If a fan site has a name with a trademark/copyright in it and isn't asking for free legal help to fight off movie company attempts to take the name, then it is obviously a fake.
That ad campain about it being a different country was right. Library censorship is one thing, but I cannot imagine that any other state (Well, maybe Utah.) would let this go anywhere. Makes me glad I decided to pass up going to the University of Texas and become a dotcommer (Ok, given my company's stock price, that isn't true:).
This is a cop-out. What we really need to do is unite and demand reforms from patent systems worldwide. This likely being unachievable, we should lobby the US patent office to drastcally lower the cost of patents for those who do not plan to profit from said patents.
Are the citizens of British Columbia blind or stupid? Every video game already comes with a rating on the front, and on the back actually lists the reasoning for that rating, breaking it down into sex, violence, gore, drug use, and whatever else parents may not like. Video games have had these ratings for five years now. The government getting involved is, at best, a total waste of money.
Of course, that would not further the career the politician pushing for this, who apparently is so bad at what he does that he cannot find a better vehicle for his political advancement.
I saw an Earthlink commercial on TV the other night. It went on and on about all of the shady things people do to strip away privacy on the internet. Then it stated that Earthlink would never do those things.
Given this stuff is not actually tracking anyone, but it does carry more information than is at all necessary (Not than any is really necessary.).
Of course, given the history net companies have with privacy, it really is not surprising.
Franklin was a great man, gentleman and scholar. He started the first newspaper and the first fire department in the US. Nice to see that he was also quite the humanitarian. I have admired him all of my life.
Of course, he did all of those things because he was helping to start a country run by a bunch of guys that didn't like their taxes. They only let white men vote or own land. Slavery was allowed for blacks, and most of their wives were treated like slaves.
So just remember, as great a guy as Franklin was, do not forget to take what he said in the context of his own time.
Actually, you are the moron for not realizing that I was making fun of the IA-64 delays. A year ago I met with a Dell rep who was promising to have me IA-64 servers in October 2000.
At this rate, by the time IA-64 is a reality Linux will be at 2.6. Get the joke?
Religion is an example of what H.P. Lovecraft once said (I'm paraphrasing, don't have the book handy.): "The strongest human emotion is fear, and the strongest fear is the fear of the unknown."
Humans create religion so that they can chalk up that which they do not understand as the will of the divine and forget about it. It allows them to wipe out what they fear, and claim that they were just protecting themselves from heresy.
Religion is an excuse. A cop-out. It is nothing but a tool for the weak among us to justify themselves, their actions, and the world around them. Religion is for those who are afraid to grow up, afraid to take responsibility.
Perhaps one day all mankind will evolve beyond religion. Until then, the world will continue to suffer under the weight of the idiots that fall into the trap.
Is it just me, or does this seem like a moot point now that people are realizing something important: Almost nobody orders anything online. All the online stores are going under. Etoys went, Amazon is almost out of money (Again.), CDNOW is getting there again, etc.
I mean, really, other than airline tickets, what do people buy online anymore?
What they really need to tax is ebay sales! Tax every last cent for people selling off yard-sale leftovers!
My point was that there are already excuses, and those excuses are already in use. Script kiddies are nothing next to the thought of Osama Bin Ladin hacking.
"Its interesting to me that the anti-authority script kiddies are going to eventually be the reason and the justification for the authorities monitoring everything we do online."
Script-kiddies? The last time I looked the government was blaming software pirates, drug-dealers, and terrorists. Script kiddies will never be a huge reason for monitoring, because script kiddes can never do anything beyond hack servers sitting on the internet with their crappy scripts.
A DDoS by a team of script kiddies means nothing in the long run. Who cares if Yahoo! or ebay go down because a few idiots manage to get in? The real danger is the big hackers. The Russian mafia crackers who hold credit card databases hostage is just a beginning. Imagine if the Taleban found a group of good crackers in Afghanistan and sent them after a Fannie Mae's mortgage database, screwing up millions of American home loans?
Script kiddies DDoSing the last of the dotcoms is no matter. There are things people could do online to do far more damage. The probable recipients of said damages know this, and they are preparing.
