DNSSEC is validated at the resolver level. However, even if you run your own local DNS resolver, DNSSEC wouldn't come into play -- Comcast can simply strip the KEY/RRSIG records entirely before sending them to you -- leaving your resolver thinking that the zone has no DNSSEC records at all (at which point, they are blindly accepted as valid).
I'd imagine that there is an option somewhere in bind to only accept signed records (and if not, there will be eventually I'm sure), but even if Comcast wasn't futzing with your dataz, you wouldn't have a functional internet.
(I'm on comcast, and am not seeing this redirection. I also run a local DNS resolver.)
So many mod points, so many different trolls in this thread. I'll reply to you.
If you hate it that badly, stop using it. The NM plasma applet is still considered beta, if not alpha quality. If your WPA wifi network doesn't work, then either NM itself broke or your controlling program sucks; it is probably the latter here. Install nm-applet (the gnome one) or knetworkmanager (kde 3.5 based) and you'll be off and running.
No, there isn't a proper NM manager for KDE4 yet. Take it or leave it. Soon, with any luck.
>> I look forward to having my touchpad break in KDE 4.3, and my keyboard break in KDE 4.4, and maybe, just maybe, a beta-quality release by KDE 4.5.
You could have just left this out and you'd have a much more respectable (if offtopic) post.
> Let anyone who has a problem come up with their own competing DNS hierarchy, a la OpenDNS.
Erm, OpenDNS has nothing to do with this. OpenDNS uses the existing root servers - the existing hierarchy - for name resolution. Then, they apply big blacklists and transformations to the bulk of the data. Typing in a slightly wrong domain will be auto corrected and bounced to the proper domain, "bad" domains (malware, etc) are blocked, and questionable content can be filtered.
(In fact, it is these very same practices that have got quite a few ISPs in trouble with their customers. Verisign pulled the same stunt with the.com TLD some time ago, and caught unbelievable crap for it. Why some people love OpenDNS but hated on Verisign for that I'll never know or understand.)
It has NOTHING to do with root DNS control. It depends upon the existing infrastructure, and does little more than sanitize it. They don't handle domain registrations, TLD management/control, and they don't manage authoritative nameservers for their customers domains.
They are, in fact, not a competitor in any form, but instead they are quite dependent upon what we already have in place. This has absolutely nothing to do with OpenDNS in any reasonable way I can think of. They are absolutely not a "DNS hierarchy" as you would imply.
Every "game" announcement is a full screen countdown to some mystery. I remember with the announcement of SC:Ghost, when it was discovered that they own starcraft2.com. Rumors everywhere, and no one guessed it right.
In their own way, their sheer secrecy could fit here.
When one of the WoW Community Managers quit years back, they were allowed to post fake patch notes all over the forums. At the time, this was a pretty popular thing to do -- to the point where it wound up being a bannable offense. And here they were, letting an employee post "patch notes" with their official "I'm a Blizzard Rep" account.
They do pay pretty close attention to their community, but aside from April Fools, I don't know if they've ever done something quite like the TF2 team did here.
You'll notice that this is an opt-in for future game betas. It's much more likely, knowing Blizzard, that you or anyone else will not get any notification for weeks at best.
I wouldn't worry about not getting a notice. It isn't SC2 specific. The title is misleading, but SC2 will be the next beta we see, so it "fits."
With that said, this (Obama's) plan is for national rail, not intercity rail.
But as a whole, yeah, my experiences here with rail has definitely been a good thing. It would take me ~30m to get to school via driving. With the TRAX, I can sit down at one end of the line, and 50 minutes later (of sitting down, relaxing, reading, doing whatever - NOT yelling at stupid drivers, getting stuck in traffic, near collisions due to hazardous roads) get up at my destination. That isn't something you can manage in a car, especially considering that your TRAX ticket can transfer to a bus!
I have to say that the TRAX here in SLC got a lot of things right. I'd love to see more.
mirandaboot.ini can be used to specify defaults and optionally prevent them from being changed. From there, it is just a matter of locking down said file to prevent users from changing it, which if your users don't run as admin, is trivial.
