"Oh, but this is single player, and you can forge the response on the connection or hack the client. Yes. So maybe single player games aren't the way to get profit. Just because your business model sucks doesn't mean that you need to call us all rapists."
As someone who regularly downloads games and software off the internet you make me sick. If I dont like something I delete it and move on. If I like it enough to keep it I GO BUY IT. I don't think that is unreasonable. And dont say you dont have the money. If you dont have the money to eat and you steal food thats one thing, but stealing a video game you can't afford is pretty lame. Its people like you that ruin P2P and the sharing of games for people like me.
And your "authentication" scheme excuse is definatly not the way to go either. It only annoys the people who bought the game. Also Steam is an example of a game that tried that, even for single player. Its a terrible idea. It ruins large lans (or places that just dont have inet) etc.
If you want to download games, music, and movies, more power to you. I do. But GO BUY the stuff you like instead of stealing it and making lame excuses!
You must have not been a gamer long. CDs rot man. Quite literally. Even if you take pretty good care of them. Yeah PS2 games aren't in danger of crapping out just yet, but some of us have 3DOs and Sega Saturns that we got when we were little kids... and little kids don't take care of games. The origial games just won't play on anymore... Good thing I have them backed up....
Besides, last I checked when you buy software you are buying a license not a CD. So long as you are only using one copy of the software on one system at a time you should really be able to have a crate full of backups if you want. At least IMHO.
Well I still paid around $1000 less for my faster computer which also runs a Unix-like operating system. And I didn't buy it because it was pretty and grape
! So Ha!
On a more serious note Mac users are generaly more computer literate than PC users, but thats not all of them. In fact, working in tech support, some of the stupidest people I've ever delt with were on Macs. I recently have fallen in love with Macs for graphic design after I was forced to use them at my college. However, before that I was quite anti-mac for a good reason. In addition to being some of the most annoying people alive "my computer is a new Mac, ok? it didnt break. i spent like $7000 on this. do you even make that in a year? its your service that is broken!" on tech support calls their whole community is a bit annoying. I remember back in high school we had a choice of macs or pcs in our web dev class. I chose a PC and my teacher gave me a 20 minute lecture on how much better Macs were. However, I got my revenge. These were the first iMacs (the ones with nothing internal) and for some reason I discovered playing a CD, having Eric's Ultimate Solitare, and a web browser window open at the same time would instantly crash the Mac, all of them. So every morning before class I would crash every since Mac in the lab. Showed her.
Basically the world is full of morons on computers and Mac users are no better than PC users. They just get a slightly more stable operating system at the expence of being overcharged and not being able to build their own system.
Actually the PS2 is fine so long as you dont smoke around it and lay in in your filthy floor. Every person I know who has had problems with their PS2 was well... cleaning impaired. Its just dust that gets in there 9 times out of 10. A can of Duster sprayed in will usually fix it.
For the record both me and two of my friends have had our PS2s since launch day and they still all run great.
Also, I have seen that problem more and more in X-Boxes. If you are refering to the Disc Read Error or whatever in some games. Not quite as many as PS2s but im seeing more of it. Plus its more annoying because as far as I can tell their is no way to fix it without taking the system apart.
The only console system of this generation that I have seen to not have any real problems is the Gamecube. Mine still runs great.
It doesnt load pop-ups, it doesnt do active-x, i can set the java permissions (by page if needed) and it ACTUALLY listens, installing it on your family's PCs saves you hours of "home tech" time, oh... and their is tabbed browsing. and the tabs don't open by default in firefox you have to tell it to use tabs so you really must have no idea what you are talking about.
IE is not a bad browser. i used it until Firefox. Well actually until Firebird, but still. Before that I think it was the best browser. I mean Mozilla is bloatware and Opera doesn't work right and wants me to PAY? But seriously. Ever since Firefox came out... its the best.
I remember reading once in Road and Track about a guy who robbed an exotic car dealership. He wedged a bit of paper in the lock earlier in the day so he could walk right in the door after they were closed. Unfortunatly he left the peice of paper... which was a parking ticket with his name and addy;)
Really, tho: to what recent widespread non-Windows "attacks" are you referring?
Non-Windows systems are the minority on Joe-Smoe desktops. A very small minority at that. So "widespread non-Windows attacks" are almost an imposibility.
Besides, the average Linux user (and to a degree, the average Mac user) is far more computer literate than an the average Windows user. I mean I like Linux and I like Mac. And both are more secure than Windows by default. That being said, if all the pr0n addicted, computer illeterate, broadband users of the world suddenly switched to Linux I am sure their would be spyware and viruses for it as well.