"Therefore, I don't think you'll be required to put Name, Address, Email account, etc."
You miss the point. By collecting this information, Sony makes MONEY. Making money is the only reason that Sony exists. They have no higher power to answer to for this. There is no morality for Sony. There is only making money. And if they are going to force online authenitcation anyway, you can be sure that they will have no qualms about doing a little more work to turn a huge profit on it.
"Hey, this also means that these games CAN'T BE RENTED"
Game rentals are safe. Game companies make too much money from them. Some game companies have even done special games that could ONLY be rented to promote game rentals.
What this really does in ensure that only games designated for rental can be used on multiple PS2s. These games will never be sold to the public, only to rental chains, and regular games will only be sold via retail. This will accomplish two things:
- First, game companies will be able to track all rentals, and make sure that they get a cut for each one.
- Second, it will further the efforts of large rental chains to destroy small businesses. By integrating a system of charge per rental, they cut into the profit margins of the stores, both by taking a cut, and hitting the stores with the costs of working within the system. Of course, if the game companies have any sense, they will start their own rental chains, keep all of the money, and not sell games to rental chains at all.
Online authentication is not just a way to verify software authenticity, it also allows Sony one more way to invade our lives and track what we do. This is an incredible way to monitor users and build demographic databases. Allow me to explain why.
The system will require registration to use. Period. They will come up with a million BS reasons to support it, such as tracking attempts to play copies.
The registration will give them the following information about the user:
- Name
- Address
- Email account (Required so that they can send you a random password of course.)
- Telephone number (For immediate contact in case of suspected fraud on your account.)
- Age (They are required by law to ask, so that at least kids under the age of thirteen are not exploited like this.).
This information can then all be linked backed to credit databases and advertising profiles to produce more information, allowing Sony to cross reference a user's buying, playing, and viewing habits. They will be able to figure out when you get paid, and use that as a basis for when to send you spam for a sequel to the game that you played for 200+ hours last year. Sony will generate a list of your favorite movies, and sell it to the MPAA, who will in turn allow movie companies to use the data to spam you with ads for like movies.
Those of course are the nice uses.
What happens when someone else wants to know what you do, what you watch? If someone is accused of a sex crime, the government will be able to subpeona your logs to see if you were watching kinky DVDs. After a school shooting, the state could use gameplay records to state that the offender learned to kill from video games, and prove it by producing records of all the games he played. A wife could divorce her husband on the grounds that he ignores her to play games all the time, and she could subpeona the records as proof.
I have a Playstation 2 now, and I love it, but I have a feeling that I might not be purchasing too many future releases.
Zethus was trying to recruit me in December. I was gung-ho and ready to go, suddenly it turned out that there were less openings that had been described, and I was told that they were all filled. The person working on recruiting me was a boss I knew from my previous employer, so I assumed it was just growing pains, and told them to call me back.
Same thing happened again. And again. I finally told them to call me when they got their shit together.
And look how lucky I was.
Of course, my current employer is a web-consulting firm that gets listed on FuckedCompany at least once a week. On Friday they gave me a raise. Then I found out on FuckedCompany that the company is about to shut down two offices and lay of another fifteen percent of our work force (I never challenge FC on this stuff, because everything Pud posts about us turns out to be true.).
On top of it all, the division I work in is for sale.
To the point: This stuff scares the shit out of me. I never know if I will have a job tomorrow, and if I do get fired, the company may be too broke for severance. I have few other options, because most of the companies in Northern Virginia are in the same boat.
So I just sit, wait, and hope the government pumps some cash into the defense industry, so that I can get a good stable job, at least for a while.
"Speculation is welcome as to why NT sysadmins don't install service packs for known vulnerabilities..."
NT service packs are a huge pain in the ass. Installing one can break apps (SP 6 and Lotus notes, anyone?), create new security holes, make a (Relatively.) stable system unstable, and more. Often it can be impossible to get approval from management to upgrade like this with no testing. Getting the testing done is a pain because developers are usually more concerned with testing their latest code than worrying about service packs. Sometimes there is just no money for the testing, especially in dotcoms.