I customized my version to specify a default server and username, along with a custom location for the profiles to be stored.
So yes, you could configure it to have what amounts to a hard-coded server to use. You may wind up poking through the source code to find the proper keys to add to the file, but as long as you're not afraid of that, it should work just great.
The short and simple answer, that should fully meet your needs, is to install jabberd2, configure it as needed (should have a logging module/plugin somewhere), and then to use Miranda IM with only the XMPP components as the client. Miranda is very easy to customize; if you don't want a protocol you simply don't include the relevant DLL.
Note: the links on that page are dead, namely the ones to the MSI installer package that I built. If you have a need for it, feel free to drop me an e-mail (the/. address should be fine).
>It was shot down because the governor feared the studios would stop labeling their games altogether if they could be held liable for what label they slap on the box.
Erm, because that is EXACTLY what could have happened, and would have been a huge step BACK. It was worded such that a retailer who didn't advertise any ratings wouldn't be liable.
>This wasn't a victory for free speech or at least a step in the right direction.
Your free speech bit confuses me (expecting replies to that) but it definitely wasn't a step in the/wrong/ direction.
>What would a studio do to cover its back? Label everything M. Even "Barnie's 'I love you' singalong" because you might see someone hug and that could be seen as something sexual (eeek!) by another nutjob. > >We're still in Utah, remember that! > >Bottom line would have been that the whole self-imposed rating system would go out the window and parents couldn't tell a Teletubbies preschooler educational game from a blood dripping slaughterfest. And you can imagine what he'd get to hear then, right? Right?
Your paranoia is making the state of Utah look normal. And yes, I live there. It was a bad bill. Future incarnations will likely not be any better. How exactly you can extrapolate all of the above from a yes/yes from the senate/legislature and then a no by the governor is so far beyond me I'm not even sure where to begin.
This definitely wouldn't have been the first time that bad legislature had been signed into law, and I sincerely doubt that Utah is the only state to have done so. Yes, our legislature has no clue in their heads. Chances are, neither does yours.
>This is no victory. Yes, we like the outcome, but that will only be temporary until Nutsy finds the time to reword it. And that he has far too much spare time should be known by now.
Your usage of "Nutsy" made me grin a little there.
In any case, this is why I will be writing letters to my relevant local representation should anything like this ever re-appear. I evidently missed the knowledge boat this round, but round 2, we'll see...
Whoops, sorry. I read "hack you with ease" as "hack it with ease."
In any case I stand by my final statement, as sure you can rewrite core system functionality, but that doesn't mean jack until you managed to get the modified components in place - without breaking things.
This is the time old debate respun and renewed. Guess what? Because the source is in front of me, I can also make my system *more* secure! Holy cow!
Two way street with open source. You can (with relative ease) create malicious system components, or (with the same relative ease) enhance your system security.
In the MS case, you have less options *in both directions.*
Fortunately for most of us, none of this matters. Who has access to your system is the only relevant thing here, and further that applies to NT based operating systems too.
Keep in mind that the question was not linux, the question was "open source." OpenBSD falls under that, and in many ways I'd regard OpenBSD as more "secure" than linux.
But before the trolls get at me (I ONLY HAVE LINUX DESKTOPS, BACK OFF!)...
Don't get me wrong, as a whole I'd agree with your NSA analogy, but your example isn't remotely encompassing of "open source." Mozilla is open source, but you'll note we don't have SEMoz. And really - SElibpng?
The MS reps are spreading FUD.
" because 'anyone can read the code and hack you with ease.'"
Which is absolutely true. The question, is who can *load and execute code* with ease. That answer is pretty clearly defined - and in the case of open source, it is arguably more clearly defined that in the case of MS.
In any case, if someone is capable of running code on your system, you're likely screwed. It's not as bad as physical access no, but it's still not good either.
The relative "openness" of the source code has 0 impact on who you allow to run code on your system. You trojaned a PAM library, great! You can now get complete root access!
I'm tempted to adjust my preferences just to mod you up higher.
