Right, so the intelligent thing would be to explain to my clients that it's Microsoft's fault and not mine that the site I just designed for them doesn't display properly for 9 out of 10 of their customers? After all, I followed the standards and it would be stupid not to!
"Sorry Mr. Client, standards evangelism is far more important to me than your customers. Now, when should I be expecting payment?" Yeah, that'll fly.
I think I'll keep using my current methodology: Design to the standards first, then add whatever hacks are needed to handle the various browser bugs in secondary stylesheets to ensure the widest possible compatability across as many browsers and platforms as I can.
Call me crazy, but keeping the client and their customers satisfied (and, as a result, making the site display properly for as many visitors as I possibly can, rather than just those that use a "standards compliant" browser) and subsequently getting paid for my work is more important to me than beating the standards drum.
True, but less and less so as time goes on and 3D cards continue to approach ubiquity. A number of previously 2D games have made the move to 3D with their latest installments: The Sims, Roller Coaster Tycoon, the Civilization series will make the move to 3D with it's forthcoming installment, hell, even SimCity requires at least a modest 3D card with it's latest sequel.
3D gaming has moved beyond the realm of the FPS, and soon it'll likely be difficult to find any game outside of shareware and children's games that isn't using 3D acceleration of some kind, even games/genres that you wouldn't normally think of as "3D".
Simply handing off driver creation to the companies isn't an effective way of ensuring something will work. Many companies will half-ass a driver just to get their product, others won't even put that much effort in to it.
Witness the state of OS X drivers for scanners. Many people have to rely on a third-party app like VueScan (which is not free) because so many scanner manufacturers have either not bothered to release OS X drivers for their hardware, or released drivers so crappy as to render them effectively useless.
Now imagine this scenario applied to the melange of PC hardware that would need drivers if OS X for Intel was opened up for non-Apple hardware. Ugh.
I don't know, I think they've pretty much balanced out. There will always be a market for single player games, just as there will be for multiplayer games.
There's a lot of single player games in a lot of genres I'm looking forward to over the next year or two: HL2: Aftermath, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., F.E.A.R., Hellgate: London, Prey, Unreal 3, Quake 4, Dragon Age, Civilization 4, SiN: Episodes, Alan Wake. I could go on, but you get the idea.
I suspect you primarily enjoy MP games, so maybe you pay more attention to those games and pay less attention to the SP games. So, from your POV, there are more MP games out there. I'm just guessing here, making no assumptions. I'm quite the opposite, I prefer SP so I pay much more attention to those games. I'd have a hard time naming any upcoming MP games, outside of Day Of Defeat: Source, which I actually am looking forward to. Heck, the only MP-centric games I can even think of coming out recently are the Battlefield series and WoW.
I think it all comes down to POV. From where I'm sitting MP games seem to be on their way out, even though I know that's not the case. I just don't pay enough attention to those games to keep up-to-date on what's coming out.
1. The Sims 2 - Single player.
2. Doom 3 - Primarily single player, with a fairly flat multiplayer component seeming added on as an afterthought.
3. World Of Warcraft - Okay, that's one.
4. Half-Life 2 - Single player. Yeah, it comes with Counter-Strike & Half-Life 2 Deathmatch (which wasn't available or even announced at HL2's launch) but the core game itself is purely single player.
5. The Sims Deluxe - Single player.
6. The Sims 2 Special Edition - Single player.
7. Battlefield Vietnam - That's two. Though it does have single player capability via bots, so it's not purely multiplayer.
8. Call Of Duty - Fifty/fifty, IMO. It has single player, though many (I suspect most) buy it for the multiplayer.
9. Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 - Yeah, that's single player too.
10. MS Zoo Tycoon: Complete Collection - Single player.
So, only one game in the top ten last year was a pure multiplayer game, with two more that are a mix of single/multi leaning towards multi. The other seven were primarily single player games, five of which have no multiplayer capability at all.
Note that I've only looked at PC games, as this game is only officially announced for the PC. They say they want to port to next-gen consoles, but it doesn't sound like they've even begun working on that. So, for now, it's just a PC game and I want to compare apples to apples.
Apparantly he's another one of those flag-waving blind patriots who equate "American company" with "American made."
