I'm pretty sure truecrypt will let you have as many hidden partitions as you want, so your megahidden partition idea is perfectly doable.
It can also have them inside files that are visible in the main partition (although I don't think you could make it so that the file is also seems like a valid Excel file, although that would be a nice touch if the devs are reading this...)
If you want to play games, couldn't you just have a decoy hidden partition for which you hand over the keys immediately when asked, and an additional one you say nothing about?
Anyway that's just hypothetical - in real life I agree with you that when you put yourself in a situation such that someone else can do whatever they want to you, your best bet is trying as hard as you can not to annoy those people regardless of who is right. My solution (which has been working so far but I don't know if it's feasible to keep it up forever) is simply not to travel to such countries. Certainly if I were travelling there for pleasure I wouldn't bring any kind of laptop (and would consider buying a not-so-smart phone for the trip - one that does nothing but calls and texts which means less content to worry about).
The problem is, let's say I'm sent there for work, which sometimes requires me to travel overseas. And carry a laptop. And for that laptop to be encrypted with TrueCrypt (no hidden partitions, just plain old visible encrypted partitions). And by handing over the keys to anyone without a court order or warrant I would be breaching my employer's data security policy (grounds for instant dismissal, with potential for follow up legal action... I would also be exposing them to legal action from their clients so I've doubt they would have much sympathy). What advice would you have for me (in hypothetical land) then?
5. Dont worry about a pool of water forming under your car after using the A/C
If you see a puddle of water on the ground, usually under the passenger area dont be alarmed. This is a normal feature of the system as it is only water dripping from the air conditioning evaporator. The evaporator has a drain tube fitted to allow the condensation from the evaporator to drain away from the vehicle.
Ok... The highest reading is still 53.5 on the map, and it's within the 20km circle. Are you sure you aren't confusing the station numbers with the readings?
BBZZZTTT, WRONG! Australians also have to pay income tax to the Aaustralian tax office even though the don't live there or use any of the services that income tax provides.
Not always. If you are doing a long term overseas stint you would not be a "resident for tax purposes" and do not have to pay income tax on your salary (dividends and capital gains on Australian investments still attract some tax). This page sums it up nicely...
Apparently the government made it a bit tougher for short term overseas postings (where you would still be considered a resident for tax purposes) though. But you can get a living away from home allowance which probably soothes the pain a little bit.
Please, how a VM does provide you security, if it runs on top of an infected host? (That's potentially VM aware?)
It doesn't, but the normal use case would probably be to do nothing (or as little as possible) directly in the host OS, but have separate images for different activities (e.g. one for online banking, one for everything else) - an infection inside one VM can't get out to the host, or to any of the other images.
Then you are in trouble and have to explain that to the seller.
"I tried to pay through PayPal but it didn't work, here's the error message I got. Not that it inconvenienced you in any way, Mr. Seller, because you wouldn't send an item without receiving payment first." Doesn't sound all that troubling.
I've never heard of these limits, but it sounds like the kind of dirty trick PayPal would do. Not that opening an unverified account to buy things costs you anything, as long as all you ever link to it is a credit card and not a transaction account.
It was a genuine question for the parent of my post - if Ubisoft have a measurement of how well Prince of Persia sold compared to other titles with DRM (and if they can say it's "pirated... more so than any of the previous Prince of Persia games", that implies that they do), I'd like to know what the real chart looks like.
Because really, showing that chart (well, a slightly more complex version with the cost side of DRM taken into account) would pretty much end the debate about whether DRM works or not, one way or another.
you know the amount of piracy and the amount of customers - but you never know how much you might have sold if you did things different.
Of course you can't know for sure, but statistics says you can have a pretty good idea based on other titles. At some point you have to make a decision, but that doesn't mean you shut your eyes and plunge in - you still have to look at the results and analyse what happened so you can make a more informed decision next time. It's the same problem as setting the release price of a game (or any other product) - you only get to launch it once, and how do you know how many units you would have sold had you priced it differently? At the end of the day, you have to pick a number and run with it. But that doesn't mean you don't bother to look at how your $60 launch of this title compared to the $80 launch of another title last year.
So, just like management at Ubisoft must be looking at sales from varying price points where they can, they should also be looking at the chart I posted (but the version with real numbers). The thing that doesn't make sense for me is, if the real numbers show conclusively that DRM works, why not just show it once to the press? Then BAM, debate over. If they show it doesn't work, why waste any more money on it?
I'm amazed the shareholders have let them get away with not showing it for so long, when they are making such big investments for it.
