Actually, if you check out some of the early beta write ups of the original Starcraft, a lot of the units had more animation, for example the Terrain Dropship used to have a "drop" animation when it unloaded or loaded units. This was removed I guess because it was unnecessarily resource consuming. Also, IMO Starcraft had stunning sprite based animation, I remember seeing Tiberian Sun though which came out a year later or something, and while it had FAR more animation and stuff, it ran MUCH slower. Did you know that Starcraft runs on an 8-bit palette? Tell me it doesn't look DAMN good for 256 colour game.
I am running an ASUS LCD at 1280x1024 in digital mode at 75hz, and the monitor OSD says digital, 75hz. So it's not all monitors, of course there is a bandwidth limit, the higher resolution you have, the lower amount of hz you can have, I guess some monitors DVI "processors" are slower than others, my old monitor for example, a Gigabyte, can only do 60hz.
I know I used to force myself upon you, repeatedly, with no remorse, but I was thinking seeing as I have asked that you allow me to, and that I have changed my name now, you may voluntarily sleep with me?
Couldn't agree more for the most part, I have an eight digit ICQ number I got around '99 I think and then in 2000 I started using MSN, while nowadays you need to turn off a few of the annoying things like showing "MSN Today", it for the most part site quietly in the corner of my screen and will auto-reconnect if it disconnects for whatever reason. That was the show stopper for me for ICQ, if it disconnected it would have this annoying popup window telling it me it disconnected, then I would have to manually reconnect, just such a pain. Then there were other things like they only started storing contact lists server side after a long time. Anyway, don't use ICQ, MSN works for me, although I have to admit it is a bit of a memory hog these days.
Relax, any Blizzard fan knows that Blizzard settles for nothing less than complete excellence, from story to quality to code. And for those who think that WoW is not good coding, consider that Blizzard runs a very smooth network for 8.5 million users running a real time interactive application.
We may as well move all the children into special homes where they can't do anything to harm themselves, in fact we will do the whole human race a favor and keep them drugged so they don't do anything stupid.
I am too angry at the audacity of this statement to try justify why it so insanely stupid, you can't blame technology when stupid/ignorant/careless people are to blame. For a poor attempt at an analogy, should we also ban the use of motor vehicles because of all the fatalities each year from them?
Haven't used Vista yet myself, but as someone who has tried in the past to run Windows XP under a normal user account, I believe the objective with Vista's UAC is not so much to help users decide if software is safe, but rather to convince software writers to write their code correct so it doesn't work without administrator access when it doesn't actually need it for a good reason.
StarCraft: high terrain serves only to create choke points and barriers to units. It is completely ignored for anything but restricting movement.
Wrong, high terrain and units on it cannot be seen by units on lower terrain, so you could get ambushed walking through a pass or valley. Furthermore, if your marines are on lower terrain and shooting at units on higher terrain, they often miss. Higher terrain is most definitely a tactical advantage and must be taken into consideration.
TA: Air units move realistically, with planes banking and gunships swerving to avoid enemy fire.
TA: Weapons are semi-realistic; they can miss a fast-moving target or be stopped by terrain
If you had read the article, you would know that originally Starcraft ships also used to bank and swerve, although I don't know if they ever "dodged" attacks, this is something they evidently decided to remove, along with many other "cool" things like burnable trees. This I believe is just one of the things which made Starcraft 'The' real time strategy tournament game, while games with better graphics missed the boat. As a small example, in Warcraft II, damage is random within a range, so a unit may do 61-75 damage, in Starcraft though, damage is set and there is no random, depending on armor and weapon upgrades, you will always do the same amount of damage. Look at chess, arguably the best strategy game of all time, and yet probably one of the easiest strategy games to learn while also being one of the most difficult games to master. Simple rules means it all comes down to strategy and being able to outwit your opponent, no luck involved so it is all pure skill.
Certainly, from a graphical perspective, there were plenty "better" games than Starcraft at the time, but I suspect that Blizzard purposefully chose not to add certain features to keep the system requirements down, something Blizzard has done with all their games.
