alright, my uncharitable answer got modded down, and it was fairly mean. So here's an actual explanation, by way of analogy.
Imagine a xerox machine instead of your card reader. Lots of sheets of paper go through there. From time to time, a small section of paper or some bits of toner might flake off of the sheets going through. This isn't likely to happen very much, and the pieces are likely to be miniscule, but the same can be said for the magnetic reader.
Could you open up the xerox machine, retrieve those bits and reconstruct useful information about the texts that had gone through the machine? Almost certainly not. Same thing with your hypothetical scenario.
If you want to worry about your card getting stolen, restaurants are the place to worry. Wait staff make very little money and can easily run your card through a hand held, battery-powered card reader that collects numbers. Usually they'd be paid to do this by somebody else. Fake ATMs are also a concern.
This rumor has been reported elsewhere previously -- see here. The idea is that the release will more-or-less be a Halo 2 expansion pack, with the engine optimized to take advantage of the new hardware. It'll be the same basic game, though.
Not that Halo 2 was so different from Halo 1, though. So perhaps they will call it Halo 3, anyway.
Bank of America has rolled out new color touchscreen ATMs in the DC/Metro area that retrieve user preferences based on the inserted card. You have to set them the first time, of course, but then it'll pull it up automatically. In addition to language choice, it also tracks whether you want receipts (and for which transactions) and some other preferences (how much money you want when you hit "fast cash").
It's a decent system, but it's sloooow compared to the old monochrome monitors. And worse: the biggest problem is the touchscreens break all the time.
Still, the general idea seems right. Keeping the GUID on the card is the right idea.
How f*%&$^ hard is it to press the pick-up (X) button when it says so on your screen?
That's the thing -- I run through a pile of weapons and suddenly see, say, the shotgun blue graphic pop up. Ooo! Better get that. So I back up. Hmm. No blue icon. Better look at the ground and find i--POP. Dead. More easily differentiated weapons would make this a lot easier -- I could be ready to hit X when I run over them instead of being surprised at what's at the bottom of that pile of black polygons.
If you want to play JUST deathmatches, there's a setting called TEAM SLAYER, and then one called SLAYER. go play and level up.
I think you're thinking of Rumble Pit; Rumble Pit is NOT the same thing as Slayer. While it's mostly Slayer, right now there are games of Rumble Swords, Rumble Rockets, Oddball and King of the Hill all grouped within this playlist. The Rumble Training playlist includes the execrable Phantom King gametype as well.
I don't think I'm being that unreasonable -- I don't like variants Rumble Swords that much, but I'll play it without complaint. It's basically still Slayer, you're still trying to kill your opponents. But you can't say that about, say, King of the Hill -- the goal is not to be a better Slayer player, it's to hold a position. Frankly, Slayer skills don't even matter that much. Toss a couple grenades, wait for the action to settle down and then try your luck.
I'm not saying people who win King of the Hill aren't skilled, but I'm at least a decent deathmatch player (lvl 10 on the Rumble Pit list right now), and I stink at King. I don't see why I should be forced to play a game I don't like (and penalized, rankings-wise) when it really is a distinct game from the one I paid for.
Okay, you're preaching to the choir. I love the game and enjoy using all the weapons. A firefight where you have to switch between single and double barrel sg? That's some good gaming.
But it *was* 2.5D. In the Doom engines, two objects can't occupy the same X,Y coordinates even if they have a different Z coordinate. I don't know if zdoom and the other updated engines have fixed this, but originally they just had the illusion of height. Imagining each item/character as a column extending infinitely up and down presents a picture closer to how the game works.
Well, I agree that Halo is *massively* overrated. Give me Q1, Q3A or Doom2 any day. Console gaming is so much easier, though...