For kicks, I looked at the 2009 annual report and there is not a mention of DRM there. Nowhere in notes to the financial statements do they say "we've adjusted Goodwill by this much due to vehement DRM backlash from PC gamers". (Actually, they have written down their 100m euros of goodwill by 95k - they don't say why but one would assume to represent all the Slashdotters boycotting Assassin's Creed 2). Piracy gets a mention in one paragraph in an appendix, under disclosure of the risks inherent to making video games.
It looks like they spent 258m euros on R&D, and another 63m on IT and admin expenses. Their gross profit off a (roughly) 400m expenditure was 111m. So, if not doing any DRM would shace just 10m euros off the IT and R&D costs (it's feasible - running enough servers to support a scheme like this for the volume of games they sold isn't free), they could increase their ROI by 2.5 percentage points (that's very significant).
So, who is making the decision to invest what is probably millions in servers to support this DRM program, and based on what data? Inquiring minds want to know.
You can get music now for 99 cents, which was the major gripe of many people (albums were too expensive). Except that an album now is about as expensive as an album was back then.
I think the major gripe was that with CD albums, someone else decides the way in which songs are packaged together. So you are paying the cost of a full album for potentially only one or two songs that you like, and a dozen you probably won't listen to. But because many songs were only released on the album CD you had no (legal) choice.
In the new world, this has been addressed - just buy the songs you like for 99c. In the rare case that you actually want every single song on an album, yes it's the same price, but then again, if you like every single song, that's actually not such bad value for money.
And if you reverse the charge on your card? Your account is suspended and you lose ALL your games.
I've never used Steam, but what is the advantage to having everything in one account, compared to starting up a new account per game?
I assume you can't link large numbers of accounts to one credit card number - but I just read they accept PayPal so starting up a few of those is certainly a non-issue...
By the way, after the reactions to Spore and Bioshock (and a other heavily DRM-ed titles) we tried shipping the recent Prince of Persia without any DRM. Guess what? It was pirated heavily.. more so than any of the previous Prince of Persia games.
How much did the number of legit customers reduce, as opposed to the number of pirates increasing? Or is it more like this?
International wire transfers cost $20 or $25 depending on the bank. Sometimes there's a SWIFT fee (USD20) on top of that too. I think that's the relevant comparison, since the Indian PayPal mechants in question would probably be receiving most of their payments from overseas.
Using VOIP over 3G while on roaming in another country would be by far the most expensive way to make a call... data roaming charges are typically so high the iPhone even has a specific option to disable 3G data on roaming connections.
In case anyone who can't read Russian was wondering... There's nothing useful whatsoever on that site - just the name and contact details of the company (in case you want to phone them or send them a letter), a copyright notice and a link to the site of another company which sells construction materials.
Selling bullets is one thing, selling bullets knowing that it'll end up being used to murder someone specific is quite another.
So if I am a gun store owner, and I believe someone is going to murder someone, is it illegal for me to sell them bullets? If someone later (after the murder) can show that I knew about the murderer's intention and I sold the bullets anyway, can I be sent to prison?
Don't delete them. Instead, open hundreds or even thousands of accounts in your own name, all with bogus and different info. Write a little script to randomly trawl other people's accounts for messages/photos/etc and copy them at random to your own hundreds of accounts, as if they were real postings. Noone would know the difference. Then if your employer/the police/whoever tried to dig up any dirt on you, it would be buried among such a volume of spam that finding it would be a Herculean task.
No doubt the social networking sites would try to shut you down somehow, but surely on Slashdot noone has to explain how to cover your tracks well enough to make it unreasonably difficult for them.
And best of all - Facebook and Twitter can keep reporting in the press "Look, our membership base is growing by a x million accounts a day! At this rate, we will have more subscriptions than there are people on the planet in just a few months! Advertisers flock to us!"... everyone wins!
That's very handy for such situations.. just leave it going, walk around, and when you notice it make a noise/vibrate take your phone out and you have a wifi connection!
I haven't seen any one device with a 12mp camera, 80gb memory for my music (yes I do listen to atleast 40 gb of different music per week), and phone usage too.
I haven't seen any combination of those 3 individual devices (camera, phone, and mp3 player) that together occupy less space than any current smartphone.
Slashdot Mirror
posting to undo accidental mod...
I'm pretty sure truecrypt will let you have as many hidden partitions as you want, so your megahidden partition idea is perfectly doable.
It can also have them inside files that are visible in the main partition (although I don't think you could make it so that the file is also seems like a valid Excel file, although that would be a nice touch if the devs are reading this...)
