If they cease selling in Australia then there will be mass import of foreign machines from foreign territories. This will be followed by mass import of games to play on these machines. By ceasing official supply they would do precisely what they were trying not to do by prosecuting the mod distributer and help homogenise the global market.
1) MS release the XBox
2) Mod chips are sold to allow users to run unsigned code.
3) Lik-Sang become sole producer of upgradable mod chip that could overcome possible MS anti-mod detection.
4) MS Introduce mod detection code on games.
5) MS change XBox mobo so old mod chips cannot be installed.
6) MS shut down Lik-Sang.
Seems quite a comphrehensive and well planned strategy. If you buy an Xbox from a store today you can't chip it. If you have an old XBox you now can't buy the upgradable chip and the non-upgradable ones are illegal in most places due to them containing MS code.
I've absolutely no idea what the legal basis for the action against lik-sang. GBA flasher/PS chips contain no code copyrighted by the console producer and the XBox chips were being supplied unflashed for the last few months. Only justification would be their stocking of enigmah and such or preprogramming their pre-modded XBoxes.
I used to copy a lot of games a few years ago as a student. I probably could have afforded to buy one or two, but I had essentials like beer to buy. I copied, I traded, I had great big caselogic wallets filled with hundreds of disks I'd never even loaded up. I had hacks, cracks, keygens, emulators, a chips on my Playstation - there was absolutely no piece of protection on any software that prevented me from running it. One day I opened a jiffy bag that popped through my door and out slid a shiny GoldCD with Halflife written on it in thick black marker. I'd read about this, it was supposed to be good, definitely worth loading up. In the drive it went and as normal I fired up the keygen as it installed. Bingo, 10 minutes later I was on my monorail to work. God it was a good game, I actually started getting twinges of guilt for ripping it off, but seemed a little bit stupid to buy an identical copy in a pretty box. Next step was to rope in my housemate - but he wasn't too hot and the novelty of popping crossbow bolts between his eyes wore off. Next stop - online. Refreshed the server list, chose my games and *Scream* - it said I didn't have a valid id. Bastards! I hunted for new keygens, hacked servers - but no luck. I relented and bought the game for a serial number. 99% of the games I had copies of I would never have paid for. 1% I would have, but I already had working copies so why go and buy a box I would never have to open. I wasn't going to start buying games before trying them as I was well aware the chances are I wouldn't love it. Maybe the future of gaming is shareware? Flood the net with easily available copies of your game, let people try it. If they like it ask them for a medium sized payment to activate it fully - open the second half of it, allow connection to servers with over a certain number of players, allow you to have full range of vehicles in your RTS. Basically people like to try things before they buy them, hear a couple of singles on the radio or on MP3 before they buy the album. Currently the best demos people can get are full warez releases - and once they have that demo they'll never buy the game. My final suggestion would be a personised activation ID for all games. I apply for it free online, and then I pay to register it against certain games. People could look at my homepage and see what I played, how good I was, click to chat to me. If I'm away on work and want to play a game I've bought I log in to my account and download a copy of the code I'm entitled to and I'm away. Maybe we could even have trialware - $5 to play the game for a week refundable against it if I choose to activate it for life. Underground/Indy releases could have budget/free activation for the first 1000, allowing a community that would attract others to be built....sorry I'm rambling here - but I'm sure there's a good idea or two in there somewhere.
That was a joke. "You all thought I was going to say it didn't come with an optional dancing midget and what I actually said was I made up the Firewire bit."
Yep, I love it to bits. At first it was just a cool thing, now on PCs without it I find myself trying to flick open windows back onto the toolbar and just blinking gormlessly when they just stay there.
although you'll have to cough up a few dollars a month - or alternatively find somebody outside to act as your free proxy. As the vast majority of people have said though you can't really whinge - and it's pretty likely you could find most stuff on a univeristy network you could ever want - except perhaps the extremely specialst pr0n.
You've missed my point - Yes spyware is wrong and Kazaa are scum for doing it, but the prevailing logic on this board seems to mean this makes them fair game for what pretty much is piracy. Equivalent of saying MS XP SP1 phones home and then posting a list of wazrez serialz.
Am I the only one a little uncomfortable with how readily people sugest using Kazaa Lite? Whilst I'm not going to attempt to defend Kazaa or the numerous little bits of crapware that keep on being found in it - if you don't like Kazaa then just don't use it. It's not as if there're no alternatives. It's nice when people release free software but we can't expect all software to be free. Kazaa lite is theft, pure and simple - we like your product, we like the network you've grown on it - but we don't want you to receive a penny for it.
