Minor nitpick: Announcing that you will kill the president is a felony so even if you never do it you can get arrested. There was the story about a guy who got 37 months for saying "God will reveal himself in a burning bush" when the POTUS was in town.
He should've looked at Milkshape 3D, the anti-piracy mechanism on that is probably the most advanced part of the whole program. On certain keys it will tell you to keep the program open for 5 minutes or so and then restart it to register it. On a wrong key it will either keep telling you that on every start or pretend it's registered but expire normally. This makes most users post a support request on the developer's forum which then results in a lot of "buy a legal key" flames. Not that it matters since there are superior opensource alternatives available but the idea is nice.
I don't know about you but when it comes to deleting files the OS or other read-only stuff is the least of my worries. Of course we have backups but it's still annoying since you'd lose everything you did since the last one and for most home users the time between backups can be pretty long.
It doesn't matter if they mistyped a legal key or if they deliberately entered a copied one, you can sue for things that happen to you even when you were performing a criminal act. A popular example is the burglar who injured himself during a break in and successfully sued the homeowner for damages.
Considering that in our legal systems two wrongs don't make a right (and three rights make a Nazi demo...) vigilante justice like this should be punished. That developer better hope the court he'll face accepts EULAs as valid and he never travels into a country where they aren't.
Power is increasingly being consolidated at the federal level. While there are a plethora of candidates for local titles the major money movers are ted by Democrats and Republicans which are essentially two arms of the same body.
Noone votes for the Republicans. Can't blame them, who wants Neonazis as their government? Which democrats do you mean, social democrats or christ democrats (i.e. conservatives)?
Didn't I say this is NOT the US? This country, for example, has two big (social democrats, conservatives), two medium (green, liberal) and a fringe party (socialist, sometimes they are in, sometimes not, depending on how many votes they get) in the main body of government. These form alliances depending on how many votes each party got which influences the final policy.
From what I heard the reason that PS2s failed so often was that Sony cheapened out and tried to use one laser with a lens apparatus that let it refocus for DVDs or CDs. That refocussing mechanism has a tendency to fail if it's used often. I think that design was abandoned some time ago though.
Difficulty? WoW is made for casual gamers. I've gotten an alt to level sixty (pre BoC) in less than 96 hours played time.
The time to level isn't difficulty, I've played through games that take one hour to finish and are MUCH harder than any MMO I've ever seen and likewise I've played through games that took 40 hours or more but were as easy as a walk in the park (discounting the dog shit you have to dodge all the time on a real walk). Are the fights in Vanguard really more difficult to pull off than the fights in WoW?
Competition? The prevalence of instancing in WoW basically destroyed the idea of competition. All that you have is who is first to beat new content. There's no more racing for big named mobs, which was part of the fun of EQ, imo.
Most people probably didn't like how many more options that gave to griefers and farmers to annoy people.
Some games kick you out of the dungeon without asking you though (especially RPGs), not a nice thing if there was still some area you wanted to search for treasure.
Of course that doesn't apply if you go there yourself but who can afford making a round trip to the US for a PS3? It may be cheaper there but not THAT much cheaper.
Obviously, getting everything native to the UK would be infinitely more convenient for you, but if backwards compatibility is that important, would not a US PS3 be an acceptable inconvenience?
Unless he uses that compatibility only for newly bought games a US PS3 would be even less compatible with his games than a European one, provided the lack of region lock on the PS3 does not extend to the "emulated" consoles.
Of course with Sony complaining about trademark "infringement" for importing there's a chance your PS3 gets intercepted at the border since the trademark holder has the right to have goods bearing his trademark confiscated AFAIK (was meant to prevent importing counterfeit goods from China and such, I think).
Additionally: The mainland price is 599€. The cheaper but not much worse 499$ (would be 499€) version will not be sold in Europe.
Now all this needs is ANOTHER press statement about how Europe is used to getting more expensive, inferior goods much later than everyone else and Operation Sell No PS3 In Europe is a full success.
Gamecube DOL-101. That thing removed the digital out (necessary for progressive scan). Nintendo offered to replace a DOL-101 with a DOL-100 (original model) if the user sends it in but I'm not sure if you get a new or a refurbished one.
Seeing how they aren't calling for an invasion of Israel nor helping Iran with its war efforts I'd assume they just want to make the govt stop caring about either country.