Kinda like those folks with "Buy American" bumper stickers on their Dodge Rams, probably unaware of the fact that many of them are assembled in Mexico. Oh yeah, and let's not forget that Dodge is owned by DaimlerChrysler, a primarily German company.
Valve would be doing a service to the entire online gaming community, and for the children of America, if they went to Xbox 360 exclusively (an AMERICAN made console BTW).
Ummm... American Made?
The ATI GPU is being manufactured by TSMC is Taiwan. The hard drive is being manufactured by Seagate in Singapore. The memory is being manufactured by NEC in Japan. The DVD drive is manufactured by Toshiba in Japan. The connectors are being built by FoxLink & Ji-Haw in Taiwan. The final assembly is being done in China. Just about the only thing in the whole damn console being made in the US is the CPU's coming out of IBM's fabrication facility in New York.
Word on the street is that they will be using the SOurce engine for HL3. Since a lot of the delat between 1 and 2 was caused by development of the engine, I seriously doubt the same delay can be expected for 3. All they need to do is the content
Valve has stated that Source will be used for HL3, they intentionally built it to be extensible enough to keep it up-to-date with the latest technologies and hardware.
Still, I'd expect HL3 is still several years off, my guess would be 2-3 years. They will probably still want to add new features to the engine, which takes time (they've spent months working on the HDR update.) They're also still working on the HL2 expansion, and likely haven't started working on HL3, at least beyond the conceptual stage.
Assuming HL2:Aftermath actually comes out in December as they're shooting for, they'll have spent about a year developing that, and it's only about half the length of the full game and uses all the same environments, textures, models, etc. as HL2. One would hope HL3 won't be using HL2 content, so all that will have to be created from scratch, all of which takes time.
I'd guess HL3 will come out towards the end of the X-Box 360's life cycle, just like HL2 is for the X-Box. Oh yeah, and I'd be amazed if it didn't come out for PC. As has already been stated, the engine is already done and was built for forward development. Why would they abandon it now?
Well, I wouldn't hope for much. Alan Moore (the guy who actually wrote V For Vendetta, not the Wachowski brothers) has completely distanced himself from the project. Even going so far as to pull all his future work from DC/Warner Bros. owned comic imprint Wildstorm simply for stating that he approved of the film. He demanded a retraction, when they wouldn't he took his ball and went home.
It should be noted that Alan has a long history of distancing himself from the Hollywood adaptions of his books. He even requested that the royalties due him for the Constantine & V For Vendetta movies be taken and distributed among the artists involved, he was unwilling to even take financial compensation for the movies.
It also should be noted that there has never been a good movie made from one of Moore's books. League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Great comic, terrible movie. From Hell? Great book, average movie. Constantine wasn't directly based off of one of Moore's stories, but it was a character he created. Great character, great comics... Okay, I haven't seen the film so I can't judge it. But Keanu Reeves as John Constantine is such horrible casting that I have little hope.
So, yeah... if history is any indication, V For Vendetta won't be very good.
I can see stopping the use of peanut oil, and even clearly labeling items that have peanuts in them. That's fine, there are a lot of kids who have peanut allergies, many very severe. I can even see the school deciding to simply not serve anything with peanuts in it, especially if they know of students with said allergies. But, to go so far as to tell kids they can't bring a peanut butter & jelly sandwich to school is a bit much.
Can't wait for the next "important social issue" to come up. It's going to be the horrors of chunky peanut butter or some such tripe.
Frighteningly enough, we've already been there, done that. Parents have sued to have anyhting containing peanuts removed from school menus because their children are allergic, even wanting to ban children from bringing in anything with peanuts in it in their lunches. Succeeded too, in some cases.
Too true, Dvorak is little more than a professional troll. Sadly, it's easier to get attention by writing something intentionally controversial than practically any other method, witness Marliyn Manson and Eminem.
I'll admit, having two computers running can be really helpful at times, but the expense of keeping two systems up-to-date is one I'd love to eliminate.
I really only use the Windows system for games and checking my HTML/CSS/JS when I'm doing web design, everything else I do on the Mac. It's nice to be able to play a game for a bit on the PC, then quickly switch over to the Mac to check e-mial, surf the web, work on some music, whatever, then quickly switch right back when I'm ready for a gaming break again. So, having to re-boot the one computer everytime I want to switch back and forth will be a pain, for sure, but I think it might be worth it to save the cash.