I disagree that "Best game evah" needs to be more than an FPS. I think that's just a question of taste. I know plenty of people who don't care for them, but for me there really isn't a more enjoyable genre.
there's the matter of the variable respawn times. For those of you unaware: every item can respawn in a different amount of time on every map. Bungie did this to let them fine-tune the map's balance, but it removes (or makes less accessible, at least) the very highest level of FPS play: when you get good enough, every sound on a map tells you where the other guy is and what he's doing, and you know where the action is about to be based on when each item is going to respawn. Changing those times from map to map pushes this matter closer to the realm of guesswork, removing a major strategic element from gameplay.
I just don't get the fascination with Halo/Halo 2. Compared to games like HalfLife, Unreal, Quake 1-3, or Doom 1-3, Halo to me seemed like a rather "corporate" effort: the Halos were competently implemented and offered pretty good game play, but ultimately, I didn't find them as entertaining.
I agree completely. But the convenience and universality of Halo makes up for this. I love Q1, Q3A and Doom2 to death, but how many of my friends can I convince to play them? Not that many. There's a learning curve, and hardware requirements (admittedly meager for those games, but many of my friends have Macs), and it's difficult to play them in the same room without going to the trouble of moving hardware.
So I sucked it up, said goodbye to my beloved mouse and WASD keys, subscribed to XBox Live and have been enjoying myself. But it doesn't hurt to complain bitterly about Halo's obvious shortcomings -- too many people are ignorant of the superior games that preceded it. I'd hate to have Halo remain the gold standard for the next generation of console FPS's.
I think you may not have played these games enough to really understand. Once you attain the level where you know when each item on a map will respawn, and what every tiny noise means (revealing where your opponent is and what he's doing), the game becomes a significant strategic challenge. Add to that the need for split-second reflexes and the ability to instantly respond to novel situations and you end up with an experience that I and many others think is *far* more compelling than, say, the endless clicking of Diablo.
Please, don't drone on about how great Goldeneye was unless you've really given action FPS's a chance. Everyone fondly remembers their first love, but if you go back to the yearbook you might be surprised at the acne and snaggle-teeth. And frankly, we all thought she was kind of a slut. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you.
Goldeneye was an impressive achievement given the N64's technical limitations, but it was not a very good FPS. The textures were muddy, the weapons and characters tiny, the levels large and repetitive, movement was slow, and the weapons insufficiently differentiated (firing faster/harder was really the extent of the creators' imagination).
But I know tons of people who love this game. Why? It was the first deathmatch they played, and deathmatch in general is really, unbelievably fun. Personally, my friends and I pulled some spare modems together in high school, threw them in the box of the kid with two phone lines and used some obscure software to play 3-way doom2 deathmatch until the wee hours. Man, I could rhapsodize for hours about what a great level Q2DM1 -- I still think it's the apogee of FPS level design (although quake's dm3 and dm4 certainly gave it a run for its money).
But you don't want to hear about that. You point out (rightly) that the graphics are terrible by modern standards, only the rocket launcher and double barreled shotgun were worth carrying, the four player limit was too restrictive, the game was only 2.5D, the green player on dialup games had a noticeable advantage, and anyone who knew the BFG/wall-push sound exploit could make the game really not-fun, really fast.
So please: a little objectivity. I'm glad you love GoldenEye. I'm sure you and your friends got really good at it, attaining levels of mastery you never thought possible as the game SEEMED to reveal layer after layer of unanticipated complexity. I'm sure it occuppied your thoughts and haunted your dreams.
But realistically, it was a bit of a steaming pile compared to the genre's greatest titles.
Okay, it's got attractive graphics and great networking capabilities. But in many ways, Halo 2 is far behind the times.
The level design varies wildly -- Zanzibar's a work of art, but too many levels feature a single all-important weapon or kill zone, control of which determines the entire game. Architectural features are frequently annoying: it's very easy to get stuck on tiny decorative filligrees while strafing backward in a furious firefight. Spawn points frequently throw the player into useless back corners of the level, and spawns and teleports can result in unpredictable viewing angles so that it becomes difficult to quickly orient one's self. The "destructible environments" are a joke: shoving around barrels does not equal a lifelike simulation. They just get underfoot.
