Because if it doesn't work the pirates will continue to work at it until it does work. This way the pirates believe the game is working properly and they disrupt it.
Believe it or not, most pirates don't sit there and play through the games they just cracked. The ones that do the pirating usually do it so they can disrupt it with their name attached saying "We're the first to hack XYZ". This is why Razor 1911 has a wiki page, because they're so damn famous.
As for batteries running dead... well, that happens. You can run down your battery watching Youtube videos or constantly checking Facebook. The "think about the battery!" excuse is played out, people said the same thing when they added color screens to phones and again when cameras were added and again when giant LCD touchscreens were added. If you don't like it, don't buy a smartphone or buy a case that charges the phone.
"I would quote the relevant part but Chrome doesn't seem to like pasting in Slashdot's comment box."
I've noticed that too! It's been like that for a good 6 months now. I don't know what/. did to make the change but I haven't been able to paste into slashdot using chrome except in the polls, for whatever reason it works there.
I've been wanting to report it but slashdot doesn't really have an obvious place to report website bugs. Real shame because it's annoying, I've been having to type everything into notepad and copy-paste it over into the comment box because it'll take a copy-paste but only if you paste everything in.
"Apparently most slashdotters do math on a daily basis. I can't recall the last time I needed to do integrals - in fact, if you had asked me 5 minutes ago how to calculate the area under a curve, I would have needed a trip to google/wolfram to look it up."
I haven't done any calculus in XY years but I guarantee you if someone asked "how do I figure out the area under a curve" I'd eventually answer "Calculus", at least before I wrote a medical journal about it and submit it for peer review. I mean he quotes the first chapter of my old calculus book almost exactly: "In Tai's Model, the total area under a curve is computed by dividing the area under the curve between two designated values on the X-axis (abscissas) into small segments (rectangles and triangles) whose areas can be accurately calculated from their respective geometrical formulas. The total sum of these individual areas thus represents the total area under the curve."
Sorry but this dr deserves to be shot, next thing he'll be figuring out how to measure the sides of a triangle given then lengths of the other two sides.
"If they really knew what they wanted, they wouldn't need a programmer - they'd need a contract fulfilled for a specific task. If you say that crap, you're just a bullshit marketing guy."
EXACTLY!
I had an idea and "just need(ed) a programmer". Did I call a unversity? Hell no, only an idiot would do that. I went online and hired a freelancer! Paid him for what I needed done and continue to pay him on a regular basis to expand on the idea. I've already made 10x more off the idea than what I've paid him in total and couldn't be happier with the success of my idea.
I'm sure you're asking why hire someone? I'm on/., shouldn't I be a coding guru? But of course, but it's more cost effective for me to outsource than do it myself. It's like paying someone to mow the lawn, yes I could do it myself but I have better things to do with my time.
I think this head of the CS department is full of it, if idiots are calling him asking "hey can I get one of your students to do programming for free?" then he needs to tell them to f*(k off, but don't bash "idea people". Maybe if this professor could get a clue (or an idea) he could hire out his students as freelancers and make a few $$$$ on the side if his phone is really ringing off the hook enough for him to be ranting about it on his blog.
All I want to know is how much the games will be, and since it's running Android will everyone be able to make games for this or will it be locked down in some manner?
"I am still predicting plenty will buy a volt, the prius has already proven that a large portion of the population is bad at math."
At least the Volt makes financial sense as long as you don't usually drive too much further than 40 miles a day, but even if I drove 80 miles a day I calculate I'd still fill up less than once a week.
"Getting multiple browser support right takes time, getting IE support right even longer."
No, no and... no.
Like it or not IE is still 47% of the internet. Nobody really likes this, but it's a fact of life, and to be the new guy on the block and already tell people they're not welcome doesn't make you popular, it turns you into the lonely loser or crazy cat lady. If they're playing these little browser games now I hate to see what they're going to do when they become popular.
"the "hold out for perfection and scorn anything that isn't perfect" model is popular with many slashdotters."
Isn't perfect? It's full of landmines. That's like buying a few acres and finding out it's covered in landmines and after you're done screaming at your real estate agent they turn to you and say "well I know it isn't perfect but..."
This isn't glass-half-empty, this is glass-smashed-on-floor-buy-new-glass. Diaspora had cross-site scripting vulnerabilities that dated back to the 90s.