Starcraft is still my favorite game and hopefully we will see a new Starcraft strategy game within the next 18 months, we know Blizzard has at least one unannounced project they have been working on for a while now.
It's called faith because people believe despite the lack of clear scientific evidence.
Personally, I do believe in God, but at the same time I choose not to judge anyone else based on what they do or don't believe. So long as I don't have to hide what I believe in, I really don't care what other people believe or think. And to terrahertz (911030) I like the way you put it, fits well with my point of view.
Chances are, if my mothers second born child did not die of SIDS over 25 years ago, I probably wouldn't exist today.
And having talked to my mom about it on occasion, it sure would have made it a lot easier for her with me if she knew a way to be sure the same thing would't cause her to find me dead in my cot. My brother, who is 10 years younger than me, always slept with a sort of breathing detector, nothing intrusive, but if he stopped breathing, or sort of pulled out the cord, we would know about it, my mom was taking no risks.
There are countless ways that children die, and it is impossible to protect them from everything, but there are those parents who have lost a child, and as with any seemingly random death, it can seem that fate is out to get you. When there is a good reason, and a way to try prevent it with any other children you may have, a good explanation is a way to make it just that little bit easier to get through each day, because my understanding is that there isn't a day, even 26 years later, that my mother doesn't think of her daughter that isn't.
Like the fact that innevitably SOMEONE will try take advantage of a situation. I hear countless stories from WoW players about how they were scammed by other players, I won't go into details, but often these scams involve a deal that appears to be to good to be true, although it is a random deal and often with someone they don't know who is often a level 1.
Now, in real life if someone randomly came up and offered you an unmarked, closed box and said there was a gold bar inside and all they wanted was $100, would you give him the money without being sure?
Also, certain behaviour towards other players is not tolerated, and can result in a temporary or permanent suspension, and even if it's not against the policies, it could result in you being kicked out your guild, or not being able to find any groups willing to have you along.
So there are real people controlling their virtual characters behaviour and there is an actual economy which is the result of real time spent doing things in the virtual world.
To get to my point, people can learn about consequences for their actions or about being naive enough to accept something that is probably too good to be true. The great thing though is that the 14 year old who learnt about scams, or that racist behaviour is not tolerated, found out in an environment where it won't have any serious consequences. In real life they may have lost their job due to their attitude or behaviour and if they were scammed they could have lost their lifetimes savings. Better to learn these lessons in such a way that minimal harm is done.
Well, if you ask me IPv6 sounds like a potential golden oppurtunity to enforce use of systems such as DomainKeys or SPF. Seeing as everyone would have to recode their mail server software to work with IPv6, they may as well make sure it supports those sender validation techonologies, and seeing as everyone is going to have to do it around the same time, it sounds like it would be a good idea to make it compulsary on IPv6 rather than optional, this means that spammers will be unable to forge their from addresses over IPv6. Of course nothing stops them from registering lots of domain, but it sure makes considerable more work for the spammer.
IMO part of the reason why "from header" forgery is so prevalent is that either an administrator's mail server can't utilize this technology by default, or they have no inclination to do so, if it becomes necessary, maybe people will get off their asses and do the required work.
Thinking about it, River really reminds me a lot of Kerrigan from Starcraft, at least before she became Zerg, in fact one might argue Firefly has various similarities with Starcraft.
It so happen's that my mother has a doctorate is psychology, and I would actually recommend that Jack Thompson and others with personal issues rather see a psychologist. A lot of people may not know the difference, but psychologists deal with your problems by talking about it while psychiatrists generally deal with your problems by prescribing drugs.
IMHO, this article, while well written doesn't really paint an accurate picture of the way DRM will likely be implemented on the PC, and how that will affect security. But before I go any further, let me state for the record, I am apposed to the concept of DRM in every way, and everytime I think about how bad the issue can get, I feel sick in my stomach.
About the only good line in the article is "DRM technology is sometimes described as security technology when it is really licensing technology -- something very different.". This is of course marketing at work, people rename things to make them less ugly sounding, just like Microsoft's "Genuine Advantage Validation Tool" could far more easily have been called something along the lines of "Windows Anti-Piracy Validator", however the latter just has such bad implications, even though that is exactly what it is. So the author demonstrates in the second sentence of the article exactly what it is he is trying to say, but then proceeds to use IMO very bad examples of what he means.