Mozilla has poked around with MSI, in the sense that they just have an MSI wrapper over their executable installer, which defeats the point of MSI almost entirely.
It's not that they're barreling down the road towards bloated browser, it's that they are putting no effort into the enterprise level support at all. I was in a similar situation, and wanted to deploy firefox across the company. There is no way to centrally manage preferences, and that's assuming you can manage to get it installed across the company in the first place. Never mind things like upgrading!
With Vista (and "above" - 2k8, win7), Microsoft changed the way they do site licensing. Instead of having one key for every computer, every client does a DNS lookup for a Key Management Software Server (KMS server), which then simply activates the client computer. It does not keep a record of how many activations you have used, only the last 50.
Likewise, you just call them up, tell them how many computers you have, and they give you a price. A few minutes and many thousands of dollars later, you have a key to plug in to KMS. Magically, every Vista+ box that you have on site is licensed and activated. This can include student computers if you wish. The activations 6 months, after which time they *must* talk to the KMS server again.
Now look. I run centos/debian/openbsd/gentoo/xp/vista/server 2008. I really hate (operating system) licensing. I hate the simple concept. But KMS is really the way to go. It takes right next to no system resources. In the KMS docs, they say that most 100k+ client customers are perfectly content with 2 KMS servers (with the same key). Next to zero system load.
Software Assurance has one big downside, and one big upside. The downside is that it is a yearly fee. It is more or less a subscription. The upside is that you are entitled to free upgrades of "the product" as long as you keep paying. This means that if you purchased SA on Office 2003 a year before 2007 was released, your 2003 license can be automatically upconverted to 2007 free of charge. The same applies to... all of their products. XP --> Vista --> Win7, SQL 2000 --> 2003 --> 2008, Visual Studio, the works. It is not a required upconversion either - you choose if and when you upgrade.
As a result, buying your weight in gold worth of Software Assurance also gives you 24/7 software support. It more or less gives you everything. Tech support, upgrades, technical resources... it is essentially the equal to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription in terms of the support you get, the products that you get, and the upgrades.
Really, your best bet to understanding MS licensing is to contact one of their reps. Gather everything that you can find before hand, and give them a call. Grill them endlessly. Ask questions, and don't let them leave until you know everything you needed.
What is the benefit of open source/free software? EVERYTHING ABOVE IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT.
"3) People who pay for some stuff, but don't have enough money for everything they want. They are somewhat similar to the first group, but they do buy things, just not everything they get. Something like university students with little disposable income. This is the only group that tighter DRM measures might help you get more money. However if everyone is tightening DRM, well you are back to where you started."
As someone in this bracket, namely a university student with *very* little disposable income, I see your point... maybe 50/50. I personally am not interested in paying for anything that isn't lossless, or has DRM. I can absolutely promise you that tightening DRM would result in me not purchasing anything.
I have 21 games on Steam. I'd love to have more, but finances prevent that. Steam is, to me, an allowable form of DRM simply because it gives me access to my games very quickly and simply. I login, double-click a game and it'll either start installing or start running. I don't have to worry about discs, keys, patches, and it doesn't get in my way *at all.* Steam, for the most part, got it right.
Music however, is either sold at too high a price, lossy, absolutely covered in very restrictive DRM, or in a format that I can't use.
I have no problem paying artists (in the broadest sense, be it musical, graphical, designer, whatever) for their work. I do have a problem when paying them would result in a product that is of poor quality (mp3), requires me to jump through excessive hoops to use (DRM), or is simply priced too high.
For me, tightening DRM would instantly drive me away. I don't own any games on Steam that have a 5-computer activation limit, and I don't own any DRM-encumbered music.
I say that I can only agree with you 50/50 because not everyone in my bracket (poor university student) even has a clue what DRM is. I have hopes, that as time goes on and the younger generations get burned on DRM (the MS music store, walmart's music store, iTunes requiring you to fork over additional money for DRM free music, DRM in general, and device crashes), that people will become more educated on the matter, care a little more about the content they buy, and demand a bit more.
I have no problem supporting the people who make the products. I do have a problem paying them when they require me to jump through excessive hoops or charge me $60 a game on an already strained budget. Lathering more DRM won't help you here, not one bit.