I've heard the rumors that Facebook is selling data but if they are I haven't noticed it. Honestly I see nothing wrong with facebook.... yet
These are huge and very well documented security violations dating back to the 90s. Anyone want to bet how many days before we find security vulnerabilities in this latest release?
This is open source, meaning people are going to be installing it that are not security experts and they expect everything to be done, they're not going to want to be pouring over code for security holes or installing MAJOR PATCH RELEASE every day.
I think a open source social networking site might work but obviously needs to be done by programmers with experience, not a few kids that took some CS classes at University and thought they could remake Facebook. They should have taken that $200,000 and hired real programmers.
"I think that 6 or maybe even 12 months severance should suffice in this situation. The guy actually got paid for 9 months to do his job so it sounds to me like there was a job, it just didn't last as long as the guy had hoped it would."
I agree. I've had jobs where they've hired everyone for a project and suddenly they cancelled the project less than a year later, should we have all received a few million? Hiring and firing is part of business, if you can't fire someone anymore because it's going to cost 2 million dollars then that'll hurt everyone.
Guess the moral of the story is they should have fired him and left him in Dallas and hired someone new in Minnesota. Would have saved the 9 months of salary they paid him and $2 million dollars.
You are correct: you do not need a discreet sound card. I haven't had a discrete sound card in the last few computers I've bought or built or the past several years and games and everything sounded just fine. Every motherboard I've bought since 2004 supported 7.1 channels like the 2004 MSI K8T Neo2 Socket 939 motherboard
The article confirms this:"That brings me to the question we posed at the beginning of this review, which is whether you really need a sound card at all. The simple answer is no. You can get by with integrated audio and live blissfully unaware of what you're missing or stubbornly claim that no difference exists."
"God forbid any company would actually contribute taxes to the infrastructure of the countries in which they operate. I mean, that would just make too much sense."
God forbid a company entice you in with discounts and coupons only to tell you after you checkout that the coupon and discounts didn't apply and you were charged full price.
That's how it feels to be a big company and move all your people and buildings and everything only to find out the tax breaks you thought you were getting no longer apply.
"Most of the time I was wondering what all the fuss (made by USians mostly) was about. Of course, I wasn't conducting scientific analysis, but I'll bet it's not nearly as poor as the reports might make you think. I hear some cities in the US have trouble too..."
As a culture Asians don't usually complain about things, especially the weather which is out of an individual's control, so it would have to be hailing balls of fire before anyone would make a peep. Of course everyone knows Americans love to have civil unrest and fix everything to make our lives better, it's what our country was founded on, so it's to be expected that Americans would notice something wrong and be vocal while the Chinese just shrug their shoulders and stay indoors.
30 years, because keeping the air clean is expensive, and if companies are forced to be clean then they'll have to raise prices which means their prices would no longer be as competitive as they are now and we'd have floods of goods from other countries.
China is going through what the US did in the late 1800s and early 1900s with pollution and child labor, this is their industrial revolution. They'll come out of it eventually but they'll no longer be shipping cheap goods when they do. Britain's industrial revolution took 80 years, I figure we have another 20 to 30 years of cheap goods before Africa begins their industrial revolution.
"sadly the truck driver lost his job due to the DUI, and his two children starved to death"
Or maybe he had suffered from a strokeor was diabetic and my call to the police got the emergency help he needed? We'll never know, but I'm glad I helped get him off the road that day, whatever the reason for the reckless driving.
"instead of linking us to the information directly, we get a link to a poor writeup on a third-rate PR web site, possibly without an actual link to anything more relevant?"
I've reported drunk drivers before. One was a semi. Few minutes after I called I saw the cop quietly pull up behind the semi. The next time that semi swerved into the other lane the cop pulled him over.
I really feel like I saved someone's life that day.
"a well known fraudulent debt collector sent me a letter claiming i owed ~$600 for an old phone bill. i replied via registered letter that this was a fraudulent claim and they were fully aware as such and that i had also sent copies of our correspondence to my state attorney general and that any further attempts at contact by them would result in legal action. never heard from them again."
I know a guy that use to do this. You'd be surprised at the number of people that would just write a check. He specifically targeted elderly, and would pretend to be a debt collection agency collecting for big names like the local electric company or phone company, businesses that everyone would have. He'd use amounts that would not be a felony if he was caught, think he would claim they owed less than $100 but more than $50. If anyone ever called or wrote to complain he would just respond that "they" would have to look up the file and contact them back and he'd take that person off his list.