Regaurdless of thier level of security, Linux and Mac desktop (note, DESKTOP not server) level virus and spyware proggies will always be kept to a minimum. I mean, where is the payoff for the programs creator if 100% system saturation would only be a smudge on the overall computer world? Non-windows systems do enjoy a certain degree of protection simply because they are a minority. I think people often ignor that fact....
Well the GameCube has "backward" abilities of a sort. With the GBA player (which I have/love) you can play gameboy and gameboy advance games. It's kept me playing my GameCube a lot longer than I would have otherwise. Not that the GC doesn't have amazing titles of its own, just not as many of them as I would like. The GB/A title's fill in the gap.
The average windows box has 28 pieces of spyware, a handful of viruses, and untold gobs of privacy invading proprietary gunk on it (such as DRM ware etc).
On top of that they have to run an obnoxious firewall system and memory and resource hogging virus scanner- just to prevent their computer from self-destructing.
Having your computer be that much of a hassle is not my definition of easy. Not to mention that XP and win2k systems still seem to lockup or blue screen quite regularly despite the much touted "stability improvements"...
I dont know what you have on your XP or win2k system, but I've never had any trouble with spyware or viruses on mine. Just run AVG, Firefox, and stay behiend a router and you should be fine. You can also just not run as admin on XP or 2k. Both OSes are quite stable whatever anti-M$ zealots say. My XP box stays up for months at a time on a regular basis.
If you actually pay mild attention to what you put on your PC then you can run a perfectly stable, secture windows OS without spyware and DRM crap.
As a side note... You don't run a firewall? I hope you realize using another OS doesn't mean you don't need one. Unless you are behiend NAT then you can usually get away with it. Maybe I am wrong, but it sounds like your just using this thread as an excuse to flame windows for no good reason to me...
Who says a virus needs access to the entire machine? A virus can propegate itself to other users on the system, other machines on the network/internet, and thrash a user's files. And since I was talking about average computer users (not a corporate server or something) their own files is all they are really going to care about.
And you don't have to run XP or 2k as admin. You can run as a restricted user. You just have to set one up. Which is really no different than Linux. It doesn't come with a useraccount for me. I make one when I am setting it up, or log into root and create one after... If you really think that their are no Mac/Linux security holes I would hate to be part of your network....
It's a fact of life that Microsoft is going to have to own up to if they want to stay on top. They raised the beast, now they need to teach it the rules.
I dunno about all that... Microsoft do have more holes than most other major OSs, but thats really not what leads them to be exploited. If say Linux/OSX was the #1 Joe Consumer OS then it would have virus like this. Because like anything Linux has its faults and if people don't patch their OS, it will remain venerable. And switching morons to Linux or Mac OSX won't fix that problem.
Its really the consumer who needs to step up and take ownership of this issue and learn how to use their machine. I for one run windows and I have not yet (crosses fingers, knocks on wood for future) gotten a virus. I run Firefox and AVG and don't download and run things without scanning them. The situation won't get any better until people start wising up, regaurdless of any move Microsoft makes.
what annoys me is for whatever reason x seams to clear the clipboard automaticall when you exit an app. Like if i copy a URL out of Firefox, close Firefox, and try to paste that URL into Gaim the clipboard is empty. This may not be that big of a deal if you are used to it, but I for one hate clutter and close things the instant I am done with them. Which can be very annoying if it loses what you had in the clipboard (unlike Windows).
Maybe their is a way around this. I can be a *nix noob at times...
I actually have this problem in a way. I used to have Slackware and Windows 2000. Everything worked fine. Then I upgraded to XP Pro which ruined my GRUB install for whatever reason. So I put Fedora Core on there. Now randomly I won't be able to boot into anything. It will just say "GRUB" on the screen and nothing will happen. The only way I found to fix it was to change the boot order of my hds in the BIOS. To something random/different. Its really wierd. This happened on both my old PC (Athlon 2700, AOpen mobo, 200gig SATA drive) and my new PC (P4 3.2GHz, Itel mobo, 200gig SATA drive and 80gig IDE drive). However I never had the problem with Slackware. Fortunatly, I like Fedora enough to stick with it, espically now that I know how to quickly fix the problem...
I don't know if this is related, but oh well... Just thought someone might find it interesting.
as someone who had the unfortunate job of working tech support for a DSL ISP I can tell you first hand that most of the stupidity comes from the customer NOT the tech.
and usually, if we give you a BS answer it is because we think you are a moron who we just want you off our phone/away from us and will probably belive whatever we say. its really not a personal thing. its after about the 1000th "my modem don't work." "sir, is it plugged in?" or something similar conversion you start to hate all of humanity who would dare ask your help.