What we really need is browsers to come with a warning before anyone submits a sixteen digit number to a form on a server running IIS, warning them how dangerous it is to provide a CC number to a site running a Microsoft product.
How does a new influx of internet users change anything? Are they likely to suddenly start buying things from all the dying online stores that do not turn a profit on items sold anyway? Or will they view so many of those ads that do not pay for the bandwidth the site uses? Are you expecting them to all start buying tickets on priceline when the airlines sell the tickets just as cheap?
Or will they all just be a bunch of non-paying content producers/digesters like most of the net users before them.
More users does not mean an end to the internet slump. All of the useless.coms will still go under. The techies will all go back to their old jobs at companies that can actually turn a buck. Sure those companies will be doing stuff with the net, but nothing spectacular.
And in short, everyone will get over the internet, until some huge change (Like easy, cheap, accessible broadband.) comes along to get the net moving again.
The x-box needs a DVD content control chip anyway, so this seems like a logical extension.
What it all comes down to is making life easier for developers. By simply taking advantage of the chip, parents can block anything they do not want the kids to see. Great examples would be:
- A Soldier of Fortune port with both the no gore and normal versions.
- Giants, with the lockout turning blood green and adding underwear.
- Games could even incorporate the German style violence workaround: With the v-chip on, all life forms become robots.
This is a good thing. Really. Too bad Microsoft is doing it.
This one will likely be just as successful as Macrovision's pervious attempts at CD copy protection, Safedisc and Safedisc 2.
Both Safedisc and Safedisc 2 can be defeated with generic cracks that were released as soon as the schemes came on the market. Safedisc and Safedisc 2 software are almost always released with specific cracks in.iso format before they ever hit the stores.
Macrovision's attempts at copy protection are worthless. They are sold to moronic executives with little technical knowledge, people too ignorant to realize how useless Macrovision protections on CDs are.
Slashdot Mirror
If a fan site has a name with a trademark/copyright in it and isn't asking for free legal help to fight off movie company attempts to take the name, then it is obviously a fake.
That ad campain about it being a different country was right. Library censorship is one thing, but I cannot imagine that any other state (Well, maybe Utah.) would let this go anywhere. Makes me glad I decided to pass up going to the University of Texas and become a dotcommer (Ok, given my company's stock price, that isn't true :).
This is a cop-out. What we really need to do is unite and demand reforms from patent systems worldwide. This likely being unachievable, we should lobby the US patent office to drastcally lower the cost of patents for those who do not plan to profit from said patents.
The point of the blind and stupid comment was that the residents are not actually blind and stupid, and thus there should be now reason for this.
Are the citizens of British Columbia blind or stupid? Every video game already comes with a rating on the front, and on the back actually lists the reasoning for that rating, breaking it down into sex, violence, gore, drug use, and whatever else parents may not like. Video games have had these ratings for five years now. The government getting involved is, at best, a total waste of money.
Of course, that would not further the career the politician pushing for this, who apparently is so bad at what he does that he cannot find a better vehicle for his political advancement.
I saw an Earthlink commercial on TV the other night. It went on and on about all of the shady things people do to strip away privacy on the internet. Then it stated that Earthlink would never do those things.
Given this stuff is not actually tracking anyone, but it does carry more information than is at all necessary (Not than any is really necessary.).
Of course, given the history net companies have with privacy, it really is not surprising.
Franklin was a great man, gentleman and scholar. He started the first newspaper and the first fire department in the US. Nice to see that he was also quite the humanitarian. I have admired him all of my life.
Of course, he did all of those things because he was helping to start a country run by a bunch of guys that didn't like their taxes. They only let white men vote or own land. Slavery was allowed for blacks, and most of their wives were treated like slaves.
So just remember, as great a guy as Franklin was, do not forget to take what he said in the context of his own time.
Actually, you are the moron for not realizing that I was making fun of the IA-64 delays. A year ago I met with a Dell rep who was promising to have me IA-64 servers in October 2000.
At this rate, by the time IA-64 is a reality Linux will be at 2.6. Get the joke?