In the short term, yes. I've ridden out the previous two transitions and I'll ride this one out too. I'm willing to wait and see how things develop before I make any decisions.
Realistically though, what other option will there be? If the Mac goes fully into the Trusted Computing model, the Windows option will certainly have too. As a graphic designer by career, without any of the major design apps being ported to Linux, there's really no option there. As a musician recreationally, without any of the major sequencers or other software being ported to Linux, it's further not an option.
Further, with a Mac presumably able to multi-boot Mac OS, Windows, and Linux, it makes it a rather attractive option. Good-bye KVM, good-bye two computers under the desk!
This guy is directing. He has nothing in his directorial history that gives me reason to be optimistic, though he was cinematographer on a few decent movies.
To further remove reasons for optimism, the writer appears to have never written a single movie before this.
One bright spot: the score is being done by Clint Mansell, who has done some excellent scores in the past, not to mention his years with the band Pop Will Eat Itself.
My point was the same from the start. If we legitimize DDoS attacks as a spamfighting tool, it's just a matter of time until it becomes legitimized as a tool for fighting any of the other form of netcrime, consequences be damned. I don't see where I've ever deviated from that statement. I also agree with you that it's not an appropriate tool for fighting fileshares, warez servers, etc. I never stated otherwise, and never claimed you did either. We're in 100% complete agreement here.
So, to restate the entire thing so that we can move on from this:
I agree with you that DDoS might be an effective tool to fight spammers. I agree with you that other potential uses for DDoS attacks against other netcrime could be wrong. However, as the RIAA has alrready demonstrated, others will want to use them in ways other than spamfighting. So allowing them to be used for spamfighting will almost certainly result in them being used in other situations eventually.
To me, that's a gamble I'm not willing to take. There's simply too much room for abuse in this instance, and we should try and find other methods that have less risk for abuse. If you feel differently, that's fine, but it's just my take on it.
Sheesh, I hope everything is clear now. I really hate arguing on the internet, especially when I generally agree with the person I'm arguing with! Can we move on now?
W/r to your first statement, I'm getting quite sick and tired of people taking my statements and either blowing them out of proportion, as you have done, or twisting them away from what I said.
Funny, that's exactly what you did in response to my post. You jumped to the conclusion that I think warez should be legal and protected simply because I stated that DDoS attacks aren't a proper way to deal with them.
Want people to stop twisting your statements? Stop twisting other people's statements. That "do as I say, not as I do" shit ain't gonna float.
And I never said "they should be proteced and allowed to carry out illegal activities" and yet you jumped to that conclusion. You carry as much irresponsibility in mis-portraying my statements, so don't preach to me until you get your own house in order.
You appear to have completely missed the point of my original post altogether. I agree that it isn't a valid solution to all problems, but once it's been used as a solution to one cybercrime problem, people (corporations) will want to use it other circumstances. The RIAA (as mentioned in another post in this story) has already petitioned lawmakers to allow them to DOS fie-sharers, others will fall in line behind them.
I, personally, don't want my cable internet connection down for lengthy periods of time because my neighbor is getting DOS-ed by the RIAA for sharing music, and won't stand behind any methodology that would allow that to happen.
So by saying that DDoSing warez servers is a bad thing? Or are you saying that they should be proteced and allowed to carry out illegal activities?
It could be. Say you own a small net-based business, small enough that you can only afford shared hosting. Now say one of those warez sites is on the same shared server as you. Microsoft (or Adobe, or Apple, or whomever) lays a DDoS attack on the server, now your site is down until the attack is over and you can no longer conduct business. Even worse, a particularly potent DDoS could take the entire host down, affecting all the sites they host.
Perhaps the warez site is hosted off of some kid's home PC through his cable modem. The DDoS attack could take down everyone's internet access around him. Do you want your internet connection killed for a day (or days) because the kid next door hosted a warez server? I know I don't.
There are already laws, albeit sometimes ineffective, on the books to deal with those kinds of situations. Opening the floodgates on DDoS-ing every server that commits anything even percieved as illegal is using a sledgehammer to swat a mosquito, and there's too much risk of collateral damage, IMHO.