Their keyboards and mice are, of course, made by Logitech. They are simply branded as Microsoft.
I forget who makes Microsoft mice, but I know its not Logitech. You might be right on the keyboards though. Whoever they are made by rocks. I love my 4 year old 5 button Microsoft Optical Intellimouse. Still runs great and I wouldnt trade it for anything.
...escept for a few thousand dollars... or anything worth a few thousand dollars.... if anyone is interested plz email me... i accept millions too!
This looks like it is no different than the 2Wire service provided by BellSouth. We I worked there we had pretty much the same capabilities (thought Im not really sure we ever TOLD them this lol) so I'd say its probably more to compete with BellSouth now that they are FINALLY offering decent (3mb) speeds in my and other areas.
Its basically for stupid people who want wireless and dunno how to set it up. I'd bet the subscription fee isnt charging you for the service either. Like, once again, when I worked at BellSouth you could have your own modem. You could have our modem. You could do whatever you want. But if you want support for whatever you have, it had better be ours and you had better be paying for whatever you want support on. So as I said... more for stupid people than anything.
after working at bellsouth i can say that applies to them also. but i dont think we ever got anything stolen.
though I'd imagine stealing a DSLAM would be a bit tougher.;)
at any rate i can say that if someone stole equipment that resulted in my internet being down for multiple days... i would spend every minute of every one of those days hunting the bast down!
On windows its Firefox, Gaim, Thunderbird, Filezilla, KazaaLite (yay oldversions.com) and Photoshop. Pretty much in that order.
On Linux it really depends on the distro (because they all come with random stuff now) but usually Mplayer, Java, Limewire, and CrossOver and then all the stuff I put in Crossover.
Slashdot Mirror
from the article:
;)
"... That has helped Linux become the No. 2 operating system worldwide for server computers."
Dumb question, I know, but who exactly is number 1, and what constitutes a server, anyway?
Duh, #1 is "beowulf clusters" of Windows 98 machines being used to send spam
"Piracy is fine."
"Oh, but this is single player, and you can forge the response on the connection or hack the client. Yes. So maybe single player games aren't the way to get profit. Just because your business model sucks doesn't mean that you need to call us all rapists."
As someone who regularly downloads games and software off the internet you make me sick. If I dont like something I delete it and move on. If I like it enough to keep it I GO BUY IT. I don't think that is unreasonable. And dont say you dont have the money. If you dont have the money to eat and you steal food thats one thing, but stealing a video game you can't afford is pretty lame. Its people like you that ruin P2P and the sharing of games for people like me.
And your "authentication" scheme excuse is definatly not the way to go either. It only annoys the people who bought the game. Also Steam is an example of a game that tried that, even for single player. Its a terrible idea. It ruins large lans (or places that just dont have inet) etc.
If you want to download games, music, and movies, more power to you. I do. But GO BUY the stuff you like instead of stealing it and making lame excuses!
Wierd... I have used Firefox forever and I havent seen any issues with Slashdot.... Hm...
You must have not been a gamer long. CDs rot man. Quite literally. Even if you take pretty good care of them. Yeah PS2 games aren't in danger of crapping out just yet, but some of us have 3DOs and Sega Saturns that we got when we were little kids... and little kids don't take care of games. The origial games just won't play on anymore... Good thing I have them backed up....
Besides, last I checked when you buy software you are buying a license not a CD. So long as you are only using one copy of the software on one system at a time you should really be able to have a crate full of backups if you want. At least IMHO.
Well I still paid around $1000 less for my faster computer which also runs a Unix-like operating system. And I didn't buy it because it was pretty and grape ! So Ha!
On a more serious note Mac users are generaly more computer literate than PC users, but thats not all of them. In fact, working in tech support, some of the stupidest people I've ever delt with were on Macs. I recently have fallen in love with Macs for graphic design after I was forced to use them at my college. However, before that I was quite anti-mac for a good reason. In addition to being some of the most annoying people alive "my computer is a new Mac, ok? it didnt break. i spent like $7000 on this. do you even make that in a year? its your service that is broken!" on tech support calls their whole community is a bit annoying. I remember back in high school we had a choice of macs or pcs in our web dev class. I chose a PC and my teacher gave me a 20 minute lecture on how much better Macs were. However, I got my revenge. These were the first iMacs (the ones with nothing internal) and for some reason I discovered playing a CD, having Eric's Ultimate Solitare, and a web browser window open at the same time would instantly crash the Mac, all of them. So every morning before class I would crash every since Mac in the lab. Showed her.