I have been diligently reading all DRM mentioned articles on/. over the last few years, and I feel I have a fair idea of what the industry envisages happening. Let's look at Microsoft's software activation technology, which is there primarily to prevent piracy of their intellectual property, I believe it's consequences are similar to what we can expect from DRM, a pain in the ass, but the majority of people accept it, and more importantly, it works pretty well, without creating security problems.
What I personally hate about software activation is that Microsoft made a far more secure way of protecting their software from casual piracy, but did not take the time to make it easier for their customers to keep track of their paid for software. Our company often has the task of fixing computers, which occasionally involves reloading Windows and or Office, and if the client doesn't know where their Office Product key happens to be (Windows key is normally stuck on the box), we end up "legally" having to tell the client we are unable to reload Microsoft Office onto their machine until such time as we have a valid CD-KEY. What I would like from Microsoft Activation is something similar to the way the WoW (the US release is the same or similar I would think) authorisation key system works. When one buys a copy of the game, they get an authorisation key with it, they then logon to their respective regional website, and create a new account, during the account creation they are required to input their authorisation key, once the account creation is complete they will NEVER require the authorisation key ever again. If their house burnt down, they could copy their friends WoW CD, use it to install the game on their new PC, and carry on playing. Obviously, Microsoft Activation has to work a little differently, seeing as we don't have to pay a monthly subscription to use it (yet). But it should work the same, the customer should to create an "account" with Microsoft, once done they can authorise copies of Office or Windows or whatever onto it, if the computer needs to be reloaded, they will always have access to their paid for software.
Right, now onto DRM, to get back to the attached article's point about security, I believe that when and if Microsoft's codename "Palladium" technology is released, if done right, will not negatively impact the integrity of the host computer's security, all that Palladium will do is prevent other programs of that computer from accessing the memory of that program, which is why DRM advocates like the idea of Palladium, it should be practically impossible for hackers to reverse engineer software which utilizes Palladium, as they have no way of seeing the memory of that active program. Assuming Palladium works as intended, everything is protected with the help of encryption, so it is still *possible* for the hacker to work out the private key, but unlikely, and the only other wa
Great, I am "free" to make my life more difficult...
Comments like yours are mostly just a waste of everyone's time, did you even fully read my post, and by responding with a comment "one word", are your trying to tell me my post was of no real substance that it deserved no more? You really need to learn to justify your statements.
I fully understand the concept of free software, but I don't see how the fact that Linux is free changes the fact that Windows works better for me. It's absolutely wonderful that I can see what Linux may be doing behind the scenes, and if I so wish, actually change it, but for my purposes, Linux may as well be closed source, because I do not have the knowledge or expertise to fully appreciate the freedom that Linux offers me.
What do you mean "Only semi-attractive women...", what's wrong with going for "Only women who are at least semi-attractive...", were you trying to tell us you would exclude "very attractive women"?;-)
Seriously though, while Microsoft has countless issues and problems, I think that saying Linux is an easy replacement is like saying windows is easy to fix.
I gather that Microsoft Windows is an abortion of code, and the fact that it actually works as well as it does could be considered a miracle. I watched a Channel9 interview of the Vista Kernel guys, they, although not quite in these words, admitted that Microsoft's past practices has resulted not only in bad code, but bad code in 3rd party software vendors. Microsoft is slowly rewriting Windows to bring it to a truly secure level, but are also being hampered by 3rd party code that just does not play by the rules.
Consider the following situation, a commercial application is released for Linux which insists on running as root, now, if a million users buy this, and follow the instructions by the software vendor on how to make the software run as root we land up with a million users with inherently insecure software, could that be considered a fault of Linux?
I know that with XP it is hard to get by as a limited user, but if one sticks to Microsoft apps, everyday tasks can be achieved with no headaches. But then one day the user comes home with a piece of software like Pastel Accounting which for some God forsaken reason HAS to be run as an Administrator, and now they are vulnerable.