The control configuration is lousy -- why can I not bind my own custom setup in this day and age? Some of us continue to hate Microsoft/Sony's awkward thumbstick button setup, and all too often in an intense firefight I end up zooming in or crouching because I'm holding the controller too tightly. There's also no good reason why varying horizontal and vertical sensitivity isn't offered.
The weapons are frequently small and hard to identify, and the radius in which they can be picked up means you can't see a weapon as you try to pick it up. Find a rocket launcher in a pile of SMGs? Good luck not getting punched to death as you try to sort through the mess. Similarly, allowing unloaded weapons to be dropped and picked up creates a hazard to anyone who's trying to grab a last-second advantage in a firefight.
The multiplayer on XBox Live is great, but I'm pretty sick of the stupid game variants. I appreciate that Bungie is proud of a flexible multiplayer system, and that some people like playing King of the Hill or Oddball or whatever other variants they might like. Not me, though. I like playing Deathmatch, and I enjoy competing seriously for my ranking. So why am I forced to play "Phantom Crazy King" and other ridiculous nonsense? These gametypes have nothing to do with deathmatch. It's like signing up for a bridge tournament and being told the semifinal round will consist of a game of Parcheesi.
Weapon balance in much improved over the first game, but as I mentioned, it's too frequently the case that the first person to get a lucky run with the sword ends up pulling ahead by ten and closing out the game. Finally, the air-vent system on levels like Foundation is abysmal. I realize they're trying not to rip off Q3A/ROTT (although they do anyway -- there are jump pads elsewhere), but the air current effect prevents players from jumping down from some areas.
It's this weird insistence on realism that's the game's biggest problem. Is a one-punch shot in the back realistic? Is the ability to fall infinite distances? To jump over your opponents' head? To teleport? No. Halo is an arcade-style shooter, and that's the way I like it. So why insist on making the dreary, tiny gun models lie on the ground? Why the drab, boring textures (Colossus, anyone?)? Why is there a two-weapon limit?
Everyone plays it, so I will, too -- it's the only real option for an arcade FPS experience on the consoles. I like being able to sit down at a friend-of-a-friend's house and play. I don't want to have to drop hundreds of dollars on new videocards all the damn time, and I don't want to have to convince my friends to learn the mouse and keyboard, then stick with it until they're competitive. Halo is the standard.
I've been working in the MS world for quite a while now. I won't deny that it is frequently irritating, but.NET is a genuinely good product. My experience with java is limited (some JSP development, primarily under Tomcat), but it was uniformly very frustrating.
"Digital divide" generally refers to the gap in computer ownership and use across different demographics in a society. A prerequisite for linux impacting that divide in India would be getting disadvantaged folks enough income to purchase computers in the first place. The situation is not one such that Windows license fees are the only thing holding back Calcutta's poor from jumping on the net.
FOSS is great and all, and I agree that it can change the world, but it's not going to feed anybody or get them immunized.
I'm glad to see Linux adoption by other countries' governments -- yes, even their militaries -- but the title to this story is just ridiculous. The idea that FOSS can "bridge" the staggering gulf between rich and poor in India just beggars belief. Let's not fool ourselves by pretending that Linux means anything to the citizens of India beyond the elite. Maybe in a few decades...
I'm getting terribly confused about appropriate slashdot dogma. First we're terrified about having our pictures taken; now we're upset that we can't take other people's pictures. Which is it?
Honestly, this is very silly. Are the./ editors really intent on being paranoid alarmists regardless of the actual situation?
a) For an individual torrent, yes. But that's just one infringement. With Exeem you can plausibly identify all users over a large section of network at once. That'll make the process much easier, instead of the serial, torrent-by-torrent approach that would be required in the past.
b) Not for my intents and purposes
P2P requires standardization, and standardization allows for tracking. Yes, an aspect of BT is centralized, but on a per-torrent basis. So I still think the existing setup is better -- not for the people running the trackers, I suppose, but for the users.
