Apple continued to claim that there were no vulnerabilities in Mac OS X but came a month later and patched their Wireless Drivers (presumably for vulnerabilities that didn't actually exist).
I believe they actually claimed they hadn't had the vulnerability in question demonstrated to them. The fact that they later patched *a* vulnerability in wireless drivers doesn't necessarily prove anything. If it does, then as an Apple basher, my future plan will be:
a) announce that I've found a vulnerability in in $OSX_FEATURE. b) ignore requests for details, proof, etc c) be universally regarded as an idiot d) Wait until someone else finds a vulnerability in $OSX_FEATURE and Apple patches it. e) trumpet from the rooftops that I said there was a vulnerability in $OSX_FEATURE months ago and OMG! Apple denied it and look, they've just fixed it and I was right all along! f) Smugly watch the sensationalist articles about how Apple bullied me.
I once got a power cable air-freighted from Malaysia. Don't ask me what Dell thought they were doing! (It apparently was supposed to go with a server we'd ordered).
What's even funnier is that I didn't find out what was in the box until *after* I'd been notified that it had been delivered to a building across town, and that the courier company had to go and pick it up from there and deliver it to me at the proper location, for free courtesy of their screwup.
I couldn't actually tell if the site was slow at first because I was reading the new blurbs via GPRS on the bus to work, and via GPRS everything is slow.
But when I got to work I noticed the picture quality had dropped drastically. Visible compression artifacts, colour banding, etc. Looks like they scrunched the pictures down in a hurry to save bandwidth?
How do you define cheating? What if I use a cheat utility on the game MechAssault and unlock all the advanced mechs before finishing the single player game? Would you consider that a cheat if you go online with those unlocked mechs that, under normal circumstances, you shouldn't be able to play in?
I don't know anything specifically about MechAssault, but if you're referring to messing with the saved game couldn't you do that anyway? Have a memory card with the save on, slap it into a modded Xbox, fiddle with it, then put it back into the Live-permitted one?
But look, the set of people who both mod XBox"en" and don't pirate video games is very very small. Small enough that Microsoft does not think it's worthwhile to cater to that group.
The thing I don't understand is the impression I've always had is that they can tell if a mod is installed but deactivated. I've read various comments about people being banned for going online with their mod activated, so I take that to mean that Microsoft *can* tell.
So as far Live goes, if there is no activated mod, why does it matter if the Xbox is modded? Since the mod is turned off, the game has to be legit, ergo no piracy and no cheating.
Hmm, and how people do you suppose that is? Do you think 1% of people mod their boxes?.01%?.001%?
I think it's a fair bit higher than 1%. As noted in another post, among the people I know (who you couldn't call geeks at all) the rate is approaching 100%. And as far as I can see, the Xbox Media Center is at least as big a drawcard as piracy, maybe bigger. If there are some actual figures (say, sales numbers for mod chips versus Xbox sales) that estimate the modding rate, I haven't seen them.
I have a modded xbox, and I enjoy it very much, thank you. But I have no problem seeing Microsoft's point of view.
Neither do I, and I think they're totally within their rights. As you note, it was clear a long time ago that Microsoft would ban modded Xboxen so long as they had the means to detect them. I'm not sure why the observation that this will have a negative effect on sales as well as the obvious positive ones is so worthy of debate.
What, the Slashdot crowd where everyone owns a Gamecube and any XBox you might see is modded and full of Linux utilities?
Your circle of friends must be fairly narrow. I know several people who most definitely aren't geeks that have modded Xboxen. Haven't asked, but they probably haven't even heard of Slashdot.
Oh, and there are no Linux utilities on mine, either.
Microsoft markets the XBox towards normal everyday people, not geeks who like to put Linux on their freakin' thermostats.
What's normal people? My friend who installs alarms? The one who does landscaping? My 10 year old nephew? No Linux, no thermostats, but they all have modded Xboxen.
but you also have to realize that making XBox Live cheat-free *gains* sales as well.
That's a point that I hadn't considered, but I personally think a lot of the complaints about cheating are from those who simply aren't in the league of the people they're playing against.
Criminy. You're not as important as you think you are..