I use Windows, I run as an Administrator, I use Firefox, I use the standard Windows XP SP2 Firewall, I don't use any Anti-Virus or Anti-Spyware software, but most importantly, I do my Windows Updates regularly, by regularly I mean to say that my machine is told to automatically download updates, and if I happen to be logged on to my machine, it will prompt for a restart which I do as soon as possible, or alternatively, if I left my machine logged off, it will automatically restart at 3am.
This machine is close to a year old now, it has not had any malware issues, this is attributed to my computer's software being up to date, and more importantly my knowledge of software and computers. For using Windows I get the convenience of being able to run any software written for it, commercial or open source, and I get access to drivers which I know will work on my OS with no more hassle than clicking an "install" button.
If I switched to Linux, I would be on a more secure system, but wouldn't have access to half the software I am using right now, and the other half would probably require weeks of tweaking and reading of news groups to get working, and at the end of it, I still would end up using Windows for games, because it's just easier.
What I am trying to say is, yes Windows is bad from a security perspective, but right now it is not only Microsoft that has to come to the party to sort it out, however, in spite of this if the users weren't such dumbasses, we would also have far less problems, so users also need to be informed, as demonstrated by my running a Linux app as root example.
And in all honesty, Windows works perfectly for me, it installed with absolute ease, not a moments problem during operation either, not even a system hang, why should I switch to Linux which I know will frustrate me because it just doesn't run some of the things as easily as Windows?
Huh?
Most people I know with "Instant Messengers" on their phones ARE using third party applications, these are also often written in Java, so are secure from the rest of the phone anyway, although, without actual research, I am not sure on the details, although I am reasonaby certain a short amount of Googling will yeild some open source, Java based cell phone IM clients.
Indeed, a strain to write and read, and now I slip into the realm of what is arguably off topic...
Leetspeak does not impress me at all, in fact, if I see someone genuinely using it, I'll just assume they are immature individuals who have yet to grow up, and consequently I treat them as such. In my opinion, Leetspeak is also a complete waste of time, my typing is bad enough without me training myself to do it incorrectly, what I am trying to get at is that leetspeak is not only arguably lame, but it is in fact counter-productive.
Many people, especially IT workers, have probably never been on a typing course, but despite this, many may be considered to be exceptionally quick on the keyboard. You see, the brain is remarkable in that forcing yourself to do something repetitively sets up neural pathways, and one finds themselves able to do the same thing that they initially found to be complicated or difficult, with almost little or no effort whatsoever, this is called "training". So, all these leetspeak people have successfully trained themselves in a skill that has absolutely no value in the workplace, but even worse, good language and typing skills, which would be useful in the workplace, have probably been sabotaged by them repetitively doing it wrong. As an example, earlier today/. linked to a White Dust Security article. I am no English teacher, but it was absolutely abysmal English, assuming that the article's author's first language is English, it would not be suprising that part of their shocking English skills (or lack there of) could be directly attributed to their "leetness" at leetspeak.
That's just one reason I don't care much for IRC, the other is that many people on IRC, seem be far to, as a Vulcan might say, "irrational".
Actually, I obtained this update, along with all other critical updates in the past without needing to fire up Internet Explorer. The URL mentioned in the article will allow me to download the patch with Firefox, whis was not necessary though as my "Automatic Updates" service prompted me almost as soon as I turned on my computer to apply this update.
So, one does not *need* Internet Explorer for critical updates. Also, to be honest Internet Explorer is only potentially dangerous to use on untrusted websites or already compromised machines, so if you are using Windows, you have Internet Explorer anyway, so there is nothing wrong with using it for Windows Update, as long as you haven't already got malware from using it to browse some dodgy site.
Honestly, I don't understand the complaint people have of only IE allowing them to obtain Windows specific software, Microsoft makes Internet Explorer freely available to whoever may need it for that purpose, and if it's got other problems (like already malware infested), use Firefox or something to download the patches manually.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, if you check out some of the early beta write ups of the original Starcraft, a lot of the units had more animation, for example the Terrain Dropship used to have a "drop" animation when it unloaded or loaded units. This was removed I guess because it was unnecessarily resource consuming. Also, IMO Starcraft had stunning sprite based animation, I remember seeing Tiberian Sun though which came out a year later or something, and while it had FAR more animation and stuff, it ran MUCH slower. Did you know that Starcraft runs on an 8-bit palette? Tell me it doesn't look DAMN good for 256 colour game.