While it's certainly true that DDoS attacks are illegal, and that there is a precedence that sets these types of things firmly in the illegal category, I personally think that we should reexamine them. Set a statute that allows DDoS attacks against known spam hosts and the like.
That's one knot that I think would be best left untied. It may start out as an anti-spam tool, but it'll only be a matter of time before all manner of other uses are okayed. How long before the RIAA gets permission to DDoS file-sharers, or entire P2P networks? How long before Microsoft gets permission to DDoS servers hosting cracks for their software?
Legalized DDoS attacks as a tool for fighting spam just reeks of a Pandora's Box solution to the problem. Once we make it an acceptable method for netcrime fighting in one instance, it's only a matter of time before all manner of major corporations and organizations tug the leash they have around US lawmaker's necks and get the right to DDoS anything they don't like.
Make the person when caught with the pirated software pay for the exact amount of what the software cost in the store. Not some $200,000 per copy.
Then, where's the deterrent? Why bother actually paying for the game at all? Pirate it, if you get caught you'll only end up paying the $50 (or whatever) you would have paid for it to begin with. There's no real risk in making the illegal choice over the legal one.
By this logic, if I go into a computer store and get caught stealing a $2000 laptop, my only punishment should be to pay the $2000? That said, if I were going to buy a laptop anyway, why not try and steal it? Worst that happens is I end up paying for it anyway, but I just might get away with a free laptop! Zero deterrent.
What then would be the punishment for speeding? If you get caught driving 10 MPH over the speed limit, they make you drive 10 MPH under the speed limit for a day to balance it off? No, there needs to be sufficient enough punishment to make people think twice about breaking the law to begin with.
I agree that the punishment should fit the crime, and that $200,000 is extreme. But the punishment does need to be harsh enough to make it not worth the risk to make the illegal choice.
Slashdot Mirror
Or... you just open up the console and type "sv_cheats 1" followed by "noclip" and don't waste time mucking about with the boat and gravity gun. :)
Right, so the intelligent thing would be to explain to my clients that it's Microsoft's fault and not mine that the site I just designed for them doesn't display properly for 9 out of 10 of their customers? After all, I followed the standards and it would be stupid not to!
"Sorry Mr. Client, standards evangelism is far more important to me than your customers. Now, when should I be expecting payment?" Yeah, that'll fly.
I think I'll keep using my current methodology: Design to the standards first, then add whatever hacks are needed to handle the various browser bugs in secondary stylesheets to ensure the widest possible compatability across as many browsers and platforms as I can.
Call me crazy, but keeping the client and their customers satisfied (and, as a result, making the site display properly for as many visitors as I possibly can, rather than just those that use a "standards compliant" browser) and subsequently getting paid for my work is more important to me than beating the standards drum.
There is more to gaming than 3D.
True, but less and less so as time goes on and 3D cards continue to approach ubiquity. A number of previously 2D games have made the move to 3D with their latest installments: The Sims, Roller Coaster Tycoon, the Civilization series will make the move to 3D with it's forthcoming installment, hell, even SimCity requires at least a modest 3D card with it's latest sequel.
3D gaming has moved beyond the realm of the FPS, and soon it'll likely be difficult to find any game outside of shareware and children's games that isn't using 3D acceleration of some kind, even games/genres that you wouldn't normally think of as "3D".
Simply handing off driver creation to the companies isn't an effective way of ensuring something will work. Many companies will half-ass a driver just to get their product, others won't even put that much effort in to it.
Witness the state of OS X drivers for scanners. Many people have to rely on a third-party app like VueScan (which is not free) because so many scanner manufacturers have either not bothered to release OS X drivers for their hardware, or released drivers so crappy as to render them effectively useless.
Now imagine this scenario applied to the melange of PC hardware that would need drivers if OS X for Intel was opened up for non-Apple hardware. Ugh.
I don't know, I think they've pretty much balanced out. There will always be a market for single player games, just as there will be for multiplayer games.
There's a lot of single player games in a lot of genres I'm looking forward to over the next year or two: HL2: Aftermath, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., F.E.A.R., Hellgate: London, Prey, Unreal 3, Quake 4, Dragon Age, Civilization 4, SiN: Episodes, Alan Wake. I could go on, but you get the idea.