Basically I feel it's a little hypocritical to complain about kazaa stealing referrals and then recommending you steal kazaa's ad revenue in the same post.
OOps, sorry - I really should actually mention the subject of my posts in the post. Only played it on PS2, supposedly identical on Xbox but with better loading time. Lovely engine, can looks fabulous and is very very fast. Only game I've really actually played since Halo.
It has been brought to our attention that several posters on this thread have implied that this viral outbreak is in some way connected to the open source community and their users. Slashdot wishes to reitterate their dogmatic belief:
Virus:= Bad
OpenSource:= Good
Microsoft:= Bad
Thus proving that any suggestion of a bug/vulnerability in Linux/Apache is a figment of a deluded imagination and you're most likely Welsh.
Goldeneye has been re-released
on
Microsoft Buys Rare
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The original team that worked on it left Rare to set up their own company - Free Radical. If anyone were still in doubt about TS2's heritage, it kicks off with you launching an assault on a Russian dam. I might also add that the game is quite fantastic (TS1 didn't really impress me) with an absolutely massive number of multiplayer options and characters. Even better than Goldeneye I promise.
I agree whole-heartedly. I've used Dabs for years (even back in Fidonet days) and never had a single problem with them. Overclockers are also good for those flash little bits and pieces. Third store I use is www.aria.co.uk, nice people, low prices and they're now carrying some of the flash bits flower coolers, arctic Silver, LianLi cases etc at reasonable prices.
Yes they're cheap, yes the daily specials have lured me to order from them - and every time have got screwed in some way. Counter staff seem to be consist of owners surly teenage daughters or grumpy wife. Whichever is manning counter they induldge in seeing how long they can keep the queue before people leave. I bought a DVD decoder from them, didn't give PAL output (I'd specifically asked) it took over 4 months from me returning it to them refunding me. I send off large order by fax to them, order didn't arrive. Phoned up and was told they don't read the faxes. Gave order over phone after little outburst and they got that wrong. That's just the first few things that spring to mind. I know other people who have the same problem as me. We swear never to use them, see a special offer that is soo cheap and promise ourselves that if we just go down, pick it up (and just that single item) in person - what could possibly go wrong? Normally something does.
Slashdot Mirror
If they cease selling in Australia then there will be mass import of foreign machines from foreign territories. This will be followed by mass import of games to play on these machines. By ceasing official supply they would do precisely what they were trying not to do by prosecuting the mod distributer and help homogenise the global market.
1) MS release the XBox
2) Mod chips are sold to allow users to run unsigned code.
3) Lik-Sang become sole producer of upgradable mod chip that could overcome possible MS anti-mod detection.
4) MS Introduce mod detection code on games.
5) MS change XBox mobo so old mod chips cannot be installed.
6) MS shut down Lik-Sang.
Seems quite a comphrehensive and well planned strategy. If you buy an Xbox from a store today you can't chip it. If you have an old XBox you now can't buy the upgradable chip and the non-upgradable ones are illegal in most places due to them containing MS code.
I've absolutely no idea what the legal basis for the action against lik-sang. GBA flasher/PS chips contain no code copyrighted by the console producer and the XBox chips were being supplied unflashed for the last few months. Only justification would be their stocking of enigmah and such or preprogramming their pre-modded XBoxes.
I used to copy a lot of games a few years ago as a student. I probably could have afforded to buy one or two, but I had essentials like beer to buy. I copied, I traded, I had great big caselogic wallets filled with hundreds of disks I'd never even loaded up. I had hacks, cracks, keygens, emulators, a chips on my Playstation - there was absolutely no piece of protection on any software that prevented me from running it.
One day I opened a jiffy bag that popped through my door and out slid a shiny GoldCD with Halflife written on it in thick black marker. I'd read about this, it was supposed to be good, definitely worth loading up. In the drive it went and as normal I fired up the keygen as it installed. Bingo, 10 minutes later I was on my monorail to work. God it was a good game, I actually started getting twinges of guilt for ripping it off, but seemed a little bit stupid to buy an identical copy in a pretty box. Next step was to rope in my housemate - but he wasn't too hot and the novelty of popping crossbow bolts between his eyes wore off. Next stop - online. Refreshed the server list, chose my games and *Scream* - it said I didn't have a valid id. Bastards! I hunted for new keygens, hacked servers - but no luck.
I relented and bought the game for a serial number.
99% of the games I had copies of I would never have paid for. 1% I would have, but I already had working copies so why go and buy a box I would never have to open. I wasn't going to start buying games before trying them as I was well aware the chances are I wouldn't love it.