I think it would be stupid to take a high frequency then drop frames, would be more annoying and result in a "jerky" experience, but check the specs yourself: http://asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1 378&l1=10&l2=86&l3=355&l4=0
(I am not sure why it asks for a password, just cancel.)
Wrong, DVI can do faster.
I am running an ASUS LCD at 1280x1024 in digital mode at 75hz, and the monitor OSD says digital, 75hz. So it's not all monitors, of course there is a bandwidth limit, the higher resolution you have, the lower amount of hz you can have, I guess some monitors DVI "processors" are slower than others, my old monitor for example, a Gigabyte, can only do 60hz.
I know I used to force myself upon you, repeatedly, with no remorse, but I was thinking seeing as I have asked that you allow me to, and that I have changed my name now, you may voluntarily sleep with me?
Couldn't agree more for the most part, I have an eight digit ICQ number I got around '99 I think and then in 2000 I started using MSN, while nowadays you need to turn off a few of the annoying things like showing "MSN Today", it for the most part site quietly in the corner of my screen and will auto-reconnect if it disconnects for whatever reason. That was the show stopper for me for ICQ, if it disconnected it would have this annoying popup window telling it me it disconnected, then I would have to manually reconnect, just such a pain. Then there were other things like they only started storing contact lists server side after a long time. Anyway, don't use ICQ, MSN works for me, although I have to admit it is a bit of a memory hog these days.
Relax, any Blizzard fan knows that Blizzard settles for nothing less than complete excellence, from story to quality to code. And for those who think that WoW is not good coding, consider that Blizzard runs a very smooth network for 8.5 million users running a real time interactive application.
Actually it is: http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/
I got the mail too, but all I had to find it on the website was click the "Blog" link at the bottom on the page.
We may as well move all the children into special homes where they can't do anything to harm themselves, in fact we will do the whole human race a favor and keep them drugged so they don't do anything stupid.
I am too angry at the audacity of this statement to try justify why it so insanely stupid, you can't blame technology when stupid/ignorant/careless people are to blame. For a poor attempt at an analogy, should we also ban the use of motor vehicles because of all the fatalities each year from them?
Haven't used Vista yet myself, but as someone who has tried in the past to run Windows XP under a normal user account, I believe the objective with Vista's UAC is not so much to help users decide if software is safe, but rather to convince software writers to write their code correct so it doesn't work without administrator access when it doesn't actually need it for a good reason.
Wrong, high terrain and units on it cannot be seen by units on lower terrain, so you could get ambushed walking through a pass or valley. Furthermore, if your marines are on lower terrain and shooting at units on higher terrain, they often miss. Higher terrain is most definitely a tactical advantage and must be taken into consideration.
TA: Air units move realistically, with planes banking and gunships swerving to avoid enemy fire.TA: Weapons are semi-realistic; they can miss a fast-moving target or be stopped by terrain
If you had read the article, you would know that originally Starcraft ships also used to bank and swerve, although I don't know if they ever "dodged" attacks, this is something they evidently decided to remove, along with many other "cool" things like burnable trees. This I believe is just one of the things which made Starcraft 'The' real time strategy tournament game, while games with better graphics missed the boat. As a small example, in Warcraft II, damage is random within a range, so a unit may do 61-75 damage, in Starcraft though, damage is set and there is no random, depending on armor and weapon upgrades, you will always do the same amount of damage. Look at chess, arguably the best strategy game of all time, and yet probably one of the easiest strategy games to learn while also being one of the most difficult games to master. Simple rules means it all comes down to strategy and being able to outwit your opponent, no luck involved so it is all pure skill.
Certainly, from a graphical perspective, there were plenty "better" games than Starcraft at the time, but I suspect that Blizzard purposefully chose not to add certain features to keep the system requirements down, something Blizzard has done with all their games.