US law has an interest but no jurisdiction. It's nonsense to try someone for an action when that someone hasn't committed it in an area where it's actually a crime just as it's nonsense to try someone for an action that wasn't against the law when it was performed but is now. Do the people that work as executioners for death row inmates get arrested for serial murder once they leave the US?
i have yet to meet a graphics professional (layouts, artwork, modeling, etc.) who doesnt use a mac.
Interesting, almost every one of them I talked to uses a PC with Macs being about as common as they are with the general populace. Software like 3D Studio MAX or Mudbox doesn't come in Mac flavour at all.
A problem with allowing hackers to report people like this is that their trojan could easily download loads of illegal files and the hacker could use it to frame people he doesn't like. It doesn't seem to have been the case here but I'd generally be cautious of using the data of a compromised system as evidence.
Also the ends don't justify all means or we'd just run a systematic search, meaning going into EVERY house and searching through EVERY computer. That would be effective but it would be a violation of human rights.
Adjusted for inflation the PS3 isn't much different than the early consoles.
Yes but if you compare the prices to the prices of home computers at the time you'll see that the PS3 is disproportionately expensive. Prices for electronics go down, not up.
While I agree that Square-Enix focusses on graphics with that series I don't think HD is an issue there. The Wii is graphically less capable in other areas as well and anything that isn't prerendered would take some work to adjust (could be a lot depending on how much the assets are optimized for the PS3). Judging by the PS2 FFs number 13 won't use many prerendered things, with consoles becoming more and more powerful they can handle more things in realtime that previously needed prerendered sequences.
Of course with S-E announcing that they want to support more platforms to prevent a monopoly like the PS2 from happening again it would sound plausible to port the FF main series to multiple platforms to prevent it from selling a single platform to everyone. However, with Dragon Quest 9 being a DS game now they may be satisfied with their spread already and don't port FF13 anywhere.
The fees are because copyright also covers public performance and broadcasting. And you just know that Slashdotters would sill complain if they could make copies freely but not broadcast ("share with my friends on Bittorrent").
Slashdot Mirror
Of course the "landmine in your backyard" is a situation pretty close to what this developer is doing.
Minor nitpick: Announcing that you will kill the president is a felony so even if you never do it you can get arrested. There was the story about a guy who got 37 months for saying "God will reveal himself in a burning bush" when the POTUS was in town.
He should've looked at Milkshape 3D, the anti-piracy mechanism on that is probably the most advanced part of the whole program. On certain keys it will tell you to keep the program open for 5 minutes or so and then restart it to register it. On a wrong key it will either keep telling you that on every start or pretend it's registered but expire normally. This makes most users post a support request on the developer's forum which then results in a lot of "buy a legal key" flames. Not that it matters since there are superior opensource alternatives available but the idea is nice.
Also I don't run as a root.
I don't know about you but when it comes to deleting files the OS or other read-only stuff is the least of my worries. Of course we have backups but it's still annoying since you'd lose everything you did since the last one and for most home users the time between backups can be pretty long.
It doesn't matter if they mistyped a legal key or if they deliberately entered a copied one, you can sue for things that happen to you even when you were performing a criminal act. A popular example is the burglar who injured himself during a break in and successfully sued the homeowner for damages.
Considering that in our legal systems two wrongs don't make a right (and three rights make a Nazi demo...) vigilante justice like this should be punished. That developer better hope the court he'll face accepts EULAs as valid and he never travels into a country where they aren't.
Power is increasingly being consolidated at the federal level. While there are a plethora of candidates for local titles the major money movers are ted by Democrats and Republicans which are essentially two arms of the same body.
Noone votes for the Republicans. Can't blame them, who wants Neonazis as their government? Which democrats do you mean, social democrats or christ democrats (i.e. conservatives)?
Didn't I say this is NOT the US? This country, for example, has two big (social democrats, conservatives), two medium (green, liberal) and a fringe party (socialist, sometimes they are in, sometimes not, depending on how many votes they get) in the main body of government. These form alliances depending on how many votes each party got which influences the final policy.
From what I heard the reason that PS2s failed so often was that Sony cheapened out and tried to use one laser with a lens apparatus that let it refocus for DVDs or CDs. That refocussing mechanism has a tendency to fail if it's used often. I think that design was abandoned some time ago though.
Difficulty? WoW is made for casual gamers. I've gotten an alt to level sixty (pre BoC) in less than 96 hours played time.