From the press release (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/06itunes.html):
"iTunes offers customers a simple, one-click option to easily upgrade their entire library of previously purchased songs to the higher quality DRM-free iTunes Plus format for just 30 cents per song or 30 percent of the album price. The iTunes Store will begin offering eight million of its 10 million songs in Apple's DRM-free format, iTunes Plus, today with the remaining two million songs offered in iTunes Plus by the end of March."
That is because a joystick is a very easy device to manipulate. Correctly reading a brain as quickly is not nearly as simplistic as a pair of physical sensors.
Once we can trivially read the mind and interpret what that means, I sincerely doubt that a joystick will remain faster.
Joysticks/muscle memory comes with practice. Once reading the brain becomes practical, given time and practice...
> Uh yeah and how many of those will be tutorial missions? Half the missions in each of the campaigns in the original Starcraft were tutorial missions.
Uh, SC had one tutorial. From there it was a gradual ramp up in terms of what units they allowed you access to.
> Uh, they just said that the multiplayer will feature all 3 races and be 100% out of the box. If they add new units, doesn't that defeat the purpose of claiming that the multiplayer is "complete"?
Games change. They want each product to stand on it's own. No where did they say that the units and balance would stay identical from game to game to game.
> Nobody complained about Brood Wars because it was $30 on release and the new units were far from game changing (who the hell uses Valkyries or Devourers outside of money and custom maps?).
I'd like to tell you to learn to play, but you posted as AC so that makes it somewhat hard.
> Blizzard says "Hey! How about instead of 1 disk, we sell you 3 disks instead? We got the idea even before the game was completed. And which we have fluffed-out enough with video and audio so it fits onto 3 discs instead of 1, so that you could buy 3 discs instead of 1."
Blizzard says, "Hey! This is going to take a long time to produce to meet our quality expectations, and quite frankly designing a massive branching campaign with multiplayer in mind is a challenge.. we can either take from here until some time in 2015 to complete all three campaigns for one game..."
You see where I'm going for this?
> They are making 3 of them JUST SO they could sell 3 of them, 3 times. > Plain and simple.
No. The game has a massive following. They're producing an equally massive sequel to it.
> They are making 3 of them JUST SO they could sell 3 of them, 3 times. > Plain and simple.
Yup. Rowling made seven books just so that you'd have to buy it seven times.
. . .
No. She told her story how she wanted it told. How is this any different?
For those of you whining about "whaaaa 300% markup"..
Each campaign has 36 missions. That's more than the original Starcraft. Further, the campaign will be branched (ie, you'll have choices that actually effect what happens, which missions are selected, what happens). It might also feature co-op multiplayer, not sure on that one yet.
Or, what they announced, was a game called Starcraft II and the following two expansions to it. You know that's how it'll work. They won't just ship new missions and charge you retail for it, it will feature new units, balance, etc.
Starcraft was released, people were happy. Brood War was released, and people didn't whine about Blizzard "ripping them off" because hey, this expansion also had content.
Starcraft II is exactly the same, and yet, people are whining now...? Am I missing something?
Slashdot Mirror
DNSSEC is validated at the resolver level. However, even if you run your own local DNS resolver, DNSSEC wouldn't come into play -- Comcast can simply strip the KEY/RRSIG records entirely before sending them to you -- leaving your resolver thinking that the zone has no DNSSEC records at all (at which point, they are blindly accepted as valid).
I'd imagine that there is an option somewhere in bind to only accept signed records (and if not, there will be eventually I'm sure), but even if Comcast wasn't futzing with your dataz, you wouldn't have a functional internet.
(I'm on comcast, and am not seeing this redirection. I also run a local DNS resolver.)
So many mod points, so many different trolls in this thread. I'll reply to you.
If you hate it that badly, stop using it. The NM plasma applet is still considered beta, if not alpha quality. If your WPA wifi network doesn't work, then either NM itself broke or your controlling program sucks; it is probably the latter here. Install nm-applet (the gnome one) or knetworkmanager (kde 3.5 based) and you'll be off and running.