Starcraft is still my favorite game and hopefully we will see a new Starcraft strategy game within the next 18 months, we know Blizzard has at least one unannounced project they have been working on for a while now.
How about V for Vendetta (2005)?
It's called faith because people believe despite the lack of clear scientific evidence.
Personally, I do believe in God, but at the same time I choose not to judge anyone else based on what they do or don't believe. So long as I don't have to hide what I believe in, I really don't care what other people believe or think. And to terrahertz (911030) I like the way you put it, fits well with my point of view.
Chances are, if my mothers second born child did not die of SIDS over 25 years ago, I probably wouldn't exist today.
And having talked to my mom about it on occasion, it sure would have made it a lot easier for her with me if she knew a way to be sure the same thing would't cause her to find me dead in my cot. My brother, who is 10 years younger than me, always slept with a sort of breathing detector, nothing intrusive, but if he stopped breathing, or sort of pulled out the cord, we would know about it, my mom was taking no risks.
There are countless ways that children die, and it is impossible to protect them from everything, but there are those parents who have lost a child, and as with any seemingly random death, it can seem that fate is out to get you. When there is a good reason, and a way to try prevent it with any other children you may have, a good explanation is a way to make it just that little bit easier to get through each day, because my understanding is that there isn't a day, even 26 years later, that my mother doesn't think of her daughter that isn't.
Like the fact that innevitably SOMEONE will try take advantage of a situation. I hear countless stories from WoW players about how they were scammed by other players, I won't go into details, but often these scams involve a deal that appears to be to good to be true, although it is a random deal and often with someone they don't know who is often a level 1.
Now, in real life if someone randomly came up and offered you an unmarked, closed box and said there was a gold bar inside and all they wanted was $100, would you give him the money without being sure?
Also, certain behaviour towards other players is not tolerated, and can result in a temporary or permanent suspension, and even if it's not against the policies, it could result in you being kicked out your guild, or not being able to find any groups willing to have you along.
So there are real people controlling their virtual characters behaviour and there is an actual economy which is the result of real time spent doing things in the virtual world.
To get to my point, people can learn about consequences for their actions or about being naive enough to accept something that is probably too good to be true. The great thing though is that the 14 year old who learnt about scams, or that racist behaviour is not tolerated, found out in an environment where it won't have any serious consequences. In real life they may have lost their job due to their attitude or behaviour and if they were scammed they could have lost their lifetimes savings. Better to learn these lessons in such a way that minimal harm is done.
Well, if you ask me IPv6 sounds like a potential golden oppurtunity to enforce use of systems such as DomainKeys or SPF. Seeing as everyone would have to recode their mail server software to work with IPv6, they may as well make sure it supports those sender validation techonologies, and seeing as everyone is going to have to do it around the same time, it sounds like it would be a good idea to make it compulsary on IPv6 rather than optional, this means that spammers will be unable to forge their from addresses over IPv6. Of course nothing stops them from registering lots of domain, but it sure makes considerable more work for the spammer.
IMO part of the reason why "from header" forgery is so prevalent is that either an administrator's mail server can't utilize this technology by default, or they have no inclination to do so, if it becomes necessary, maybe people will get off their asses and do the required work.
Thinking about it, River really reminds me a lot of Kerrigan from Starcraft, at least before she became Zerg, in fact one might argue Firefly has various similarities with Starcraft.
It so happen's that my mother has a doctorate is psychology, and I would actually recommend that Jack Thompson and others with personal issues rather see a psychologist. A lot of people may not know the difference, but psychologists deal with your problems by talking about it while psychiatrists generally deal with your problems by prescribing drugs.
IMHO, this article, while well written doesn't really paint an accurate picture of the way DRM will likely be implemented on the PC, and how that will affect security. But before I go any further, let me state for the record, I am apposed to the concept of DRM in every way, and everytime I think about how bad the issue can get, I feel sick in my stomach.
/. over the last few years, and I feel I have a fair idea of what the industry envisages happening. Let's look at Microsoft's software activation technology, which is there primarily to prevent piracy of their intellectual property, I believe it's consequences are similar to what we can expect from DRM, a pain in the ass, but the majority of people accept it, and more importantly, it works pretty well, without creating security problems.