I suspect you primarily enjoy MP games, so maybe you pay more attention to those games and pay less attention to the SP games. So, from your POV, there are more MP games out there. I'm just guessing here, making no assumptions. I'm quite the opposite, I prefer SP so I pay much more attention to those games. I'd have a hard time naming any upcoming MP games, outside of Day Of Defeat: Source, which I actually am looking forward to. Heck, the only MP-centric games I can even think of coming out recently are the Battlefield series and WoW.
I think it all comes down to POV. From where I'm sitting MP games seem to be on their way out, even though I know that's not the case. I just don't pay enough attention to those games to keep up-to-date on what's coming out.
Multiplayer games sell more copies.
I'm curious where you get this information from. A quick check of the top ten selling PC games for 2004 paints a different picture.
1. The Sims 2 - Single player.
2. Doom 3 - Primarily single player, with a fairly flat multiplayer component seeming added on as an afterthought.
3. World Of Warcraft - Okay, that's one.
4. Half-Life 2 - Single player. Yeah, it comes with Counter-Strike & Half-Life 2 Deathmatch (which wasn't available or even announced at HL2's launch) but the core game itself is purely single player.
5. The Sims Deluxe - Single player.
6. The Sims 2 Special Edition - Single player.
7. Battlefield Vietnam - That's two. Though it does have single player capability via bots, so it's not purely multiplayer.
8. Call Of Duty - Fifty/fifty, IMO. It has single player, though many (I suspect most) buy it for the multiplayer.
9. Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 - Yeah, that's single player too.
10. MS Zoo Tycoon: Complete Collection - Single player.
So, only one game in the top ten last year was a pure multiplayer game, with two more that are a mix of single/multi leaning towards multi. The other seven were primarily single player games, five of which have no multiplayer capability at all.
Note that I've only looked at PC games, as this game is only officially announced for the PC. They say they want to port to next-gen consoles, but it doesn't sound like they've even begun working on that. So, for now, it's just a PC game and I want to compare apples to apples.
it comes pre-installed in OS X
Not anymore it doesn't. At least it didn't with my copy of Tiger, and I did a default installation.
Apparantly he's another one of those flag-waving blind patriots who equate "American company" with "American made."
Kinda like those folks with "Buy American" bumper stickers on their Dodge Rams, probably unaware of the fact that many of them are assembled in Mexico. Oh yeah, and let's not forget that Dodge is owned by DaimlerChrysler, a primarily German company.
Valve would be doing a service to the entire online gaming community, and for the children of America, if they went to Xbox 360 exclusively (an AMERICAN made console BTW).
Ummm... American Made?
The ATI GPU is being manufactured by TSMC is Taiwan. The hard drive is being manufactured by Seagate in Singapore. The memory is being manufactured by NEC in Japan. The DVD drive is manufactured by Toshiba in Japan. The connectors are being built by FoxLink & Ji-Haw in Taiwan. The final assembly is being done in China. Just about the only thing in the whole damn console being made in the US is the CPU's coming out of IBM's fabrication facility in New York.
American made? Walter. Tango. Foxtrot.
Word on the street is that they will be using the SOurce engine for HL3. Since a lot of the delat between 1 and 2 was caused by development of the engine, I seriously doubt the same delay can be expected for 3. All they need to do is the content
Valve has stated that Source will be used for HL3, they intentionally built it to be extensible enough to keep it up-to-date with the latest technologies and hardware.
Still, I'd expect HL3 is still several years off, my guess would be 2-3 years. They will probably still want to add new features to the engine, which takes time (they've spent months working on the HDR update.) They're also still working on the HL2 expansion, and likely haven't started working on HL3, at least beyond the conceptual stage.
Assuming HL2:Aftermath actually comes out in December as they're shooting for, they'll have spent about a year developing that, and it's only about half the length of the full game and uses all the same environments, textures, models, etc. as HL2. One would hope HL3 won't be using HL2 content, so all that will have to be created from scratch, all of which takes time.
I'd guess HL3 will come out towards the end of the X-Box 360's life cycle, just like HL2 is for the X-Box. Oh yeah, and I'd be amazed if it didn't come out for PC. As has already been stated, the engine is already done and was built for forward development. Why would they abandon it now?
Games?