No, there isn't a proper NM manager for KDE4 yet. Take it or leave it. Soon, with any luck.
>> I look forward to having my touchpad break in KDE 4.3, and my keyboard break in KDE 4.4, and maybe, just maybe, a beta-quality release by KDE 4.5.
You could have just left this out and you'd have a much more respectable (if offtopic) post.
> Let anyone who has a problem come up with their own competing DNS hierarchy, a la OpenDNS.
Erm, OpenDNS has nothing to do with this. OpenDNS uses the existing root servers - the existing hierarchy - for name resolution. Then, they apply big blacklists and transformations to the bulk of the data. Typing in a slightly wrong domain will be auto corrected and bounced to the proper domain, "bad" domains (malware, etc) are blocked, and questionable content can be filtered.
(In fact, it is these very same practices that have got quite a few ISPs in trouble with their customers. Verisign pulled the same stunt with the .com TLD some time ago, and caught unbelievable crap for it. Why some people love OpenDNS but hated on Verisign for that I'll never know or understand.)
It has NOTHING to do with root DNS control. It depends upon the existing infrastructure, and does little more than sanitize it. They don't handle domain registrations, TLD management/control, and they don't manage authoritative nameservers for their customers domains.
They are, in fact, not a competitor in any form, but instead they are quite dependent upon what we already have in place. This has absolutely nothing to do with OpenDNS in any reasonable way I can think of. They are absolutely not a "DNS hierarchy" as you would imply.
Yeah, they have.
Every "game" announcement is a full screen countdown to some mystery. I remember with the announcement of SC:Ghost, when it was discovered that they own starcraft2.com. Rumors everywhere, and no one guessed it right.
In their own way, their sheer secrecy could fit here.
When one of the WoW Community Managers quit years back, they were allowed to post fake patch notes all over the forums. At the time, this was a pretty popular thing to do -- to the point where it wound up being a bannable offense. And here they were, letting an employee post "patch notes" with their official "I'm a Blizzard Rep" account.
They do pay pretty close attention to their community, but aside from April Fools, I don't know if they've ever done something quite like the TF2 team did here.
They've stated that the beta won't start until the EU region can merge their accounts properly. It's in TFA, iirc.
You'll notice that this is an opt-in for future game betas. It's much more likely, knowing Blizzard, that you or anyone else will not get any notification for weeks at best.
I wouldn't worry about not getting a notice. It isn't SC2 specific. The title is misleading, but SC2 will be the next beta we see, so it "fits."
As someone who is about to leave his house to step on the TRAX..
I don't know if you've been here recently, but they semi-recently completed another extension to the system, named FrontRunner.
From one end of the line, to the other: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=hKV&ei=X5voSZzrPKPGtAPckrTgAQ&resnum=0&q=2700%20N%2C%20Highway%2089%20Pleasant%20View%2C%20Utah&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl
You can, for about $3, sit down on a train at one end and get off at the other. They also have planned lines that extend out to the airport, and... aw whatever, here, have the current map (that includes upcoming plans): http://www.rideuta.com/ridinguta/routeMapImage.aspx?abbreviation=749&signup=81
With that said, this (Obama's) plan is for national rail, not intercity rail.
But as a whole, yeah, my experiences here with rail has definitely been a good thing. It would take me ~30m to get to school via driving. With the TRAX, I can sit down at one end of the line, and 50 minutes later (of sitting down, relaxing, reading, doing whatever - NOT yelling at stupid drivers, getting stuck in traffic, near collisions due to hazardous roads) get up at my destination. That isn't something you can manage in a car, especially considering that your TRAX ticket can transfer to a bus!
I have to say that the TRAX here in SLC got a lot of things right. I'd love to see more.
Which is why the dead links are on my blog, not the miranda webpage ;)
(I moved the domain it was hosted on, and never cared to properly update that entry, despite it being one of the few I care about.)
mirandaboot.ini can be used to specify defaults and optionally prevent them from being changed. From there, it is just a matter of locking down said file to prevent users from changing it, which if your users don't run as admin, is trivial.