Basically the world is full of morons on computers and Mac users are no better than PC users. They just get a slightly more stable operating system at the expence of being overcharged and not being able to build their own system.
They are cold cathode not neon... and I like them you insensitive clod!
Actually the PS2 is fine so long as you dont smoke around it and lay in in your filthy floor. Every person I know who has had problems with their PS2 was well... cleaning impaired. Its just dust that gets in there 9 times out of 10. A can of Duster sprayed in will usually fix it.
For the record both me and two of my friends have had our PS2s since launch day and they still all run great.
Also, I have seen that problem more and more in X-Boxes. If you are refering to the Disc Read Error or whatever in some games. Not quite as many as PS2s but im seeing more of it. Plus its more annoying because as far as I can tell their is no way to fix it without taking the system apart.
The only console system of this generation that I have seen to not have any real problems is the Gamecube. Mine still runs great.
It doesnt load pop-ups, it doesnt do active-x, i can set the java permissions (by page if needed) and it ACTUALLY listens, installing it on your family's PCs saves you hours of "home tech" time, oh... and their is tabbed browsing. and the tabs don't open by default in firefox you have to tell it to use tabs so you really must have no idea what you are talking about.
IE is not a bad browser. i used it until Firefox. Well actually until Firebird, but still. Before that I think it was the best browser. I mean Mozilla is bloatware and Opera doesn't work right and wants me to PAY? But seriously. Ever since Firefox came out... its the best.
other than detail textures and 1 decent new map!
Um ok... So TiVos and digital recorders are suddenely a terrible plight. What were VCRs? Or are we going to outlaw them next??
I remember reading once in Road and Track about a guy who robbed an exotic car dealership. He wedged a bit of paper in the lock earlier in the day so he could walk right in the door after they were closed. Unfortunatly he left the peice of paper... which was a parking ticket with his name and addy ;)
Really, tho: to what recent widespread non-Windows "attacks" are you referring?
Non-Windows systems are the minority on Joe-Smoe desktops. A very small minority at that. So "widespread non-Windows attacks" are almost an imposibility.
Besides, the average Linux user (and to a degree, the average Mac user) is far more computer literate than an the average Windows user. I mean I like Linux and I like Mac. And both are more secure than Windows by default. That being said, if all the pr0n addicted, computer illeterate, broadband users of the world suddenly switched to Linux I am sure their would be spyware and viruses for it as well.
Regaurdless of thier level of security, Linux and Mac desktop (note, DESKTOP not server) level virus and spyware proggies will always be kept to a minimum. I mean, where is the payoff for the programs creator if 100% system saturation would only be a smudge on the overall computer world? Non-windows systems do enjoy a certain degree of protection simply because they are a minority. I think people often ignor that fact....
Well the GameCube has "backward" abilities of a sort. With the GBA player (which I have/love) you can play gameboy and gameboy advance games. It's kept me playing my GameCube a lot longer than I would have otherwise. Not that the GC doesn't have amazing titles of its own, just not as many of them as I would like. The GB/A title's fill in the gap.
The average windows box has 28 pieces of spyware, a handful of viruses, and untold gobs of privacy invading proprietary gunk on it (such as DRM ware etc).
On top of that they have to run an obnoxious firewall system and memory and resource hogging virus scanner- just to prevent their computer from self-destructing.
Having your computer be that much of a hassle is not my definition of easy. Not to mention that XP and win2k systems still seem to lockup or blue screen quite regularly despite the much touted "stability improvements"...
I dont know what you have on your XP or win2k system, but I've never had any trouble with spyware or viruses on mine. Just run AVG, Firefox, and stay behiend a router and you should be fine. You can also just not run as admin on XP or 2k. Both OSes are quite stable whatever anti-M$ zealots say. My XP box stays up for months at a time on a regular basis.
If you actually pay mild attention to what you put on your PC then you can run a perfectly stable, secture windows OS without spyware and DRM crap.
As a side note... You don't run a firewall? I hope you realize using another OS doesn't mean you don't need one. Unless you are behiend NAT then you can usually get away with it. Maybe I am wrong, but it sounds like your just using this thread as an excuse to flame windows for no good reason to me...
Who says a virus needs access to the entire machine? A virus can propegate itself to other users on the system, other machines on the network/internet, and thrash a user's files. And since I was talking about average computer users (not a corporate server or something) their own files is all they are really going to care about.