If you want to play games, couldn't you just have a decoy hidden partition for which you hand over the keys immediately when asked, and an additional one you say nothing about?
Anyway that's just hypothetical - in real life I agree with you that when you put yourself in a situation such that someone else can do whatever they want to you, your best bet is trying as hard as you can not to annoy those people regardless of who is right. My solution (which has been working so far but I don't know if it's feasible to keep it up forever) is simply not to travel to such countries. Certainly if I were travelling there for pleasure I wouldn't bring any kind of laptop (and would consider buying a not-so-smart phone for the trip - one that does nothing but calls and texts which means less content to worry about).
The problem is, let's say I'm sent there for work, which sometimes requires me to travel overseas. And carry a laptop. And for that laptop to be encrypted with TrueCrypt (no hidden partitions, just plain old visible encrypted partitions). And by handing over the keys to anyone without a court order or warrant I would be breaching my employer's data security policy (grounds for instant dismissal, with potential for follow up legal action ... I would also be exposing them to legal action from their clients so I've doubt they would have much sympathy). What advice would you have for me (in hypothetical land) then?
It looks like it's just water from the air conditioner...
http://www.motorpoint.com.au/car-air-conditioning-system.asp
Ok... The highest reading is still 53.5 on the map, and it's within the 20km circle. Are you sure you aren't confusing the station numbers with the readings?
Really? I clicked the link and the highest reading was 53, from a site 20km away...
BBZZZTTT, WRONG! Australians also have to pay income tax to the Aaustralian tax office even though the don't live there or use any of the services that income tax provides.
Not always. If you are doing a long term overseas stint you would not be a "resident for tax purposes" and do not have to pay income tax on your salary (dividends and capital gains on Australian investments still attract some tax). This page sums it up nicely...
Apparently the government made it a bit tougher for short term overseas postings (where you would still be considered a resident for tax purposes) though. But you can get a living away from home allowance which probably soothes the pain a little bit.
Please, how a VM does provide you security, if it runs on top of an infected host? (That's potentially VM aware?)
It doesn't, but the normal use case would probably be to do nothing (or as little as possible) directly in the host OS, but have separate images for different activities (e.g. one for online banking, one for everything else) - an infection inside one VM can't get out to the host, or to any of the other images.
Then you are in trouble and have to explain that to the seller.
"I tried to pay through PayPal but it didn't work, here's the error message I got. Not that it inconvenienced you in any way, Mr. Seller, because you wouldn't send an item without receiving payment first." Doesn't sound all that troubling.
I've never heard of these limits, but it sounds like the kind of dirty trick PayPal would do. Not that opening an unverified account to buy things costs you anything, as long as all you ever link to it is a credit card and not a transaction account.
I made the numbers behind the bars up, but see my other post for a discussion of the issue you raise.
It was a genuine question for the parent of my post - if Ubisoft have a measurement of how well Prince of Persia sold compared to other titles with DRM (and if they can say it's "pirated ... more so than any of the previous Prince of Persia games", that implies that they do), I'd like to know what the real chart looks like.
Because really, showing that chart (well, a slightly more complex version with the cost side of DRM taken into account) would pretty much end the debate about whether DRM works or not, one way or another.
you know the amount of piracy and the amount of customers - but you never know how much you might have sold if you did things different.
Of course you can't know for sure, but statistics says you can have a pretty good idea based on other titles. At some point you have to make a decision, but that doesn't mean you shut your eyes and plunge in - you still have to look at the results and analyse what happened so you can make a more informed decision next time. It's the same problem as setting the release price of a game (or any other product) - you only get to launch it once, and how do you know how many units you would have sold had you priced it differently? At the end of the day, you have to pick a number and run with it. But that doesn't mean you don't bother to look at how your $60 launch of this title compared to the $80 launch of another title last year.
So, just like management at Ubisoft must be looking at sales from varying price points where they can, they should also be looking at the chart I posted (but the version with real numbers). The thing that doesn't make sense for me is, if the real numbers show conclusively that DRM works, why not just show it once to the
press? Then BAM, debate over. If they show it doesn't work, why waste any more money on it?
I'm amazed the shareholders have let them get away with not showing it for so long, when they are making such big investments for it.
For kicks, I looked at the 2009 annual report and there is not a mention of DRM there. Nowhere in notes to the financial statements do they say "we've adjusted Goodwill by this much due to vehement DRM backlash from PC gamers". (Actually, they have written down their 100m euros of goodwill by 95k - they don't say why but one would assume to represent all the Slashdotters boycotting Assassin's Creed 2). Piracy gets a mention in one paragraph in an appendix, under disclosure of the risks inherent to making video games.
