You think thats bad? Up here in Canada, you wind up with a "majority" at 40% in most cases. The Provincial Government here in New Brunswick has a "majority", but they actually came in second in vote counts.
Based on what? The cause of infection is pretty much the same with or without AV software: - Application exploits (AV software only stops known ones, all the new ones constantly coming out get through just fine) - Stupid users saying "sure I want to run this random.exe file someone emailed me" (AV software is no help at all)
I'm not seeing any real world evidence that AV software is reducing the damage being done by all these viruses.
I mean really, when was the last time you had AV software catch a virus that would have otherwise infected your system?
From deeper in the patent: "In accordance with the invention, a virtual operating environment for simulating the execution of programs to determine if the programs are malware is created. The virtual operating environment confines potential malware so that the systems of the host operating environment will not be adversely effected during simulation. As a program is being simulated, a set of behavior signatures is generated. The collected behavior signatures are suitable for analysis to determine if the program is malware."
So it looks like what its actually doing is letting the virus run in a virtual environment, watching it, then using heuristics to say "yep, thats probably a virus."
The question on the patents validity becomes not if someone else has done "proactive" virus protection, but if they did it the same way. AFAIK Mcafee's stuff just watches the program while its actually running and says "hey this thing emailing itself to all your friends might be a virus." Thats similar, but patent-wise not actually the same thing.
(Not that I like software patents or anything, but the "patents suck" line of comments will be covered by 500 other people.)
Maybe they should put a warning on the box "game requires 20 hours of play before you get to the fun"?
"You only got to level 9, you can't judge it" is an idiotic argument. The games job is to entertain. If it doesn't do that, it fails. Making people play something really boring for 10 hours until they get to something interesting is the hallmark of a bad game.
Back when they were having their congressional pets write the law, they had no idea that it could ever be used against them.
Suddenly realizing that they might have to pay these things causes the appeal to wane.
Its similar to software patents. Lots of big software companies were in favor of the patents until small patent troll companies started filing lawsuits against them for pretty much every new product.
I was thinking the same thing. Microsoft's licenses are confusingly named, but open source licensing was confusing long before MS came to the party.
They also don't call "shared source" open source, which to me seems more like they're trying to avoid confusion then creating it. (Calling it open source when its actually not would be more confusing then calling it something else.)
Updates for Sins of a Solar Empire are also available from a download link on the website, but you do need to have the game registered to get them.
Updates and Internet multiplayer are the places where they require a cd key. You can play the single player game (which is what GalCiv2 is) all you want without ever registering if you want to, there's no protection on that at all. (You can play LAN based multiplayer Sins the same way.)
"Quote: Posted 05/04/08 19:48 (GMT) by MosaicM80 I've read over what everyone has said and the responses and I think I understand this. So, what's going to happen is after about 20 days or so if you DON'T have a net connection that will reactivate the game, it will lock you out. Right?"
This is a new one for Slashdot I think. They updated the summary with new information, and in doing so made it wrong.
"For clarity, though, an internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after. You can be completely connectionless for 9 days and encounter no problems playing Mass Effect. And you don't need the disk in the drive to play."
Taco's link is to page 1, but he didn't keep reading to see the newer information. You do in fact need to re-authenticate every 10 days if you want to keep playing.
Well, its not a big deal for you. For me, it defeats the entire point of buying it. For EA, its a lost sale.
None of this should be necessary at all though. Stardock manages to sell games using this bizzare assumption that paying customers should be treated better then pirates.
Its true, and it shouldn't be that way. Publishers who do this sort of nonsense will get no more of my money. People who want to treat me like a customer (ala Stardock) will get my business instead.
Thats what should happen, yes. However the last time I moved, this happened:
"Sure, we'll hook you up Thursday."
Thursday arrives. "Sorry, we're having issues with the DSL cards at the CO, it might be a while."
Took a couple of weeks to get it sorted out.
Besides, its not 10 days in general. Its 10 days since you last ran the game and it last did a check. It doesn't try to check until after 5 days, and it only checks while the game is running. So if I don't run for 2 weeks before losing the Internet, I'm SOL. If its a new install, I'm SOL. If I last ran it 6 days ago and it didn't bother to authenticate then because that was day 4, I'm SOL.
This will in no way stop piracy, but its awfully inconvenient to me as a would-have-been paying customer (I refuse to pay for this kind of shabby treatment).
I've said it a few times in here already but I keep hearing the same argument about how its not a big deal.