You must have reading comprehension problems, because I didn't say anywhere that I was important.
But the unwritten point, which I'll state now, is that I'm sure I'm not the only one in this boat. There will be others out there who were thinking about getting Live and Halo 2 etc etc who aren't going to bother now.
All this is doing is guaranteeing they won't get any money for Live from me, and Live support won't make me more likely to buy a particular game.
Because I'm not going to give up Xbox Media Center, MAMEoX, UAE-X in favour of online games when I have a computer with games that I don't have to pay by the month to play online.
What's going to happen here is plain and simple that the industry is going to lose their rights to my money!
I'm not going to spend money on music I can't play on my Mac, Xbox, PS/2 or car stereo. If that's the choice I'm faced with, I'll just wait for somebody to crack it and download a copy instead.
Dunno about smelling an oncoming truck, but you can certainly tell by smell if you're following one and don't hit the re-circulate button quick enough:(
Is he using a (relatively new) surge protector with his laptop? All the time?
Setting aside the fact that his house is full of all sorts of other electronic equipment - ADSL modems, switches, wireless base stations, TVs, videos, stereos, other laptops, desktop computers etc - that aren't blowing up, why should he have to? And how can power contribute to a battery that comes loose or paint that flakes off or a hinge that breaks?
I've heard the whole sorry saga straight from the horse's mouth. He's come over more than once wanting to borrow my iBook PSU to confirm it's his PSU that's dead not his PowerBook; I've seen the ugly flaking paint that resulted in his top case being replaced, and heard the stories about the other failures. Recently I had him round to target-disk a backup image of his HD onto my G5 (which incidentally has the power supply chirp issue, and my iBook has had a logic board replacement) in the hope that his machine would be replaced soon.
Apparently Apple were suggesting that maybe he was abusing it, which is somewhat ironic considering I'd expect the HD and optical drive to be suffering in that situation, and those two *non-Apple* parts are still working fine. About the only ones that haven't been problematic, in fact.
I've got to agree that the drawer-style info display for iCal was one of the most profoundly crap updates I can ever think of being made to a program. As one of the probably thousands who sent feedback bitching about this, I'm very glad Apple have listened to us.
Because when the drives/memory/scsi controller fails, you have no warranty or come back on it.
Unless of course, you're completely comfortable with having whatever service you have running on it killed off suddenly with no clear ETA on restoration time.
Yes, actually. One is running serving web pages and everything on it is duplicated on another system that can be switched over in minutes. One's got Ghost images on it and the users won't even notice if that's down for a while. And if an apps server fails, there are two others doing exactly the same job. We also have a backup domain controller and a syslog box running on recycled server hardware.
Bearing in mind that if the machine fails, a warranty would only have just got us replacement parts - being under warranty won't stop the machine failing in the first place. All that's changed is we have to pay for the bits ourselves now in such a situation - which hasn't happened yet.
There are lots of things that are best when horizontal;)
At work I don't have too many services running on each box. We have a regular upgrade cycle, so have a good supply of older server-grade hardware that doesn't have a manufacturer's warranty any more but is still good for less critical tasks. Why wouldn't we use them instead of letting them lie around doing nothing? Patching is easy enough with ssh public keys and a shell script that logs into each one in turn and executes a command, eg allserv sudo apt-get install ssh.
As they say..."The BBC Special Effects department. Neither special nor effective".
Blake's 7 fans know all about this. And anyone who managed to watch the Doctor Who story "The Green Death" without being a gibbering wreck after seeing the giant fly effect has my undying respect.
As someone noted earlier though, I liked the graphics for the Guide entries - lovely style.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll stop snickering at it when it has adblock support.
and of course the gamers who see no problem with shelling out insane money to get another 3-FPS in Crysis.
Hey, don't knock a 50% improvement!
That version was an internal-only release.
It might be easier, if you have another Mac available, to do a Target Disk boot off that drive to do the screen sharing enable step.
Apple continued to claim that there were no vulnerabilities in Mac OS X but came a month later and patched their Wireless Drivers (presumably for vulnerabilities that didn't actually exist).