And you don't have to run XP or 2k as admin. You can run as a restricted user. You just have to set one up. Which is really no different than Linux. It doesn't come with a useraccount for me. I make one when I am setting it up, or log into root and create one after... If you really think that their are no Mac/Linux security holes I would hate to be part of your network....
It's a fact of life that Microsoft is going to have to own up to if they want to stay on top. They raised the beast, now they need to teach it the rules.
I dunno about all that... Microsoft do have more holes than most other major OSs, but thats really not what leads them to be exploited. If say Linux/OSX was the #1 Joe Consumer OS then it would have virus like this. Because like anything Linux has its faults and if people don't patch their OS, it will remain venerable. And switching morons to Linux or Mac OSX won't fix that problem.
Its really the consumer who needs to step up and take ownership of this issue and learn how to use their machine. I for one run windows and I have not yet (crosses fingers, knocks on wood for future) gotten a virus. I run Firefox and AVG and don't download and run things without scanning them. The situation won't get any better until people start wising up, regaurdless of any move Microsoft makes.
what annoys me is for whatever reason x seams to clear the clipboard automaticall when you exit an app. Like if i copy a URL out of Firefox, close Firefox, and try to paste that URL into Gaim the clipboard is empty. This may not be that big of a deal if you are used to it, but I for one hate clutter and close things the instant I am done with them. Which can be very annoying if it loses what you had in the clipboard (unlike Windows).
Maybe their is a way around this. I can be a *nix noob at times...
I remember the 3DO. I have one. And I love it. Damn good console IMHO.
I actually have this problem in a way. I used to have Slackware and Windows 2000. Everything worked fine. Then I upgraded to XP Pro which ruined my GRUB install for whatever reason. So I put Fedora Core on there. Now randomly I won't be able to boot into anything. It will just say "GRUB" on the screen and nothing will happen. The only way I found to fix it was to change the boot order of my hds in the BIOS. To something random/different. Its really wierd. This happened on both my old PC (Athlon 2700, AOpen mobo, 200gig SATA drive) and my new PC (P4 3.2GHz, Itel mobo, 200gig SATA drive and 80gig IDE drive). However I never had the problem with Slackware. Fortunatly, I like Fedora enough to stick with it, espically now that I know how to quickly fix the problem...
I don't know if this is related, but oh well... Just thought someone might find it interesting.
as someone who had the unfortunate job of working tech support for a DSL ISP I can tell you first hand that most of the stupidity comes from the customer NOT the tech. and usually, if we give you a BS answer it is because we think you are a moron who we just want you off our phone/away from us and will probably belive whatever we say. its really not a personal thing. its after about the 1000th "my modem don't work." "sir, is it plugged in?" or something similar conversion you start to hate all of humanity who would dare ask your help.
Their keyboards and mice are, of course, made by Logitech. They are simply branded as Microsoft.
...escept for a few thousand dollars... or anything worth a few thousand dollars.... if anyone is interested plz email me... i accept millions too!
I forget who makes Microsoft mice, but I know its not Logitech. You might be right on the keyboards though. Whoever they are made by rocks. I love my 4 year old 5 button Microsoft Optical Intellimouse. Still runs great and I wouldnt trade it for anything.
This looks like it is no different than the 2Wire service provided by BellSouth. We I worked there we had pretty much the same capabilities (thought Im not really sure we ever TOLD them this lol) so I'd say its probably more to compete with BellSouth now that they are FINALLY offering decent (3mb) speeds in my and other areas.
Its basically for stupid people who want wireless and dunno how to set it up. I'd bet the subscription fee isnt charging you for the service either. Like, once again, when I worked at BellSouth you could have your own modem. You could have our modem. You could do whatever you want. But if you want support for whatever you have, it had better be ours and you had better be paying for whatever you want support on. So as I said... more for stupid people than anything.
yeah its not in there as i recall... their was an article in something... maybe e-week a while back about that. so if he said it, it wasnt there...
after working at bellsouth i can say that applies to them also. but i dont think we ever got anything stolen.
;)
though I'd imagine stealing a DSLAM would be a bit tougher.
at any rate i can say that if someone stole equipment that resulted in my internet being down for multiple days... i would spend every minute of every one of those days hunting the bast down!
On windows its Firefox, Gaim, Thunderbird, Filezilla, KazaaLite (yay oldversions.com) and Photoshop. Pretty much in that order. On Linux it really depends on the distro (because they all come with random stuff now) but usually Mplayer, Java, Limewire, and CrossOver and then all the stuff I put in Crossover.