In any case, it sounds like Exeem is an adware-riddled piece of junk, so the point is somewhat moot.
see the IPs of everyone downloading that torrent for as long as you're connected, you mean. Build a client that takes advantage of the Exeem network and see the IPs of everyone downloading any torrent over as long a time period as you'd like.
Yes, I'm aware of the standardized port range. However, you can specify any other range you'd like and the tracker will make sure it works. The tracker can also be set up to run on an arbitrary port as specified in the.torrent file.
So while a lot of BT users can be found by the ??AA, smart users have changed their default port range and can only be identified by going to the tracker. Even if the BT portion of this app remains port-agnostic, the.torrent distribution and peer discovery portion of it is almost certain to run on a specific port.
Honeypots are admittedly a concern with the BT system. But setting up a honeypot and collecting IPs isn't the industry's preferred method -- you have to give away content, and you only get evidence of infringements one torrent at a time. This is a very serial procedure, without a great return in prosecutions for the effort it takes.
By contrast, if there's a well-defined port or ports, the industry can just monitor traffic on it for a period of weeks or months using either legal pressure on an ISP or a custom client, collect tons of infringements per IP and start back up the subpoena factory.
You're right that the industry will always go after pirates, but the Exeem architecture makes it much easier to automate the process. There'll be no super-sites to get sued, but the legal exposure gets shifted to the user.
Hey! No need for trackers! Hurrah! Peers can just find each other automatically! Gosh, I wonder how that works -- could it be a standardized port range? And could that make it incredibly easy to throttle, track and persecute BitTorrent use?!?!
If my hunch is correct, these guys are morons. The nominal point of Exeem is to reduce the ability of copyright owners to sue pirates. Actually, it'll make it much easier for BigChampagne and others to track down users and prosecute them. Way to go, guys.
Please note that I'm not making a moral judgment about piracy -- please withhold the flames. My point is simply that the Exeem architecture, while created to fix BT's legal vulnerability, is actually likely to enhance it.
PGP a message then steganographically insert it into an alt.binaries.whatever post. This makes it easy to anonymously broadcast a message worldwide that can only be found and retrieved by its intended recipient, but can be picked up at any convenient time, from pretty much anywhere.
I'm no expert on steganography, but my understanding is that automatically detecting its present depends on statistical anomalies that presumably wouldn't exist in a well-encrypted message (which will appear to be random noise).
Slashdot Mirror
look through the personalization menus a little bit more. I'm pretty sure it remembers my language preference.
If you don't configure it to, though, it will keep asking you every time.
alright, my uncharitable answer got modded down, and it was fairly mean. So here's an actual explanation, by way of analogy.
Imagine a xerox machine instead of your card reader. Lots of sheets of paper go through there. From time to time, a small section of paper or some bits of toner might flake off of the sheets going through. This isn't likely to happen very much, and the pieces are likely to be miniscule, but the same can be said for the magnetic reader.
Could you open up the xerox machine, retrieve those bits and reconstruct useful information about the texts that had gone through the machine? Almost certainly not. Same thing with your hypothetical scenario.
If you want to worry about your card getting stolen, restaurants are the place to worry. Wait staff make very little money and can easily run your card through a hand held, battery-powered card reader that collects numbers. Usually they'd be paid to do this by somebody else. Fake ATMs are also a concern.
Not that Halo 2 was so different from Halo 1, though. So perhaps they will call it Halo 3, anyway.
No.
It's a decent system, but it's sloooow compared to the old monochrome monitors. And worse: the biggest problem is the touchscreens break all the time.
Still, the general idea seems right. Keeping the GUID on the card is the right idea.
That's the thing -- I run through a pile of weapons and suddenly see, say, the shotgun blue graphic pop up. Ooo! Better get that. So I back up. Hmm. No blue icon. Better look at the ground and find i--POP. Dead. More easily differentiated weapons would make this a lot easier -- I could be ready to hit X when I run over them instead of being surprised at what's at the bottom of that pile of black polygons.