I believe they actually claimed they hadn't had the vulnerability in question demonstrated to them. The fact that they later patched *a* vulnerability in wireless drivers doesn't necessarily prove anything. If it does, then as an Apple basher, my future plan will be:
a) announce that I've found a vulnerability in in $OSX_FEATURE.
b) ignore requests for details, proof, etc
c) be universally regarded as an idiot
d) Wait until someone else finds a vulnerability in $OSX_FEATURE and Apple patches it.
e) trumpet from the rooftops that I said there was a vulnerability in $OSX_FEATURE months ago and OMG! Apple denied it and look, they've just fixed it and I was right all along!
f) Smugly watch the sensationalist articles about how Apple bullied me.
I once got a power cable air-freighted from Malaysia. Don't ask me what Dell thought they were doing! (It apparently was supposed to go with a server we'd ordered).
What's even funnier is that I didn't find out what was in the box until *after* I'd been notified that it had been delivered to a building across town, and that the courier company had to go and pick it up from there and deliver it to me at the proper location, for free courtesy of their screwup.
...even God's DRM is hackable.
And they didn't even need DVD Jon's help!
What hope do Apple/Microsoft/etc have?
I couldn't actually tell if the site was slow at first because I was reading the new blurbs via GPRS on the bus to work, and via GPRS everything is slow.
But when I got to work I noticed the picture quality had dropped drastically. Visible compression artifacts, colour banding, etc. Looks like they scrunched the pictures down in a hurry to save bandwidth?
If you don't like it, don't use the service.
a) I don't
b) I can't now, anyway
How do you define cheating? What if I use a cheat utility on the game MechAssault and unlock all the advanced mechs before finishing the single player game? Would you consider that a cheat if you go online with those unlocked mechs that, under normal circumstances, you shouldn't be able to play in?
I don't know anything specifically about MechAssault, but if you're referring to messing with the saved game couldn't you do that anyway? Have a memory card with the save on, slap it into a modded Xbox, fiddle with it, then put it back into the Live-permitted one?
(work intervening. replies sporadic from now on)
But look, the set of people who both mod XBox"en" and don't pirate video games is very very small. Small enough that Microsoft does not think it's worthwhile to cater to that group.
The thing I don't understand is the impression I've always had is that they can tell if a mod is installed but deactivated. I've read various comments about people being banned for going online with their mod activated, so I take that to mean that Microsoft *can* tell.
So as far Live goes, if there is no activated mod, why does it matter if the Xbox is modded? Since the mod is turned off, the game has to be legit, ergo no piracy and no cheating.
Hmm, and how people do you suppose that is? Do you think 1% of people mod their boxes? .01%? .001%?
I think it's a fair bit higher than 1%. As noted in another post, among the people I know (who you couldn't call geeks at all) the rate is approaching 100%. And as far as I can see, the Xbox Media Center is at least as big a drawcard as piracy, maybe bigger. If there are some actual figures (say, sales numbers for mod chips versus Xbox sales) that estimate the modding rate, I haven't seen them.
I have a modded xbox, and I enjoy it very much, thank you. But I have no problem seeing Microsoft's point of view.
Neither do I, and I think they're totally within their rights. As you note, it was clear a long time ago that Microsoft would ban modded Xboxen so long as they had the means to detect them. I'm not sure why the observation that this will have a negative effect on sales as well as the obvious positive ones is so worthy of debate.
What, the Slashdot crowd where everyone owns a Gamecube and any XBox you might see is modded and full of Linux utilities?
Your circle of friends must be fairly narrow. I know several people who most definitely aren't geeks that have modded Xboxen. Haven't asked, but they probably haven't even heard of Slashdot.
Oh, and there are no Linux utilities on mine, either.
Microsoft markets the XBox towards normal everyday people, not geeks who like to put Linux on their freakin' thermostats.
What's normal people? My friend who installs alarms? The one who does landscaping? My 10 year old nephew? No Linux, no thermostats, but they all have modded Xboxen.
but you also have to realize that making XBox Live cheat-free *gains* sales as well.
That's a point that I hadn't considered, but I personally think a lot of the complaints about cheating are from those who simply aren't in the league of the people they're playing against.
You don't like it, you won't buy it. Fine.