Well, I wouldn't hope for much. Alan Moore (the guy who actually wrote V For Vendetta, not the Wachowski brothers) has completely distanced himself from the project. Even going so far as to pull all his future work from DC/Warner Bros. owned comic imprint Wildstorm simply for stating that he approved of the film. He demanded a retraction, when they wouldn't he took his ball and went home.
It should be noted that Alan has a long history of distancing himself from the Hollywood adaptions of his books. He even requested that the royalties due him for the Constantine & V For Vendetta movies be taken and distributed among the artists involved, he was unwilling to even take financial compensation for the movies.
It also should be noted that there has never been a good movie made from one of Moore's books. League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Great comic, terrible movie. From Hell? Great book, average movie. Constantine wasn't directly based off of one of Moore's stories, but it was a character he created. Great character, great comics... Okay, I haven't seen the film so I can't judge it. But Keanu Reeves as John Constantine is such horrible casting that I have little hope.
So, yeah... if history is any indication, V For Vendetta won't be very good.
I can see stopping the use of peanut oil, and even clearly labeling items that have peanuts in them. That's fine, there are a lot of kids who have peanut allergies, many very severe. I can even see the school deciding to simply not serve anything with peanuts in it, especially if they know of students with said allergies. But, to go so far as to tell kids they can't bring a peanut butter & jelly sandwich to school is a bit much.
Can't wait for the next "important social issue" to come up. It's going to be the horrors of chunky peanut butter or some such tripe.
Frighteningly enough, we've already been there, done that. Parents have sued to have anyhting containing peanuts removed from school menus because their children are allergic, even wanting to ban children from bringing in anything with peanuts in it in their lunches. Succeeded too, in some cases.
but yeah, hopefully Fox recognizes that the brand is stronger than fox, and doesn't try to insert some of their coporate DNA into it.
"Look for your friends, but do not trust to hope. It has forsaken these lands."
Too true, Dvorak is little more than a professional troll. Sadly, it's easier to get attention by writing something intentionally controversial than practically any other method, witness Marliyn Manson and Eminem.
I'll admit, having two computers running can be really helpful at times, but the expense of keeping two systems up-to-date is one I'd love to eliminate.
I really only use the Windows system for games and checking my HTML/CSS/JS when I'm doing web design, everything else I do on the Mac. It's nice to be able to play a game for a bit on the PC, then quickly switch over to the Mac to check e-mial, surf the web, work on some music, whatever, then quickly switch right back when I'm ready for a gaming break again. So, having to re-boot the one computer everytime I want to switch back and forth will be a pain, for sure, but I think it might be worth it to save the cash.
In the short term, yes. I've ridden out the previous two transitions and I'll ride this one out too. I'm willing to wait and see how things develop before I make any decisions.
Realistically though, what other option will there be? If the Mac goes fully into the Trusted Computing model, the Windows option will certainly have too. As a graphic designer by career, without any of the major design apps being ported to Linux, there's really no option there. As a musician recreationally, without any of the major sequencers or other software being ported to Linux, it's further not an option.
Further, with a Mac presumably able to multi-boot Mac OS, Windows, and Linux, it makes it a rather attractive option. Good-bye KVM, good-bye two computers under the desk!
This guy is directing. He has nothing in his directorial history that gives me reason to be optimistic, though he was cinematographer on a few decent movies.
To further remove reasons for optimism, the writer appears to have never written a single movie before this.
One bright spot: the score is being done by Clint Mansell, who has done some excellent scores in the past, not to mention his years with the band Pop Will Eat Itself.
My point was the same from the start. If we legitimize DDoS attacks as a spamfighting tool, it's just a matter of time until it becomes legitimized as a tool for fighting any of the other form of netcrime, consequences be damned. I don't see where I've ever deviated from that statement. I also agree with you that it's not an appropriate tool for fighting fileshares, warez servers, etc. I never stated otherwise, and never claimed you did either. We're in 100% complete agreement here.
So, to restate the entire thing so that we can move on from this:
I agree with you that DDoS might be an effective tool to fight spammers. I agree with you that other potential uses for DDoS attacks against other netcrime could be wrong. However, as the RIAA has alrready demonstrated, others will want to use them in ways other than spamfighting. So allowing them to be used for spamfighting will almost certainly result in them being used in other situations eventually.