He was making thousands a week with this scheme. It made me sick and I lost track of him, hope he's in jail by now, but I've always wondered how many people were doing this...
"Read the Wiki you linked: "While the FDCPA generally applies only to third party debt collectors—not internal collectors for an "original creditor""
True, but there's limitations: for example, if someone owes me money I can't run commercials or billboards with their name, picture and address saying "JOHN DOE OWES ME $200 DOLLARS!". There are limitations, and I think posting information or contacting someone's friends and family on Facebook would be considered one of those limitations.
After all, don't all of those collector calls begin with "This is a personal business matter for YOUR NAME..." If they were not legally required to have that message I'm pretty sure the voicemail would be "JOHN DOE YOU OWE FORD $200! PAY US OR WE TAKE YOUR CAR!"
"You obviously didn't fly after 9/11. In fact, the full body scanning program began under the Bush Administration."
I flew out of two international airports earlier this year. No body scanners then, but I've read that they have since been installed, and what administration are we under?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, they search through slashdot posts for people asking "how they detect pirated copies?"
Because if it doesn't work the pirates will continue to work at it until it does work. This way the pirates believe the game is working properly and they disrupt it.
Believe it or not, most pirates don't sit there and play through the games they just cracked. The ones that do the pirating usually do it so they can disrupt it with their name attached saying "We're the first to hack XYZ". This is why Razor 1911 has a wiki page, because they're so damn famous.
"Question: Why exactly would you WANT this?"
Seriously? I guess you're serious, but this comes from the "why do I want a color screen/camera/internet/touchscreen on my phone" crowd.
Here's a shocker: people play games on their phones. Angry Birds has been purchased by 6.5 million people. That's a lot, and that's not even a good game. EA makes iPhone games like SimCity, Need for Speed, Spore and Command and Conquer Red Alert. Square Enix makes a little game called Final Fantasy. Yes, that Final Fantasy. the real final fantasy. Even small developers are making a million dollars a month off iPhone games.
Sony has no choice: iPhone had 19% of the portable software revenue in 2009 compared to the PSP's 11%. That's amazing for a device that was only 2 years old at the time, that's triple the 5% the iPhone had in 2008.
As for batteries running dead... well, that happens. You can run down your battery watching Youtube videos or constantly checking Facebook. The "think about the battery!" excuse is played out, people said the same thing when they added color screens to phones and again when cameras were added and again when giant LCD touchscreens were added. If you don't like it, don't buy a smartphone or buy a case that charges the phone.
"I would quote the relevant part but Chrome doesn't seem to like pasting in Slashdot's comment box."
/. did to make the change but I haven't been able to paste into slashdot using chrome except in the polls, for whatever reason it works there.
I've noticed that too! It's been like that for a good 6 months now. I don't know what
I've been wanting to report it but slashdot doesn't really have an obvious place to report website bugs. Real shame because it's annoying, I've been having to type everything into notepad and copy-paste it over into the comment box because it'll take a copy-paste but only if you paste everything in.
"Apparently most slashdotters do math on a daily basis. I can't recall the last time I needed to do integrals - in fact, if you had asked me 5 minutes ago how to calculate the area under a curve, I would have needed a trip to google/wolfram to look it up."
I haven't done any calculus in XY years but I guarantee you if someone asked "how do I figure out the area under a curve" I'd eventually answer "Calculus", at least before I wrote a medical journal about it and submit it for peer review. I mean he quotes the first chapter of my old calculus book almost exactly: "In Tai's Model, the total area under a curve is computed by dividing the area under the curve between two designated values on the X-axis (abscissas) into small segments (rectangles and triangles) whose areas can be accurately calculated from their respective geometrical formulas. The total sum of these individual areas thus represents the total area under the curve."
Sorry but this dr deserves to be shot, next thing he'll be figuring out how to measure the sides of a triangle given then lengths of the other two sides.
"If they really knew what they wanted, they wouldn't need a programmer - they'd need a contract fulfilled for a specific task. If you say that crap, you're just a bullshit marketing guy."
/., shouldn't I be a coding guru? But of course, but it's more cost effective for me to outsource than do it myself. It's like paying someone to mow the lawn, yes I could do it myself but I have better things to do with my time.
EXACTLY!