If you want to play JUST deathmatches, there's a setting called TEAM SLAYER, and then one called SLAYER. go play and level up.I think you're thinking of Rumble Pit; Rumble Pit is NOT the same thing as Slayer. While it's mostly Slayer, right now there are games of Rumble Swords, Rumble Rockets, Oddball and King of the Hill all grouped within this playlist. The Rumble Training playlist includes the execrable Phantom King gametype as well.
I don't think I'm being that unreasonable -- I don't like variants Rumble Swords that much, but I'll play it without complaint. It's basically still Slayer, you're still trying to kill your opponents. But you can't say that about, say, King of the Hill -- the goal is not to be a better Slayer player, it's to hold a position. Frankly, Slayer skills don't even matter that much. Toss a couple grenades, wait for the action to settle down and then try your luck.
I'm not saying people who win King of the Hill aren't skilled, but I'm at least a decent deathmatch player (lvl 10 on the Rumble Pit list right now), and I stink at King. I don't see why I should be forced to play a game I don't like (and penalized, rankings-wise) when it really is a distinct game from the one I paid for.
Okay, you're preaching to the choir. I love the game and enjoy using all the weapons. A firefight where you have to switch between single and double barrel sg? That's some good gaming.
But it *was* 2.5D. In the Doom engines, two objects can't occupy the same X,Y coordinates even if they have a different Z coordinate. I don't know if zdoom and the other updated engines have fixed this, but originally they just had the illusion of height. Imagining each item/character as a column extending infinitely up and down presents a picture closer to how the game works.
Well, I agree that Halo is *massively* overrated. Give me Q1, Q3A or Doom2 any day. Console gaming is so much easier, though...
I disagree that "Best game evah" needs to be more than an FPS. I think that's just a question of taste. I know plenty of people who don't care for them, but for me there really isn't a more enjoyable genre.
there's the matter of the variable respawn times. For those of you unaware: every item can respawn in a different amount of time on every map. Bungie did this to let them fine-tune the map's balance, but it removes (or makes less accessible, at least) the very highest level of FPS play: when you get good enough, every sound on a map tells you where the other guy is and what he's doing, and you know where the action is about to be based on when each item is going to respawn. Changing those times from map to map pushes this matter closer to the realm of guesswork, removing a major strategic element from gameplay.
I agree completely. But the convenience and universality of Halo makes up for this. I love Q1, Q3A and Doom2 to death, but how many of my friends can I convince to play them? Not that many. There's a learning curve, and hardware requirements (admittedly meager for those games, but many of my friends have Macs), and it's difficult to play them in the same room without going to the trouble of moving hardware.
So I sucked it up, said goodbye to my beloved mouse and WASD keys, subscribed to XBox Live and have been enjoying myself. But it doesn't hurt to complain bitterly about Halo's obvious shortcomings -- too many people are ignorant of the superior games that preceded it. I'd hate to have Halo remain the gold standard for the next generation of console FPS's.
I think you may not have played these games enough to really understand. Once you attain the level where you know when each item on a map will respawn, and what every tiny noise means (revealing where your opponent is and what he's doing), the game becomes a significant strategic challenge. Add to that the need for split-second reflexes and the ability to instantly respond to novel situations and you end up with an experience that I and many others think is *far* more compelling than, say, the endless clicking of Diablo.
Please, don't drone on about how great Goldeneye was unless you've really given action FPS's a chance. Everyone fondly remembers their first love, but if you go back to the yearbook you might be surprised at the acne and snaggle-teeth. And frankly, we all thought she was kind of a slut. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you.
Goldeneye was an impressive achievement given the N64's technical limitations, but it was not a very good FPS. The textures were muddy, the weapons and characters tiny, the levels large and repetitive, movement was slow, and the weapons insufficiently differentiated (firing faster/harder was really the extent of the creators' imagination).
But I know tons of people who love this game. Why? It was the first deathmatch they played, and deathmatch in general is really, unbelievably fun. Personally, my friends and I pulled some spare modems together in high school, threw them in the box of the kid with two phone lines and used some obscure software to play 3-way doom2 deathmatch until the wee hours. Man, I could rhapsodize for hours about what a great level Q2DM1 -- I still think it's the apogee of FPS level design (although quake's dm3 and dm4 certainly gave it a run for its money).