I customized my version to specify a default server and username, along with a custom location for the profiles to be stored.
So yes, you could configure it to have what amounts to a hard-coded server to use. You may wind up poking through the source code to find the proper keys to add to the file, but as long as you're not afraid of that, it should work just great.
I wrote about this some time ago, right here.
/. address should be fine).
The short and simple answer, that should fully meet your needs, is to install jabberd2, configure it as needed (should have a logging module/plugin somewhere), and then to use Miranda IM with only the XMPP components as the client. Miranda is very easy to customize; if you don't want a protocol you simply don't include the relevant DLL.
Note: the links on that page are dead, namely the ones to the MSI installer package that I built. If you have a need for it, feel free to drop me an e-mail (the
I've got the "Submitted a Story That Was Posted" achieve, which I actually did do - back when Firefox 2 was released. Which was quite some time ago.
To be honest, if this is an April Fools joke, they might as well keep the code around, as it IS a full-blown achieve system, from what I can tell.
I also added my WoW main and... got the level 80 achieve. So.
We'll see, I guess.
>It was shot down because the governor feared the studios would stop labeling their games altogether if they could be held liable for what label they slap on the box.
Erm, because that is EXACTLY what could have happened, and would have been a huge step BACK. It was worded such that a retailer who didn't advertise any ratings wouldn't be liable.
>This wasn't a victory for free speech or at least a step in the right direction.
Your free speech bit confuses me (expecting replies to that) but it definitely wasn't a step in the /wrong/ direction.
>What would a studio do to cover its back? Label everything M. Even "Barnie's 'I love you' singalong" because you might see someone hug and that could be seen as something sexual (eeek!) by another nutjob.
>
>We're still in Utah, remember that!
>
>Bottom line would have been that the whole self-imposed rating system would go out the window and parents couldn't tell a Teletubbies preschooler educational game from a blood dripping slaughterfest. And you can imagine what he'd get to hear then, right? Right?
Your paranoia is making the state of Utah look normal. And yes, I live there. It was a bad bill. Future incarnations will likely not be any better. How exactly you can extrapolate all of the above from a yes/yes from the senate/legislature and then a no by the governor is so far beyond me I'm not even sure where to begin.
This definitely wouldn't have been the first time that bad legislature had been signed into law, and I sincerely doubt that Utah is the only state to have done so. Yes, our legislature has no clue in their heads. Chances are, neither does yours.
>This is no victory. Yes, we like the outcome, but that will only be temporary until Nutsy finds the time to reword it. And that he has far too much spare time should be known by now.
Your usage of "Nutsy" made me grin a little there.
In any case, this is why I will be writing letters to my relevant local representation should anything like this ever re-appear. I evidently missed the knowledge boat this round, but round 2, we'll see...
Whoops, sorry. I read "hack you with ease" as "hack it with ease."
In any case I stand by my final statement, as sure you can rewrite core system functionality, but that doesn't mean jack until you managed to get the modified components in place - without breaking things.
This is the time old debate respun and renewed. Guess what? Because the source is in front of me, I can also make my system *more* secure! Holy cow!
Two way street with open source. You can (with relative ease) create malicious system components, or (with the same relative ease) enhance your system security.
In the MS case, you have less options *in both directions.*
Fortunately for most of us, none of this matters. Who has access to your system is the only relevant thing here, and further that applies to NT based operating systems too.
Keep in mind that the question was not linux, the question was "open source." OpenBSD falls under that, and in many ways I'd regard OpenBSD as more "secure" than linux.
But before the trolls get at me (I ONLY HAVE LINUX DESKTOPS, BACK OFF!)...
Don't get me wrong, as a whole I'd agree with your NSA analogy, but your example isn't remotely encompassing of "open source." Mozilla is open source, but you'll note we don't have SEMoz. And really - SElibpng?
The MS reps are spreading FUD.
" because 'anyone can read the code and hack you with ease.'"
Which is absolutely true. The question, is who can *load and execute code* with ease. That answer is pretty clearly defined - and in the case of open source, it is arguably more clearly defined that in the case of MS.
