new libraries and mixing will be prohibited.
The real problem is that game makers cheat because of things like copy protection. Relying on OS hacks and bugs to make their precious game "secure" and when those are fixed, the code doesn't actually work correctly. The only way around that would be to pre-announce that any DRM scheme would be void in 3 years and we Open Source the tools so games can be run on new hardware... after all, how many games do people care about after 3 years that don't get constant updates? (which could charge money and add features to the new DRM model) That would help with abandon ware as well.
I'd differ. The spec should be the minimum to play at good quality and it's the game maker's butt to target the platform, not expect you to buy more hardware. Take low-average hardware right now... 1.8-2.0 dual core, 2GB ram, DX10/OpenGL 3 with the proper addons in a low end card and draw the line. Then expect game makers to hold to it for a "good" experience. No playing with more ram or cpu or gpu... it needs to just work at a quality level. Sure if you have something faster, maybe allow higher resolutions or more polygons, etc. but the game must be PLAYABLE at the bottom of the spec. In reality, game makers do it now, but they all pick different numbers and it's a moving target trying to one-up for slightly faster hardware. The current games have wiped the common PC gamer with only a "$1000" laptop or PC out the door... that would be why nobody gives a damn about PC games anymore except die-hards.
Microsoft was on track with Direct X for just this reason. It was the long drag between windows releases that added the silly "extras" to the spec that made game specs confusing.
If there was a separate spec it might work out better. What you have to be careful of are operations like Intel that slink in and want to get DX10 rated with the bare minimum spec implemented mostly in software.. ouch. Unlike other posts, there should be no levels of the year-to-year spec. Go forward, don't allow going back.. There's no reason to break "old" software for no reason. Make the divisions atomic, like other posters said, so you can choose your level of bloat by loading old libraries for old games, but not require old libraries to run new software.... in fact ban them and limit programmers to only their target model year. I'd even backport older years into the spec for old 2D and 3D games already out there to get people used to seeing the numbers. This would work well in the OSS world because companies could focus on new hardware and new specs and let the community pull the old version forward to the new hardware rather than spend time tying up resources.
you gotta be kidding about small builders, sure SOME are good, but in most towns the best builders are quite clueless about gaming. They're good a building cheap computers and networks to run MS office but that's about it. A grading system would be good for this crowd.
I've thought Linux needed this for a while. Some way to rate SDL games and distros on a scale and update the scale every 2 years or so.
that's the difference between Consoles and PCs right there.
When framerates dip in PC games, they just tell you to "buy something faster next month" when framerates dip in Consoles, they adjust the game model to maintain constant rates by "cheating". Consoles play better because game devs work harder with what they got, rather than what "will" be in 6 months.