About the only good line in the article is "DRM technology is sometimes described as security technology when it is really licensing technology -- something very different.". This is of course marketing at work, people rename things to make them less ugly sounding, just like Microsoft's "Genuine Advantage Validation Tool" could far more easily have been called something along the lines of "Windows Anti-Piracy Validator", however the latter just has such bad implications, even though that is exactly what it is. So the author demonstrates in the second sentence of the article exactly what it is he is trying to say, but then proceeds to use IMO very bad examples of what he means.
I have been diligently reading all DRM mentioned articles on
What I personally hate about software activation is that Microsoft made a far more secure way of protecting their software from casual piracy, but did not take the time to make it easier for their customers to keep track of their paid for software. Our company often has the task of fixing computers, which occasionally involves reloading Windows and or Office, and if the client doesn't know where their Office Product key happens to be (Windows key is normally stuck on the box), we end up "legally" having to tell the client we are unable to reload Microsoft Office onto their machine until such time as we have a valid CD-KEY. What I would like from Microsoft Activation is something similar to the way the WoW (the US release is the same or similar I would think) authorisation key system works. When one buys a copy of the game, they get an authorisation key with it, they then logon to their respective regional website, and create a new account, during the account creation they are required to input their authorisation key, once the account creation is complete they will NEVER require the authorisation key ever again. If their house burnt down, they could copy their friends WoW CD, use it to install the game on their new PC, and carry on playing. Obviously, Microsoft Activation has to work a little differently, seeing as we don't have to pay a monthly subscription to use it (yet). But it should work the same, the customer should to create an "account" with Microsoft, once done they can authorise copies of Office or Windows or whatever onto it, if the computer needs to be reloaded, they will always have access to their paid for software.
Right, now onto DRM, to get back to the attached article's point about security, I believe that when and if Microsoft's codename "Palladium" technology is released, if done right, will not negatively impact the integrity of the host computer's security, all that Palladium will do is prevent other programs of that computer from accessing the memory of that program, which is why DRM advocates like the idea of Palladium, it should be practically impossible for hackers to reverse engineer software which utilizes Palladium, as they have no way of seeing the memory of that active program. Assuming Palladium works as intended, everything is protected with the help of encryption, so it is still *possible* for the hacker to work out the private key, but unlikely, and the only other wa
Just one of the reasons why I choose to shower in the morning rather than in the evening.
Great, I am "free" to make my life more difficult...
Comments like yours are mostly just a waste of everyone's time, did you even fully read my post, and by responding with a comment "one word", are your trying to tell me my post was of no real substance that it deserved no more? You really need to learn to justify your statements.
I fully understand the concept of free software, but I don't see how the fact that Linux is free changes the fact that Windows works better for me. It's absolutely wonderful that I can see what Linux may be doing behind the scenes, and if I so wish, actually change it, but for my purposes, Linux may as well be closed source, because I do not have the knowledge or expertise to fully appreciate the freedom that Linux offers me.
What do you mean "Only semi-attractive women...", what's wrong with going for "Only women who are at least semi-attractive...", were you trying to tell us you would exclude "very attractive women"? ;-)
Seriously though, while Microsoft has countless issues and problems, I think that saying Linux is an easy replacement is like saying windows is easy to fix.
I gather that Microsoft Windows is an abortion of code, and the fact that it actually works as well as it does could be considered a miracle. I watched a Channel9 interview of the Vista Kernel guys, they, although not quite in these words, admitted that Microsoft's past practices has resulted not only in bad code, but bad code in 3rd party software vendors. Microsoft is slowly rewriting Windows to bring it to a truly secure level, but are also being hampered by 3rd party code that just does not play by the rules.
Consider the following situation, a commercial application is released for Linux which insists on running as root, now, if a million users buy this, and follow the instructions by the software vendor on how to make the software run as root we land up with a million users with inherently insecure software, could that be considered a fault of Linux?
I know that with XP it is hard to get by as a limited user, but if one sticks to Microsoft apps, everyday tasks can be achieved with no headaches. But then one day the user comes home with a piece of software like Pastel Accounting which for some God forsaken reason HAS to be run as an Administrator, and now they are vulnerable.