Maybe the future of gaming is shareware? Flood the net with easily available copies of your game, let people try it. If they like it ask them for a medium sized payment to activate it fully - open the second half of it, allow connection to servers with over a certain number of players, allow you to have full range of vehicles in your RTS.
Basically people like to try things before they buy them, hear a couple of singles on the radio or on MP3 before they buy the album. Currently the best demos people can get are full warez releases - and once they have that demo they'll never buy the game.
My final suggestion would be a personised activation ID for all games. I apply for it free online, and then I pay to register it against certain games. People could look at my homepage and see what I played, how good I was, click to chat to me. If I'm away on work and want to play a game I've bought I log in to my account and download a copy of the code I'm entitled to and I'm away. Maybe we could even have trialware - $5 to play the game for a week refundable against it if I choose to activate it for life. Underground/Indy releases could have budget/free activation for the first 1000, allowing a community that would attract others to be built....sorry I'm rambling here - but I'm sure there's a good idea or two in there somewhere.
That was a joke. "You all thought I was going to say it didn't come with an optional dancing midget and what I actually said was I made up the Firewire bit."
Yep, I love it to bits. At first it was just a cool thing, now on PCs without it I find myself trying to flick open windows back onto the toolbar and just blinking gormlessly when they just stay there.
although you'll have to cough up a few dollars a month - or alternatively find somebody outside to act as your free proxy. As the vast majority of people have said though you can't really whinge - and it's pretty likely you could find most stuff on a univeristy network you could ever want - except perhaps the extremely specialst pr0n.
You've missed my point - Yes spyware is wrong and Kazaa are scum for doing it, but the prevailing logic on this board seems to mean this makes them fair game for what pretty much is piracy. Equivalent of saying MS XP SP1 phones home and then posting a list of wazrez serialz.
Am I the only one a little uncomfortable with how readily people sugest using Kazaa Lite? Whilst I'm not going to attempt to defend Kazaa or the numerous little bits of crapware that keep on being found in it - if you don't like Kazaa then just don't use it. It's not as if there're no alternatives.
It's nice when people release free software but we can't expect all software to be free. Kazaa lite is theft, pure and simple - we like your product, we like the network you've grown on it - but we don't want you to receive a penny for it.
Basically I feel it's a little hypocritical to complain about kazaa stealing referrals and then recommending you steal kazaa's ad revenue in the same post.
OOps, sorry - I really should actually mention the subject of my posts in the post. Only played it on PS2, supposedly identical on Xbox but with better loading time. Lovely engine, can looks fabulous and is very very fast. Only game I've really actually played since Halo.
It has been brought to our attention that several posters on this thread have implied that this viral outbreak is in some way connected to the open source community and their users. Slashdot wishes to reitterate their dogmatic belief: Virus := Bad
OpenSource := Good
Microsoft := Bad
Thus proving that any suggestion of a bug/vulnerability in Linux/Apache is a figment of a deluded imagination and you're most likely Welsh.
The original team that worked on it left Rare to set up their own company - Free Radical. If anyone were still in doubt about TS2's heritage, it kicks off with you launching an assault on a Russian dam. I might also add that the game is quite fantastic (TS1 didn't really impress me) with an absolutely massive number of multiplayer options and characters. Even better than Goldeneye I promise.
or significantly increase the shift to Linux?
they find a priceless gold sarcophagus of unimaginable scientific value - how the f*ck do they intend to get it out?
I agree whole-heartedly. I've used Dabs for years (even back in Fidonet days) and never had a single problem with them. Overclockers are also good for those flash little bits and pieces. Third store I use is www.aria.co.uk, nice people, low prices and they're now carrying some of the flash bits flower coolers, arctic Silver, LianLi cases etc at reasonable prices.
Yes they're cheap, yes the daily specials have lured me to order from them - and every time have got screwed in some way.
Counter staff seem to be consist of owners surly teenage daughters or grumpy wife. Whichever is manning counter they induldge in seeing how long they can keep the queue before people leave.
I bought a DVD decoder from them, didn't give PAL output (I'd specifically asked) it took over 4 months from me returning it to them refunding me.
I send off large order by fax to them, order didn't arrive. Phoned up and was told they don't read the faxes. Gave order over phone after little outburst and they got that wrong.
That's just the first few things that spring to mind.
I know other people who have the same problem as me. We swear never to use them, see a special offer that is soo cheap and promise ourselves that if we just go down, pick it up (and just that single item) in person - what could possibly go wrong? Normally something does.