You like it, you buy it. Fine.
Criminy. You're not as important as you think you are..
You must have reading comprehension problems, because I didn't say anywhere that I was important.
But the unwritten point, which I'll state now, is that I'm sure I'm not the only one in this boat. There will be others out there who were thinking about getting Live and Halo 2 etc etc who aren't going to bother now.
All this is doing is guaranteeing they won't get any money for Live from me, and Live support won't make me more likely to buy a particular game.
Because I'm not going to give up Xbox Media Center, MAMEoX, UAE-X in favour of online games when I have a computer with games that I don't have to pay by the month to play online.
(and yes - I bought them)
What's going to happen here is plain and simple that the industry is going to lose their rights to my money!
I'm not going to spend money on music I can't play on my Mac, Xbox, PS/2 or car stereo. If that's the choice I'm faced with, I'll just wait for somebody to crack it and download a copy instead.
"Watch out, I smell an oncoming truck!"
:(
Dunno about smelling an oncoming truck, but you can certainly tell by smell if you're following one and don't hit the re-circulate button quick enough
Is he using a (relatively new) surge protector with his laptop? All the time?
Setting aside the fact that his house is full of all sorts of other electronic equipment - ADSL modems, switches, wireless base stations, TVs, videos, stereos, other laptops, desktop computers etc - that aren't blowing up, why should he have to? And how can power contribute to a battery that comes loose or paint that flakes off or a hinge that breaks?
I've heard the whole sorry saga straight from the horse's mouth. He's come over more than once wanting to borrow my iBook PSU to confirm it's his PSU that's dead not his PowerBook; I've seen the ugly flaking paint that resulted in his top case being replaced, and heard the stories about the other failures. Recently I had him round to target-disk a backup image of his HD onto my G5 (which incidentally has the power supply chirp issue, and my iBook has had a logic board replacement) in the hope that his machine would be replaced soon.
Apparently Apple were suggesting that maybe he was abusing it, which is somewhat ironic considering I'd expect the HD and optical drive to be suffering in that situation, and those two *non-Apple* parts are still working fine. About the only ones that haven't been problematic, in fact.
"Like the article's author points out, if you really want 64-bit computing, it's available cheaply on eBay."
Or expensively at apple.com.
Seriously, I love my Dual G5, I really do. But by golly did it cost a ton of money.
I've got to agree that the drawer-style info display for iCal was one of the most profoundly crap updates I can ever think of being made to a program. As one of the probably thousands who sent feedback bitching about this, I'm very glad Apple have listened to us.
Try: /Applications/AppleScript/Example\ Scripts/Mail\ Scripts/Manage\ SMTP\ Servers.scpt
Seemed to work for me OK.
Because when the drives/memory/scsi controller fails, you have no warranty or come back on it.
Unless of course, you're completely comfortable with having whatever service you have running on it killed off suddenly with no clear ETA on restoration time.
Yes, actually. One is running serving web pages and everything on it is duplicated on another system that can be switched over in minutes. One's got Ghost images on it and the users won't even notice if that's down for a while. And if an apps server fails, there are two others doing exactly the same job. We also have a backup domain controller and a syslog box running on recycled server hardware.
Bearing in mind that if the machine fails, a warranty would only have just got us replacement parts - being under warranty won't stop the machine failing in the first place. All that's changed is we have to pay for the bits ourselves now in such a situation - which hasn't happened yet.
There are lots of things that are best when horizontal ;)
At work I don't have too many services running on each box. We have a regular upgrade cycle, so have a good supply of older server-grade hardware that doesn't have a manufacturer's warranty any more but is still good for less critical tasks. Why wouldn't we use them instead of letting them lie around doing nothing? Patching is easy enough with ssh public keys and a shell script that logs into each one in turn and executes a command, eg allserv sudo apt-get install ssh.
As they say..."The BBC Special Effects department. Neither special nor effective".
Blake's 7 fans know all about this. And anyone who managed to watch the Doctor Who story "The Green Death" without being a gibbering wreck after seeing the giant fly effect has my undying respect.
As someone noted earlier though, I liked the graphics for the Guide entries - lovely style.