The time to level isn't difficulty, I've played through games that take one hour to finish and are MUCH harder than any MMO I've ever seen and likewise I've played through games that took 40 hours or more but were as easy as a walk in the park (discounting the dog shit you have to dodge all the time on a real walk). Are the fights in Vanguard really more difficult to pull off than the fights in WoW?
Competition? The prevalence of instancing in WoW basically destroyed the idea of competition. All that you have is who is first to beat new content. There's no more racing for big named mobs, which was part of the fun of EQ, imo.
Most people probably didn't like how many more options that gave to griefers and farmers to annoy people.
Some games kick you out of the dungeon without asking you though (especially RPGs), not a nice thing if there was still some area you wanted to search for treasure.
Of course that doesn't apply if you go there yourself but who can afford making a round trip to the US for a PS3? It may be cheaper there but not THAT much cheaper.
Obviously, getting everything native to the UK would be infinitely more convenient for you, but if backwards compatibility is that important, would not a US PS3 be an acceptable inconvenience?
Unless he uses that compatibility only for newly bought games a US PS3 would be even less compatible with his games than a European one, provided the lack of region lock on the PS3 does not extend to the "emulated" consoles.
Of course with Sony complaining about trademark "infringement" for importing there's a chance your PS3 gets intercepted at the border since the trademark holder has the right to have goods bearing his trademark confiscated AFAIK (was meant to prevent importing counterfeit goods from China and such, I think).
Additionally: The mainland price is 599€. The cheaper but not much worse 499$ (would be 499€) version will not be sold in Europe.
Now all this needs is ANOTHER press statement about how Europe is used to getting more expensive, inferior goods much later than everyone else and Operation Sell No PS3 In Europe is a full success.
Gamecube DOL-101. That thing removed the digital out (necessary for progressive scan). Nintendo offered to replace a DOL-101 with a DOL-100 (original model) if the user sends it in but I'm not sure if you get a new or a refurbished one.
Seeing how they aren't calling for an invasion of Israel nor helping Iran with its war efforts I'd assume they just want to make the govt stop caring about either country.
That article sucks, it doesn't even mention how Zero dies in every second game.
US law has an interest but no jurisdiction. It's nonsense to try someone for an action when that someone hasn't committed it in an area where it's actually a crime just as it's nonsense to try someone for an action that wasn't against the law when it was performed but is now. Do the people that work as executioners for death row inmates get arrested for serial murder once they leave the US?
Certifying Firefox would be pointless anyway, a certificate would be good only for a specific build and one patch would mess that up again.
i have yet to meet a graphics professional (layouts, artwork, modeling, etc.) who doesnt use a mac.
Interesting, almost every one of them I talked to uses a PC with Macs being about as common as they are with the general populace. Software like 3D Studio MAX or Mudbox doesn't come in Mac flavour at all.
A problem with allowing hackers to report people like this is that their trojan could easily download loads of illegal files and the hacker could use it to frame people he doesn't like. It doesn't seem to have been the case here but I'd generally be cautious of using the data of a compromised system as evidence.
Also the ends don't justify all means or we'd just run a systematic search, meaning going into EVERY house and searching through EVERY computer. That would be effective but it would be a violation of human rights.
However it should be dismissed since it can't be proven that the hacker didn't tamper with the evidence.
Adjusted for inflation the PS3 isn't much different than the early consoles.
Yes but if you compare the prices to the prices of home computers at the time you'll see that the PS3 is disproportionately expensive. Prices for electronics go down, not up.
While I agree that Square-Enix focusses on graphics with that series I don't think HD is an issue there. The Wii is graphically less capable in other areas as well and anything that isn't prerendered would take some work to adjust (could be a lot depending on how much the assets are optimized for the PS3). Judging by the PS2 FFs number 13 won't use many prerendered things, with consoles becoming more and more powerful they can handle more things in realtime that previously needed prerendered sequences.
Of course with S-E announcing that they want to support more platforms to prevent a monopoly like the PS2 from happening again it would sound plausible to port the FF main series to multiple platforms to prevent it from selling a single platform to everyone. However, with Dragon Quest 9 being a DS game now they may be satisfied with their spread already and don't port FF13 anywhere.
The fees are because copyright also covers public performance and broadcasting. And you just know that Slashdotters would sill complain if they could make copies freely but not broadcast ("share with my friends on Bittorrent").
This isn't the US, we have plenty of different candidates and not all think we should immediately surrender our rights.