But you don't want to hear about that. You point out (rightly) that the graphics are terrible by modern standards, only the rocket launcher and double barreled shotgun were worth carrying, the four player limit was too restrictive, the game was only 2.5D, the green player on dialup games had a noticeable advantage, and anyone who knew the BFG/wall-push sound exploit could make the game really not-fun, really fast.
So please: a little objectivity. I'm glad you love GoldenEye. I'm sure you and your friends got really good at it, attaining levels of mastery you never thought possible as the game SEEMED to reveal layer after layer of unanticipated complexity. I'm sure it occuppied your thoughts and haunted your dreams.
But realistically, it was a bit of a steaming pile compared to the genre's greatest titles.
Okay, it's got attractive graphics and great networking capabilities. But in many ways, Halo 2 is far behind the times.
The level design varies wildly -- Zanzibar's a work of art, but too many levels feature a single all-important weapon or kill zone, control of which determines the entire game. Architectural features are frequently annoying: it's very easy to get stuck on tiny decorative filligrees while strafing backward in a furious firefight. Spawn points frequently throw the player into useless back corners of the level, and spawns and teleports can result in unpredictable viewing angles so that it becomes difficult to quickly orient one's self. The "destructible environments" are a joke: shoving around barrels does not equal a lifelike simulation. They just get underfoot.
The control configuration is lousy -- why can I not bind my own custom setup in this day and age? Some of us continue to hate Microsoft/Sony's awkward thumbstick button setup, and all too often in an intense firefight I end up zooming in or crouching because I'm holding the controller too tightly. There's also no good reason why varying horizontal and vertical sensitivity isn't offered.
The weapons are frequently small and hard to identify, and the radius in which they can be picked up means you can't see a weapon as you try to pick it up. Find a rocket launcher in a pile of SMGs? Good luck not getting punched to death as you try to sort through the mess. Similarly, allowing unloaded weapons to be dropped and picked up creates a hazard to anyone who's trying to grab a last-second advantage in a firefight.
The multiplayer on XBox Live is great, but I'm pretty sick of the stupid game variants. I appreciate that Bungie is proud of a flexible multiplayer system, and that some people like playing King of the Hill or Oddball or whatever other variants they might like. Not me, though. I like playing Deathmatch, and I enjoy competing seriously for my ranking. So why am I forced to play "Phantom Crazy King" and other ridiculous nonsense? These gametypes have nothing to do with deathmatch. It's like signing up for a bridge tournament and being told the semifinal round will consist of a game of Parcheesi.
Weapon balance in much improved over the first game, but as I mentioned, it's too frequently the case that the first person to get a lucky run with the sword ends up pulling ahead by ten and closing out the game. Finally, the air-vent system on levels like Foundation is abysmal. I realize they're trying not to rip off Q3A/ROTT (although they do anyway -- there are jump pads elsewhere), but the air current effect prevents players from jumping down from some areas.
It's this weird insistence on realism that's the game's biggest problem. Is a one-punch shot in the back realistic? Is the ability to fall infinite distances? To jump over your opponents' head? To teleport? No. Halo is an arcade-style shooter, and that's the way I like it. So why insist on making the dreary, tiny gun models lie on the ground? Why the drab, boring textures (Colossus, anyone?)? Why is there a two-weapon limit?
Everyone plays it, so I will, too -- it's the only real option for an arcade FPS experience on the consoles. I like being able to sit down at a friend-of-a-friend's house and play. I don't want to have to drop hundreds of dollars on new videocards all the damn time, and I don't want to have to convince my friends to learn the mouse and keyboard, then stick with it until they're competitive. Halo is the standard.
But it could easily be better.
I believe
I've been working in the MS world for quite a while now. I won't deny that it is frequently irritating, but .NET is a genuinely good product. My experience with java is limited (some JSP development, primarily under Tomcat), but it was uniformly very frustrating.