It looks like they spent 258m euros on R&D, and another 63m on IT and admin expenses. Their gross profit off a (roughly) 400m expenditure was 111m. So, if not doing any DRM would shace just 10m euros off the IT and R&D costs (it's feasible - running enough servers to support a scheme like this for the volume of games they sold isn't free), they could increase their ROI by 2.5 percentage points (that's very significant).
So, who is making the decision to invest what is probably millions in servers to support this DRM program, and based on what data? Inquiring minds want to know.
You can get music now for 99 cents, which was the major gripe of many people (albums were too expensive).
Except that an album now is about as expensive as an album was back then.
I think the major gripe was that with CD albums, someone else decides the way in which songs are packaged together. So you are paying the cost of a full album for potentially only one or two songs that you like, and a dozen you probably won't listen to. But because many songs were only released on the album CD you had no (legal) choice.
In the new world, this has been addressed - just buy the songs you like for 99c. In the rare case that you actually want every single song on an album, yes it's the same price, but then again, if you like every single song, that's actually not such bad value for money.
And if you reverse the charge on your card? Your account is suspended and you lose ALL your games.
I've never used Steam, but what is the advantage to having everything in one account, compared to starting up a new account per game?
I assume you can't link large numbers of accounts to one credit card number - but I just read they accept PayPal so starting up a few of those is certainly a non-issue...
By the way, after the reactions to Spore and Bioshock (and a other heavily DRM-ed titles) we tried shipping the recent Prince of Persia without any DRM. Guess what? It was pirated heavily.. more so than any of the previous Prince of Persia games.
How much did the number of legit customers reduce, as opposed to the number of pirates increasing? Or is it more like this?
International wire transfers cost $20 or $25 depending on the bank. Sometimes there's a SWIFT fee (USD20) on top of that too. I think that's the relevant comparison, since the Indian PayPal mechants in question would probably be receiving most of their payments from overseas.
Using VOIP over 3G while on roaming in another country would be by far the most expensive way to make a call... data roaming charges are typically so high the iPhone even has a specific option to disable 3G data on roaming connections.
In case anyone who can't read Russian was wondering... There's nothing useful whatsoever on that site - just the name and contact details of the company (in case you want to phone them or send them a letter), a copyright notice and a link to the site of another company which sells construction materials.
BTW, Australian telco's arent allowed to charge for unlocking phone functionality, either it's there or it's not.
If that's true, how do Optus get away with charging for unlocking access to tethering?
Selling bullets is one thing, selling bullets knowing that it'll end up being used to murder someone specific is quite another.
So if I am a gun store owner, and I believe someone is going to murder someone, is it illegal for me to sell them bullets? If someone later (after the murder) can show that I knew about the murderer's intention and I sold the bullets anyway, can I be sent to prison?
Honest question - I genuinely want to know.
I imagine that upon receiving such an injunction, you could (if you were concerned) contact the court and verify its legitimacy.
If you decided to ignore it because it didn't even have your name on it, that would be another matter.
Don't delete them. Instead, open hundreds or even thousands of accounts in your own name, all with bogus and different info. Write a little script to randomly trawl other people's accounts for messages/photos/etc and copy them at random to your own hundreds of accounts, as if they were real postings. Noone would know the difference. Then if your employer/the police/whoever tried to dig up any dirt on you, it would be buried among such a volume of spam that finding it would be a Herculean task.
No doubt the social networking sites would try to shut you down somehow, but surely on Slashdot noone has to explain how to cover your tracks well enough to make it unreasonably difficult for them.
And best of all - Facebook and Twitter can keep reporting in the press "Look, our membership base is growing by a x million accounts a day! At this rate, we will have more subscriptions than there are people on the planet in just a few months! Advertisers flock to us!" ... everyone wins!
Ultramon is cool but I don't believe it will let you select an area of your screen and say, "this is an area that defines the limits of maximzation"
I don't think UltraMon does, but there's a free utility called ZoneSize that does exactly that.
http://www.whatsoniphone.com/reviews/wifinder
That's very handy for such situations.. just leave it going, walk around, and when you notice it make a noise/vibrate take your phone out and you have a wifi connection!
I haven't seen any one device with a 12mp camera, 80gb memory for my music (yes I do listen to atleast 40 gb of different music per week), and phone usage too.
I haven't seen any combination of those 3 individual devices (camera, phone, and mp3 player) that together occupy less space than any current smartphone.
if only we could get an Azureus version of this app...
Here's one.
And I wish Apple the best of luck should they ever wish to block it.