I use Windows, I run as an Administrator, I use Firefox, I use the standard Windows XP SP2 Firewall, I don't use any Anti-Virus or Anti-Spyware software, but most importantly, I do my Windows Updates regularly, by regularly I mean to say that my machine is told to automatically download updates, and if I happen to be logged on to my machine, it will prompt for a restart which I do as soon as possible, or alternatively, if I left my machine logged off, it will automatically restart at 3am.
This machine is close to a year old now, it has not had any malware issues, this is attributed to my computer's software being up to date, and more importantly my knowledge of software and computers. For using Windows I get the convenience of being able to run any software written for it, commercial or open source, and I get access to drivers which I know will work on my OS with no more hassle than clicking an "install" button.
If I switched to Linux, I would be on a more secure system, but wouldn't have access to half the software I am using right now, and the other half would probably require weeks of tweaking and reading of news groups to get working, and at the end of it, I still would end up using Windows for games, because it's just easier.
What I am trying to say is, yes Windows is bad from a security perspective, but right now it is not only Microsoft that has to come to the party to sort it out, however, in spite of this if the users weren't such dumbasses, we would also have far less problems, so users also need to be informed, as demonstrated by my running a Linux app as root example.
And in all honesty, Windows works perfectly for me, it installed with absolute ease, not a moments problem during operation either, not even a system hang, why should I switch to Linux which I know will frustrate me because it just doesn't run some of the things as easily as Windows?
Huh? Most people I know with "Instant Messengers" on their phones ARE using third party applications, these are also often written in Java, so are secure from the rest of the phone anyway, although, without actual research, I am not sure on the details, although I am reasonaby certain a short amount of Googling will yeild some open source, Java based cell phone IM clients.
Indeed, a strain to write and read, and now I slip into the realm of what is arguably off topic...
/. linked to a White Dust Security article. I am no English teacher, but it was absolutely abysmal English, assuming that the article's author's first language is English, it would not be suprising that part of their shocking English skills (or lack there of) could be directly attributed to their "leetness" at leetspeak.
Leetspeak does not impress me at all, in fact, if I see someone genuinely using it, I'll just assume they are immature individuals who have yet to grow up, and consequently I treat them as such. In my opinion, Leetspeak is also a complete waste of time, my typing is bad enough without me training myself to do it incorrectly, what I am trying to get at is that leetspeak is not only arguably lame, but it is in fact counter-productive.
Many people, especially IT workers, have probably never been on a typing course, but despite this, many may be considered to be exceptionally quick on the keyboard. You see, the brain is remarkable in that forcing yourself to do something repetitively sets up neural pathways, and one finds themselves able to do the same thing that they initially found to be complicated or difficult, with almost little or no effort whatsoever, this is called "training". So, all these leetspeak people have successfully trained themselves in a skill that has absolutely no value in the workplace, but even worse, good language and typing skills, which would be useful in the workplace, have probably been sabotaged by them repetitively doing it wrong. As an example, earlier today
That's just one reason I don't care much for IRC, the other is that many people on IRC, seem be far to, as a Vulcan might say, "irrational".
Actually, I obtained this update, along with all other critical updates in the past without needing to fire up Internet Explorer. The URL mentioned in the article will allow me to download the patch with Firefox, whis was not necessary though as my "Automatic Updates" service prompted me almost as soon as I turned on my computer to apply this update.
So, one does not *need* Internet Explorer for critical updates. Also, to be honest Internet Explorer is only potentially dangerous to use on untrusted websites or already compromised machines, so if you are using Windows, you have Internet Explorer anyway, so there is nothing wrong with using it for Windows Update, as long as you haven't already got malware from using it to browse some dodgy site.
Honestly, I don't understand the complaint people have of only IE allowing them to obtain Windows specific software, Microsoft makes Internet Explorer freely available to whoever may need it for that purpose, and if it's got other problems (like already malware infested), use Firefox or something to download the patches manually.
Did you mean this movie staring Ben Affleck?
./ (dotslash??), don't you mean /. (Slashdot)?
Also, in your signature you refer to