In any case, if someone is capable of running code on your system, you're likely screwed. It's not as bad as physical access no, but it's still not good either.
The relative "openness" of the source code has 0 impact on who you allow to run code on your system. You trojaned a PAM library, great! You can now get complete root access!
Now you just have to install it.
(Oh....)
You mean the part where I've repackaged FF with a MSI installer myself?
Look.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=231062
Politics.
Meta-whining also accomplishes nothing. But thanks for trying to call me on being an ignorant whining tool and also helping the situation?
Except for the part where that extension doesn't cover managed installs and upgrades.
I'm tempted to adjust my preferences just to mod you up higher.
Mozilla has poked around with MSI, in the sense that they just have an MSI wrapper over their executable installer, which defeats the point of MSI almost entirely.
It's not that they're barreling down the road towards bloated browser, it's that they are putting no effort into the enterprise level support at all. I was in a similar situation, and wanted to deploy firefox across the company. There is no way to centrally manage preferences, and that's assuming you can manage to get it installed across the company in the first place. Never mind things like upgrading!
Whoops. The activations *last 6 months.
Think-o.
With Vista (and "above" - 2k8, win7), Microsoft changed the way they do site licensing. Instead of having one key for every computer, every client does a DNS lookup for a Key Management Software Server (KMS server), which then simply activates the client computer. It does not keep a record of how many activations you have used, only the last 50.
Likewise, you just call them up, tell them how many computers you have, and they give you a price. A few minutes and many thousands of dollars later, you have a key to plug in to KMS. Magically, every Vista+ box that you have on site is licensed and activated. This can include student computers if you wish. The activations 6 months, after which time they *must* talk to the KMS server again.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/vol/default.mspx
Now look. I run centos/debian/openbsd/gentoo/xp/vista/server 2008. I really hate (operating system) licensing. I hate the simple concept. But KMS is really the way to go. It takes right next to no system resources. In the KMS docs, they say that most 100k+ client customers are perfectly content with 2 KMS servers (with the same key). Next to zero system load.
Second, Office.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/HA101080191033.aspx
There is also their Software Assurance program.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sa/default.mspx
Software Assurance has one big downside, and one big upside. The downside is that it is a yearly fee. It is more or less a subscription. The upside is that you are entitled to free upgrades of "the product" as long as you keep paying. This means that if you purchased SA on Office 2003 a year before 2007 was released, your 2003 license can be automatically upconverted to 2007 free of charge. The same applies to... all of their products. XP --> Vista --> Win7, SQL 2000 --> 2003 --> 2008, Visual Studio, the works. It is not a required upconversion either - you choose if and when you upgrade.
As a result, buying your weight in gold worth of Software Assurance also gives you 24/7 software support. It more or less gives you everything. Tech support, upgrades, technical resources... it is essentially the equal to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription in terms of the support you get, the products that you get, and the upgrades.
Really, your best bet to understanding MS licensing is to contact one of their reps. Gather everything that you can find before hand, and give them a call. Grill them endlessly. Ask questions, and don't let them leave until you know everything you needed.
What is the benefit of open source/free software? EVERYTHING ABOVE IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT.
"3) People who pay for some stuff, but don't have enough money for everything they want. They are somewhat similar to the first group, but they do buy things, just not everything they get. Something like university students with little disposable income. This is the only group that tighter DRM measures might help you get more money. However if everyone is tightening DRM, well you are back to where you started."
As someone in this bracket, namely a university student with *very* little disposable income, I see your point... maybe 50/50. I personally am not interested in paying for anything that isn't lossless, or has DRM. I can absolutely promise you that tightening DRM would result in me not purchasing anything.
I have 21 games on Steam. I'd love to have more, but finances prevent that. Steam is, to me, an allowable form of DRM simply because it gives me access to my games very quickly and simply. I login, double-click a game and it'll either start installing or start running. I don't have to worry about discs, keys, patches, and it doesn't get in my way *at all.* Steam, for the most part, got it right.