I had an idea and "just need(ed) a programmer". Did I call a unversity? Hell no, only an idiot would do that. I went online and hired a freelancer! Paid him for what I needed done and continue to pay him on a regular basis to expand on the idea. I've already made 10x more off the idea than what I've paid him in total and couldn't be happier with the success of my idea.
I'm sure you're asking why hire someone? I'm on
I think this head of the CS department is full of it, if idiots are calling him asking "hey can I get one of your students to do programming for free?" then he needs to tell them to f*(k off, but don't bash "idea people". Maybe if this professor could get a clue (or an idea) he could hire out his students as freelancers and make a few $$$$ on the side if his phone is really ringing off the hook enough for him to be ranting about it on his blog.
All I want to know is how much the games will be, and since it's running Android will everyone be able to make games for this or will it be locked down in some manner?
"I am still predicting plenty will buy a volt, the prius has already proven that a large portion of the population is bad at math."
At least the Volt makes financial sense as long as you don't usually drive too much further than 40 miles a day, but even if I drove 80 miles a day I calculate I'd still fill up less than once a week.
"placing ads of naked hippies should really come first."
And for that reason alone I completely support PETA. (NSFW probably NSFW)
"Getting multiple browser support right takes time, getting IE support right even longer."
No, no and... no.
Like it or not IE is still 47% of the internet. Nobody really likes this, but it's a fact of life, and to be the new guy on the block and already tell people they're not welcome doesn't make you popular, it turns you into the lonely loser or crazy cat lady. If they're playing these little browser games now I hate to see what they're going to do when they become popular.
And we thought facebook was bad...
"the "hold out for perfection and scorn anything that isn't perfect" model is popular with many slashdotters."
Isn't perfect? It's full of landmines. That's like buying a few acres and finding out it's covered in landmines and after you're done screaming at your real estate agent they turn to you and say "well I know it isn't perfect but..."
This isn't glass-half-empty, this is glass-smashed-on-floor-buy-new-glass. Diaspora had cross-site scripting vulnerabilities that dated back to the 90s.
I've heard the rumors that Facebook is selling data but if they are I haven't noticed it. Honestly I see nothing wrong with facebook.... yet
You're modded Funny but really this is Insightful.
"I would rather not use something that has contained vulnerabilities caused by a failure to follow basic good practice (I.e. incompetent developers)."
Agreed. Diaspora was revealed on Sept 16th and the very next day major security holes were found. Not minor ones, "many show-stopping issues": cross-site scripting — attack vulnerabilities, a session token that's easy to steal, a lack of user input filtering, and repeated errors when a null character is entered into web fields.
These are huge and very well documented security violations dating back to the 90s. Anyone want to bet how many days before we find security vulnerabilities in this latest release?
This is open source, meaning people are going to be installing it that are not security experts and they expect everything to be done, they're not going to want to be pouring over code for security holes or installing MAJOR PATCH RELEASE every day.
I think a open source social networking site might work but obviously needs to be done by programmers with experience, not a few kids that took some CS classes at University and thought they could remake Facebook. They should have taken that $200,000 and hired real programmers.
"I think that 6 or maybe even 12 months severance should suffice in this situation. The guy actually got paid for 9 months to do his job so it sounds to me like there was a job, it just didn't last as long as the guy had hoped it would."
I agree. I've had jobs where they've hired everyone for a project and suddenly they cancelled the project less than a year later, should we have all received a few million? Hiring and firing is part of business, if you can't fire someone anymore because it's going to cost 2 million dollars then that'll hurt everyone.
Guess the moral of the story is they should have fired him and left him in Dallas and hired someone new in Minnesota. Would have saved the 9 months of salary they paid him and $2 million dollars.
here's a photo of the guy standing proudly in back of his Minnesota home (are those solar panels on the roof?) "Vaidyanathan has since started his own alternative energy company, Mouli Engineering Inc., and now installs solar panels on commercial and residential buildings."
Yep, guess those are solar panels. Obviously this guy isn't hurting for money, this must be his linkedin and here's his business
You are correct: you do not need a discreet sound card. I haven't had a discrete sound card in the last few computers I've bought or built or the past several years and games and everything sounded just fine. Every motherboard I've bought since 2004 supported 7.1 channels like the 2004 MSI K8T Neo2 Socket 939 motherboard
The article confirms this: "That brings me to the question we posed at the beginning of this review, which is whether you really need a sound card at all. The simple answer is no. You can get by with integrated audio and live blissfully unaware of what you're missing or stubbornly claim that no difference exists."