To me, that's a gamble I'm not willing to take. There's simply too much room for abuse in this instance, and we should try and find other methods that have less risk for abuse. If you feel differently, that's fine, but it's just my take on it.
Sheesh, I hope everything is clear now. I really hate arguing on the internet, especially when I generally agree with the person I'm arguing with! Can we move on now?
W/r to your first statement, I'm getting quite sick and tired of people taking my statements and either blowing them out of proportion, as you have done, or twisting them away from what I said.
Funny, that's exactly what you did in response to my post. You jumped to the conclusion that I think warez should be legal and protected simply because I stated that DDoS attacks aren't a proper way to deal with them.
Want people to stop twisting your statements? Stop twisting other people's statements. That "do as I say, not as I do" shit ain't gonna float.
Hypocrisy at it's finest.
And I never said "they should be proteced and allowed to carry out illegal activities" and yet you jumped to that conclusion. You carry as much irresponsibility in mis-portraying my statements, so don't preach to me until you get your own house in order.
You appear to have completely missed the point of my original post altogether. I agree that it isn't a valid solution to all problems, but once it's been used as a solution to one cybercrime problem, people (corporations) will want to use it other circumstances. The RIAA (as mentioned in another post in this story) has already petitioned lawmakers to allow them to DOS fie-sharers, others will fall in line behind them.
I, personally, don't want my cable internet connection down for lengthy periods of time because my neighbor is getting DOS-ed by the RIAA for sharing music, and won't stand behind any methodology that would allow that to happen.
So by saying that DDoSing warez servers is a bad thing? Or are you saying that they should be proteced and allowed to carry out illegal activities?
It could be. Say you own a small net-based business, small enough that you can only afford shared hosting. Now say one of those warez sites is on the same shared server as you. Microsoft (or Adobe, or Apple, or whomever) lays a DDoS attack on the server, now your site is down until the attack is over and you can no longer conduct business. Even worse, a particularly potent DDoS could take the entire host down, affecting all the sites they host.
Perhaps the warez site is hosted off of some kid's home PC through his cable modem. The DDoS attack could take down everyone's internet access around him. Do you want your internet connection killed for a day (or days) because the kid next door hosted a warez server? I know I don't.
There are already laws, albeit sometimes ineffective, on the books to deal with those kinds of situations. Opening the floodgates on DDoS-ing every server that commits anything even percieved as illegal is using a sledgehammer to swat a mosquito, and there's too much risk of collateral damage, IMHO.
While it's certainly true that DDoS attacks are illegal, and that there is a precedence that sets these types of things firmly in the illegal category, I personally think that we should reexamine them. Set a statute that allows DDoS attacks against known spam hosts and the like.
That's one knot that I think would be best left untied. It may start out as an anti-spam tool, but it'll only be a matter of time before all manner of other uses are okayed. How long before the RIAA gets permission to DDoS file-sharers, or entire P2P networks? How long before Microsoft gets permission to DDoS servers hosting cracks for their software?
Legalized DDoS attacks as a tool for fighting spam just reeks of a Pandora's Box solution to the problem. Once we make it an acceptable method for netcrime fighting in one instance, it's only a matter of time before all manner of major corporations and organizations tug the leash they have around US lawmaker's necks and get the right to DDoS anything they don't like.
Make the person when caught with the pirated software pay for the exact amount of what the software cost in the store. Not some $200,000 per copy.
Then, where's the deterrent? Why bother actually paying for the game at all? Pirate it, if you get caught you'll only end up paying the $50 (or whatever) you would have paid for it to begin with. There's no real risk in making the illegal choice over the legal one.
By this logic, if I go into a computer store and get caught stealing a $2000 laptop, my only punishment should be to pay the $2000? That said, if I were going to buy a laptop anyway, why not try and steal it? Worst that happens is I end up paying for it anyway, but I just might get away with a free laptop! Zero deterrent.
What then would be the punishment for speeding? If you get caught driving 10 MPH over the speed limit, they make you drive 10 MPH under the speed limit for a day to balance it off? No, there needs to be sufficient enough punishment to make people think twice about breaking the law to begin with.
I agree that the punishment should fit the crime, and that $200,000 is extreme. But the punishment does need to be harsh enough to make it not worth the risk to make the illegal choice.