I'm moving later this month to a new house. No Internet until its hooked up. Hey look, if I try to run the game more then 10 days since I last ran it while online and it bothered to phone home, it'll fail to phone home and it won't work. (If I haven't actually run the game in 2 weeks, or if heaven forbid I'm installing it for the first time, I'm out of luck.)
I can plan to bring the CD with me. I can't plan to bring a network connection that the phone company hasn't hooked up.
"For clarity, though, an internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after. You can be completely connectionless for 9 days and encounter no problems playing Mass Effect. And you don't need the disk in the drive to play."
Every 10 days after. The game will be checking every 10 days. If you've been 10 days since its last check and it can't get online, it won't run.
5% here and there adds up. My father in law recently bought a 360 after being a PC gamer for years.
Why?
DRM. He had all kinds of problems with games refusing to recognize his CD drive, or stuff like Starforce crashing his machine, or all the other issues that these systems cause. He wasn't a pirate. He just wanted the games to work, and this stuff caused PC games to not work for him.
Now he avoids the hassle and just plays console games.
On any one game, its only a few people here and there. But think of how many games he would have bought over the next 10 years that he now won't. Think of all the other people every time it happens. Those numbers pile up into real money very quickly, and THAT is what is really killing PC gaming.
I'm moving to a new house soon, and won't have Internet until its hooked up. That can take a while, given the local phone and cable monopolies customer service levels.
So yes, this is a very real issue. The whole point of buying a single player game is to be able to play it when I can't play World of Warcraft due to being offline. The restriction is completely pointless for stopping piracy, all it does is interfere with legitimate customers (namely me, who will now not buy the game).
Stardock has this stuff figured out. Here's how life works if you buy Sins of a Solar Empire:
- You can install it from the original media, a copy of the original media, downloaded from Stardock, or whatever. The game works without a disk, and without a key. It doesn't phone home. It treats you like a customer, not a criminal.
- Registering with Stardock (putting your key in once) gets you access to updates on the website. Oh, if your CD gets lost, you can also download the entire game again for free from Stardock.
- You need the CD key once to create an online multiplayer account. Unless you want to play LAN, in fact two players are allowed to play LAN games with only one copy of the game between them. (You can probably do more then that without technical hurdles, the license just explictly allows it for two people.)
Take a good game and put all that on top of it, and as a paying customer I feel good about buying it. I like buying games, it means more games get made.
In the case of Mass Effect, buying the game means I can't use it while I'm moving, when I'll have no Internet. Of course the whole point of buying it is to play a single player game while I'm moving, since I won't have World of Warcraft due to having no Internet.
But the pirated version will work just fine for me. So as a paying customer, I get treated WORSE then someone who pirates the game. I'm failing to see how this does anything but encourage me to pirate the game.
Well, I'm going to be moving soon. I'll have no Internet while I do that (it needs to be hooked up at the new location).
If the game requires a CD in the drive, my legitimate copy will continue to work during the move. If it requires Internet, it will not.
Meanwhile, a pirated copy will work in both cases. This is the game company actively encouraging me to pirate the game, since the pirated copy works BETTER then the one that I'm paying for.
I mean, come on? Why would I pay for a game when paying means I won't be able to use it during the move (which is the whole point of buying it)?
I don't know anything about the "how", as its thankfully never come up in my life. But asking if you should do it or not, I say yes.
He's dead, unfortunately. Dead people don't care about privacy. His family however is alive, and going through a very difficult time. If something is in those accounts/files that can provide some answers about what happened, it would help them.
"The conventional response to this problem has been the use of BIOS passwords(4) and software-based encryption. Seeking a more robust form of data security, Fujitsu has now developed 2.5" hard disk drives with hardware-based AES encryption using industry-leading 256-bit key.
The built-in AES automatically encrypts all data when storing it on the hard disk drive and decrypts the data when read. Unlike software-based encryption, the key does not reside in the computer's memory. This makes it more resistant to attack and imposes no processing overhead on the CPU, optimizing system performance. "
Slashdot Mirror
You think thats bad? Up here in Canada, you wind up with a "majority" at 40% in most cases. The Provincial Government here in New Brunswick has a "majority", but they actually came in second in vote counts.
Its a joke.
"And the risks and losses would be much greater."
.exe file someone emailed me" (AV software is no help at all)
Based on what? The cause of infection is pretty much the same with or without AV software:
- Application exploits (AV software only stops known ones, all the new ones constantly coming out get through just fine)
- Stupid users saying "sure I want to run this random
I'm not seeing any real world evidence that AV software is reducing the damage being done by all these viruses.