Music however, is either sold at too high a price, lossy, absolutely covered in very restrictive DRM, or in a format that I can't use.
I have no problem paying artists (in the broadest sense, be it musical, graphical, designer, whatever) for their work. I do have a problem when paying them would result in a product that is of poor quality (mp3), requires me to jump through excessive hoops to use (DRM), or is simply priced too high.
For me, tightening DRM would instantly drive me away. I don't own any games on Steam that have a 5-computer activation limit, and I don't own any DRM-encumbered music.
I say that I can only agree with you 50/50 because not everyone in my bracket (poor university student) even has a clue what DRM is. I have hopes, that as time goes on and the younger generations get burned on DRM (the MS music store, walmart's music store, iTunes requiring you to fork over additional money for DRM free music, DRM in general, and device crashes), that people will become more educated on the matter, care a little more about the content they buy, and demand a bit more.
I have no problem supporting the people who make the products. I do have a problem paying them when they require me to jump through excessive hoops or charge me $60 a game on an already strained budget. Lathering more DRM won't help you here, not one bit.
From the press release (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/06itunes.html):
"iTunes offers customers a simple, one-click option to easily upgrade their entire library of previously purchased songs to the higher quality DRM-free iTunes Plus format for just 30 cents per song or 30 percent of the album price. The iTunes Store will begin offering eight million of its 10 million songs in Apple's DRM-free format, iTunes Plus, today with the remaining two million songs offered in iTunes Plus by the end of March."
That is because a joystick is a very easy device to manipulate. Correctly reading a brain as quickly is not nearly as simplistic as a pair of physical sensors.
Once we can trivially read the mind and interpret what that means, I sincerely doubt that a joystick will remain faster.
Joysticks/muscle memory comes with practice. Once reading the brain becomes practical, given time and practice...
> Uh yeah and how many of those will be tutorial missions? Half the missions in each of the campaigns in the original Starcraft were tutorial missions.
Uh, SC had one tutorial. From there it was a gradual ramp up in terms of what units they allowed you access to.
> Uh, they just said that the multiplayer will feature all 3 races and be 100% out of the box. If they add new units, doesn't that defeat the purpose of claiming that the multiplayer is "complete"?
Games change. They want each product to stand on it's own. No where did they say that the units and balance would stay identical from game to game to game.
> Nobody complained about Brood Wars because it was $30 on release and the new units were far from game changing (who the hell uses Valkyries or Devourers outside of money and custom maps?).
I'd like to tell you to learn to play, but you posted as AC so that makes it somewhat hard.
> Blizzard says "Hey! How about instead of 1 disk, we sell you 3 disks instead? We got the idea even before the game was completed. And which we have fluffed-out enough with video and audio so it fits onto 3 discs instead of 1, so that you could buy 3 discs instead of 1."
Blizzard says, "Hey! This is going to take a long time to produce to meet our quality expectations, and quite frankly designing a massive branching campaign with multiplayer in mind is a challenge.. we can either take from here until some time in 2015 to complete all three campaigns for one game..."
You see where I'm going for this?
> They are making 3 of them JUST SO they could sell 3 of them, 3 times.
> Plain and simple.
No. The game has a massive following. They're producing an equally massive sequel to it.
> They are making 3 of them JUST SO they could sell 3 of them, 3 times.
> Plain and simple.
Yup. Rowling made seven books just so that you'd have to buy it seven times.
. . .
No. She told her story how she wanted it told. How is this any different?
For those of you whining about "whaaaa 300% markup"..
Each campaign has 36 missions. That's more than the original Starcraft. Further, the campaign will be branched (ie, you'll have choices that actually effect what happens, which missions are selected, what happens). It might also feature co-op multiplayer, not sure on that one yet.
Or, what they announced, was a game called Starcraft II and the following two expansions to it. You know that's how it'll work. They won't just ship new missions and charge you retail for it, it will feature new units, balance, etc.
Starcraft was released, people were happy. Brood War was released, and people didn't whine about Blizzard "ripping them off" because hey, this expansion also had content.
Starcraft II is exactly the same, and yet, people are whining now...? Am I missing something?