"Digital divide" generally refers to the gap in computer ownership and use across different demographics in a society. A prerequisite for linux impacting that divide in India would be getting disadvantaged folks enough income to purchase computers in the first place. The situation is not one such that Windows license fees are the only thing holding back Calcutta's poor from jumping on the net. FOSS is great and all, and I agree that it can change the world, but it's not going to feed anybody or get them immunized.
I'm glad to see Linux adoption by other countries' governments -- yes, even their militaries -- but the title to this story is just ridiculous. The idea that FOSS can "bridge" the staggering gulf between rich and poor in India just beggars belief. Let's not fool ourselves by pretending that Linux means anything to the citizens of India beyond the elite. Maybe in a few decades...
I'm getting terribly confused about appropriate slashdot dogma. First we're terrified about having our pictures taken; now we're upset that we can't take other people's pictures. Which is it?
./ editors really intent on being paranoid alarmists regardless of the actual situation?
Honestly, this is very silly. Are the
a) For an individual torrent, yes. But that's just one infringement. With Exeem you can plausibly identify all users over a large section of network at once. That'll make the process much easier, instead of the serial, torrent-by-torrent approach that would be required in the past.
b) Not for my intents and purposes
P2P requires standardization, and standardization allows for tracking. Yes, an aspect of BT is centralized, but on a per-torrent basis. So I still think the existing setup is better -- not for the people running the trackers, I suppose, but for the users.
In any case, it sounds like Exeem is an adware-riddled piece of junk, so the point is somewhat moot.
see the IPs of everyone downloading that torrent for as long as you're connected, you mean. Build a client that takes advantage of the Exeem network and see the IPs of everyone downloading any torrent over as long a time period as you'd like.
Yes, I'm aware of the standardized port range. However, you can specify any other range you'd like and the tracker will make sure it works. The tracker can also be set up to run on an arbitrary port as specified in the .torrent file.
.torrent distribution and peer discovery portion of it is almost certain to run on a specific port.
So while a lot of BT users can be found by the ??AA, smart users have changed their default port range and can only be identified by going to the tracker. Even if the BT portion of this app remains port-agnostic, the
Honeypots are admittedly a concern with the BT system. But setting up a honeypot and collecting IPs isn't the industry's preferred method -- you have to give away content, and you only get evidence of infringements one torrent at a time. This is a very serial procedure, without a great return in prosecutions for the effort it takes.
By contrast, if there's a well-defined port or ports, the industry can just monitor traffic on it for a period of weeks or months using either legal pressure on an ISP or a custom client, collect tons of infringements per IP and start back up the subpoena factory.
You're right that the industry will always go after pirates, but the Exeem architecture makes it much easier to automate the process. There'll be no super-sites to get sued, but the legal exposure gets shifted to the user.
edit the above: "prosecute" BitTorrent use. Persecute certainly does imply a moral judgment. Sorry for the malapropism.
Hey! No need for trackers! Hurrah! Peers can just find each other automatically! Gosh, I wonder how that works -- could it be a standardized port range? And could that make it incredibly easy to throttle, track and persecute BitTorrent use?!?!
If my hunch is correct, these guys are morons. The nominal point of Exeem is to reduce the ability of copyright owners to sue pirates. Actually, it'll make it much easier for BigChampagne and others to track down users and prosecute them. Way to go, guys.
Please note that I'm not making a moral judgment about piracy -- please withhold the flames. My point is simply that the Exeem architecture, while created to fix BT's legal vulnerability, is actually likely to enhance it.
PGP a message then steganographically insert it into an alt.binaries.whatever post. This makes it easy to anonymously broadcast a message worldwide that can only be found and retrieved by its intended recipient, but can be picked up at any convenient time, from pretty much anywhere.
I'm no expert on steganography, but my understanding is that automatically detecting its present depends on statistical anomalies that presumably wouldn't exist in a well-encrypted message (which will appear to be random noise).