I mean really, when was the last time you had AV software catch a virus that would have otherwise infected your system?
From deeper in the patent: "In accordance with the invention, a virtual operating environment for simulating the execution of programs to determine if the programs are malware is created. The virtual operating environment confines potential malware so that the systems of the host operating environment will not be adversely effected during simulation. As a program is being simulated, a set of behavior signatures is generated. The collected behavior signatures are suitable for analysis to determine if the program is malware."
So it looks like what its actually doing is letting the virus run in a virtual environment, watching it, then using heuristics to say "yep, thats probably a virus."
The question on the patents validity becomes not if someone else has done "proactive" virus protection, but if they did it the same way. AFAIK Mcafee's stuff just watches the program while its actually running and says "hey this thing emailing itself to all your friends might be a virus." Thats similar, but patent-wise not actually the same thing.
(Not that I like software patents or anything, but the "patents suck" line of comments will be covered by 500 other people.)
Maybe they should put a warning on the box "game requires 20 hours of play before you get to the fun"?
"You only got to level 9, you can't judge it" is an idiotic argument. The games job is to entertain. If it doesn't do that, it fails. Making people play something really boring for 10 hours until they get to something interesting is the hallmark of a bad game.
Back when they were having their congressional pets write the law, they had no idea that it could ever be used against them.
Suddenly realizing that they might have to pay these things causes the appeal to wane.
Its similar to software patents. Lots of big software companies were in favor of the patents until small patent troll companies started filing lawsuits against them for pretty much every new product.
I was thinking the same thing. Microsoft's licenses are confusingly named, but open source licensing was confusing long before MS came to the party.
They also don't call "shared source" open source, which to me seems more like they're trying to avoid confusion then creating it. (Calling it open source when its actually not would be more confusing then calling it something else.)
Updates for Sins of a Solar Empire are also available from a download link on the website, but you do need to have the game registered to get them.
Updates and Internet multiplayer are the places where they require a cd key. You can play the single player game (which is what GalCiv2 is) all you want without ever registering if you want to, there's no protection on that at all. (You can play LAN based multiplayer Sins the same way.)
"Quote: Posted 05/04/08 19:48 (GMT) by MosaicM80 I've read over what everyone has said and the responses and I think I understand this. So, what's going to happen is after about 20 days or so if you DON'T have a net connection that will reactivate the game, it will lock you out. Right?"
"Correct."
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=545796&cid=23327936
The original summary is correct, and Taco's update is wrong.
This is a new one for Slashdot I think. They updated the summary with new information, and in doing so made it wrong.
"For clarity, though, an internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after. You can be completely connectionless for 9 days and encounter no problems playing Mass Effect. And you don't need the disk in the drive to play."
From page 2.
Taco's link is to page 1, but he didn't keep reading to see the newer information. You do in fact need to re-authenticate every 10 days if you want to keep playing.
Read page 2 of the linked thread. It is every 10 days.
Well, its not a big deal for you. For me, it defeats the entire point of buying it. For EA, its a lost sale.
None of this should be necessary at all though. Stardock manages to sell games using this bizzare assumption that paying customers should be treated better then pirates.
Its true, and it shouldn't be that way. Publishers who do this sort of nonsense will get no more of my money. People who want to treat me like a customer (ala Stardock) will get my business instead.
Thats what should happen, yes. However the last time I moved, this happened:
"Sure, we'll hook you up Thursday."
Thursday arrives. "Sorry, we're having issues with the DSL cards at the CO, it might be a while."
Took a couple of weeks to get it sorted out.
Besides, its not 10 days in general. Its 10 days since you last ran the game and it last did a check. It doesn't try to check until after 5 days, and it only checks while the game is running. So if I don't run for 2 weeks before losing the Internet, I'm SOL. If its a new install, I'm SOL. If I last ran it 6 days ago and it didn't bother to authenticate then because that was day 4, I'm SOL.
This will in no way stop piracy, but its awfully inconvenient to me as a would-have-been paying customer (I refuse to pay for this kind of shabby treatment).
No its not.
I've said it a few times in here already but I keep hearing the same argument about how its not a big deal.
I'm moving later this month to a new house. No Internet until its hooked up. Hey look, if I try to run the game more then 10 days since I last ran it while online and it bothered to phone home, it'll fail to phone home and it won't work. (If I haven't actually run the game in 2 weeks, or if heaven forbid I'm installing it for the first time, I'm out of luck.)