"God forbid any company would actually contribute taxes to the infrastructure of the countries in which they operate. I mean, that would just make too much sense."
God forbid a company entice you in with discounts and coupons only to tell you after you checkout that the coupon and discounts didn't apply and you were charged full price.
That's how it feels to be a big company and move all your people and buildings and everything only to find out the tax breaks you thought you were getting no longer apply.
"Most of the time I was wondering what all the fuss (made by USians mostly) was about. Of course, I wasn't conducting scientific analysis, but I'll bet it's not nearly as poor as the reports might make you think. I hear some cities in the US have trouble too..."
As a culture Asians don't usually complain about things, especially the weather which is out of an individual's control, so it would have to be hailing balls of fire before anyone would make a peep. Of course everyone knows Americans love to have civil unrest and fix everything to make our lives better, it's what our country was founded on, so it's to be expected that Americans would notice something wrong and be vocal while the Chinese just shrug their shoulders and stay indoors.
"When will the same happen in China?"
30 years, because keeping the air clean is expensive, and if companies are forced to be clean then they'll have to raise prices which means their prices would no longer be as competitive as they are now and we'd have floods of goods from other countries.
China is going through what the US did in the late 1800s and early 1900s with pollution and child labor, this is their industrial revolution. They'll come out of it eventually but they'll no longer be shipping cheap goods when they do. Britain's industrial revolution took 80 years, I figure we have another 20 to 30 years of cheap goods before Africa begins their industrial revolution.
"sadly the truck driver lost his job due to the DUI, and his two children starved to death"
Or maybe he had suffered from a stroke or was diabetic and my call to the police got the emergency help he needed? We'll never know, but I'm glad I helped get him off the road that day, whatever the reason for the reckless driving.
"instead of linking us to the information directly, we get a link to a poor writeup on a third-rate PR web site, possibly without an actual link to anything more relevant?"
So Engadget is the third-rate PR web site in this case? I hate to burst your bubble, but Engadget gets 4x the visitors that slashdot does, 2 million vs 500k, so really we're the third-rate website
Also slashdot stories are user submitted, so it only makes sense that their would be links to stories written by writers that (hopefully) do research.
I've reported drunk drivers before. One was a semi. Few minutes after I called I saw the cop quietly pull up behind the semi. The next time that semi swerved into the other lane the cop pulled him over.
I really feel like I saved someone's life that day.
"The left hates China because of their disgusting intolerance of any human rights"
You mean like displaying the corpses of political prisoners in Body Worlds? (second link, NSFW) (third link)
I wonder when I can see Cheng Jianping in Body Worlds?
"a well known fraudulent debt collector sent me a letter claiming i owed ~$600 for an old phone bill. i replied via registered letter that this was a fraudulent claim and they were fully aware as such and that i had also sent copies of our correspondence to my state attorney general and that any further attempts at contact by them would result in legal action. never heard from them again."
I know a guy that use to do this. You'd be surprised at the number of people that would just write a check. He specifically targeted elderly, and would pretend to be a debt collection agency collecting for big names like the local electric company or phone company, businesses that everyone would have. He'd use amounts that would not be a felony if he was caught, think he would claim they owed less than $100 but more than $50. If anyone ever called or wrote to complain he would just respond that "they" would have to look up the file and contact them back and he'd take that person off his list.
He was making thousands a week with this scheme. It made me sick and I lost track of him, hope he's in jail by now, but I've always wondered how many people were doing this...
"Read the Wiki you linked: "While the FDCPA generally applies only to third party debt collectors—not internal collectors for an "original creditor""
True, but there's limitations: for example, if someone owes me money I can't run commercials or billboards with their name, picture and address saying "JOHN DOE OWES ME $200 DOLLARS!". There are limitations, and I think posting information or contacting someone's friends and family on Facebook would be considered one of those limitations.
After all, don't all of those collector calls begin with "This is a personal business matter for YOUR NAME..." If they were not legally required to have that message I'm pretty sure the voicemail would be "JOHN DOE YOU OWE FORD $200! PAY US OR WE TAKE YOUR CAR!"
I just read that it is illegal for voicemails to say it is a personal business matter, they must state that the call is an attempt to collect a debt.
"You obviously didn't fly after 9/11. In fact, the full body scanning program began under the Bush Administration."
I flew out of two international airports earlier this year. No body scanners then, but I've read that they have since been installed, and what administration are we under?