I can plan to bring the CD with me. I can't plan to bring a network connection that the phone company hasn't hooked up.
Get a friend to get you a pirated copy. Thats the only way.
Sad, isn't it? Their method of fighting PC game piracy is actually to encourage PC game piracy.
Its on page 2:
"For clarity, though, an internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after. You can be completely connectionless for 9 days and encounter no problems playing Mass Effect. And you don't need the disk in the drive to play."
Every 10 days after. The game will be checking every 10 days. If you've been 10 days since its last check and it can't get online, it won't run.
5% here and there adds up. My father in law recently bought a 360 after being a PC gamer for years.
Why?
DRM. He had all kinds of problems with games refusing to recognize his CD drive, or stuff like Starforce crashing his machine, or all the other issues that these systems cause. He wasn't a pirate. He just wanted the games to work, and this stuff caused PC games to not work for him.
Now he avoids the hassle and just plays console games.
On any one game, its only a few people here and there. But think of how many games he would have bought over the next 10 years that he now won't. Think of all the other people every time it happens. Those numbers pile up into real money very quickly, and THAT is what is really killing PC gaming.
I'm moving to a new house soon, and won't have Internet until its hooked up. That can take a while, given the local phone and cable monopolies customer service levels.
So yes, this is a very real issue. The whole point of buying a single player game is to be able to play it when I can't play World of Warcraft due to being offline. The restriction is completely pointless for stopping piracy, all it does is interfere with legitimate customers (namely me, who will now not buy the game).
Stardock has this stuff figured out. Here's how life works if you buy Sins of a Solar Empire:
- You can install it from the original media, a copy of the original media, downloaded from Stardock, or whatever. The game works without a disk, and without a key. It doesn't phone home. It treats you like a customer, not a criminal.
- Registering with Stardock (putting your key in once) gets you access to updates on the website. Oh, if your CD gets lost, you can also download the entire game again for free from Stardock.
- You need the CD key once to create an online multiplayer account. Unless you want to play LAN, in fact two players are allowed to play LAN games with only one copy of the game between them. (You can probably do more then that without technical hurdles, the license just explictly allows it for two people.)
Take a good game and put all that on top of it, and as a paying customer I feel good about buying it. I like buying games, it means more games get made.
In the case of Mass Effect, buying the game means I can't use it while I'm moving, when I'll have no Internet. Of course the whole point of buying it is to play a single player game while I'm moving, since I won't have World of Warcraft due to having no Internet.
But the pirated version will work just fine for me. So as a paying customer, I get treated WORSE then someone who pirates the game. I'm failing to see how this does anything but encourage me to pirate the game.
Mass Effect doesn't though, which is what this article is about. Thats a purely single player game that requires an Internet connection only for DRM.
Well, I'm going to be moving soon. I'll have no Internet while I do that (it needs to be hooked up at the new location).
If the game requires a CD in the drive, my legitimate copy will continue to work during the move. If it requires Internet, it will not.
Meanwhile, a pirated copy will work in both cases. This is the game company actively encouraging me to pirate the game, since the pirated copy works BETTER then the one that I'm paying for.
I mean, come on? Why would I pay for a game when paying means I won't be able to use it during the move (which is the whole point of buying it)?
Hey I hate wrong summaries as much as you do, so I made sure to get it right! :)
I find the whole thing depressing personally. I really wanted to play Mass Effect when I move, since I'll be offline and need a single player game.
Why they don't want me to be able to do that is a total mystery, but it cost them a sale.
I don't know anything about the "how", as its thankfully never come up in my life. But asking if you should do it or not, I say yes.
He's dead, unfortunately. Dead people don't care about privacy. His family however is alive, and going through a very difficult time. If something is in those accounts/files that can provide some answers about what happened, it would help them.
That makes it worth at least trying.
They don't want to tell you, but here's what information they made available: http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2008/20080421-01.html
"The conventional response to this problem has been the use of BIOS passwords(4) and software-based encryption. Seeking a more robust form of data security, Fujitsu has now developed 2.5" hard disk drives with hardware-based AES encryption using industry-leading 256-bit key.
The built-in AES automatically encrypts all data when storing it on the hard disk drive and decrypts the data when read. Unlike software-based encryption, the key does not reside in the computer's memory. This makes it more resistant to attack and imposes no processing overhead on the CPU, optimizing system performance. "
Let the guesswork begin?
IIRC, the article mentions an adaptor that comes with the card to let you use optical.