This is happening on IA-64? Guess that means it will be running the 2.6 kernel...
So true.
Religion is an example of what H.P. Lovecraft once said (I'm paraphrasing, don't have the book handy.): "The strongest human emotion is fear, and the strongest fear is the fear of the unknown."
Humans create religion so that they can chalk up that which they do not understand as the will of the divine and forget about it. It allows them to wipe out what they fear, and claim that they were just protecting themselves from heresy.
Religion is an excuse. A cop-out. It is nothing but a tool for the weak among us to justify themselves, their actions, and the world around them. Religion is for those who are afraid to grow up, afraid to take responsibility.
Perhaps one day all mankind will evolve beyond religion. Until then, the world will continue to suffer under the weight of the idiots that fall into the trap.
Is it just me, or does this seem like a moot point now that people are realizing something important: Almost nobody orders anything online. All the online stores are going under. Etoys went, Amazon is almost out of money (Again.), CDNOW is getting there again, etc.
I mean, really, other than airline tickets, what do people buy online anymore?
What they really need to tax is ebay sales! Tax every last cent for people selling off yard-sale leftovers!
My point was that there are already excuses, and those excuses are already in use. Script kiddies are nothing next to the thought of Osama Bin Ladin hacking.
"Its interesting to me that the anti-authority script kiddies are going to eventually be the reason and the justification for the authorities monitoring everything we do online."
Script-kiddies? The last time I looked the government was blaming software pirates, drug-dealers, and terrorists. Script kiddies will never be a huge reason for monitoring, because script kiddes can never do anything beyond hack servers sitting on the internet with their crappy scripts.
A DDoS by a team of script kiddies means nothing in the long run. Who cares if Yahoo! or ebay go down because a few idiots manage to get in? The real danger is the big hackers. The Russian mafia crackers who hold credit card databases hostage is just a beginning. Imagine if the Taleban found a group of good crackers in Afghanistan and sent them after a Fannie Mae's mortgage database, screwing up millions of American home loans?
Script kiddies DDoSing the last of the dotcoms is no matter. There are things people could do online to do far more damage. The probable recipients of said damages know this, and they are preparing.
"Therefore, I don't think you'll be required to put Name, Address, Email account, etc."
You miss the point. By collecting this information, Sony makes MONEY. Making money is the only reason that Sony exists. They have no higher power to answer to for this. There is no morality for Sony. There is only making money. And if they are going to force online authenitcation anyway, you can be sure that they will have no qualms about doing a little more work to turn a huge profit on it.
"Hey, this also means that these games CAN'T BE RENTED"
Game rentals are safe. Game companies make too much money from them. Some game companies have even done special games that could ONLY be rented to promote game rentals.
What this really does in ensure that only games designated for rental can be used on multiple PS2s. These games will never be sold to the public, only to rental chains, and regular games will only be sold via retail. This will accomplish two things:
- First, game companies will be able to track all rentals, and make sure that they get a cut for each one.
- Second, it will further the efforts of large rental chains to destroy small businesses. By integrating a system of charge per rental, they cut into the profit margins of the stores, both by taking a cut, and hitting the stores with the costs of working within the system. Of course, if the game companies have any sense, they will start their own rental chains, keep all of the money, and not sell games to rental chains at all.
Online authentication is not just a way to verify software authenticity, it also allows Sony one more way to invade our lives and track what we do. This is an incredible way to monitor users and build demographic databases. Allow me to explain why.
The system will require registration to use. Period. They will come up with a million BS reasons to support it, such as tracking attempts to play copies.
The registration will give them the following information about the user:
- Name
- Address
- Email account (Required so that they can send you a random password of course.)
- Telephone number (For immediate contact in case of suspected fraud on your account.)
- Age (They are required by law to ask, so that at least kids under the age of thirteen are not exploited like this.).
This information can then all be linked backed to credit databases and advertising profiles to produce more information, allowing Sony to cross reference a user's buying, playing, and viewing habits. They will be able to figure out when you get paid, and use that as a basis for when to send you spam for a sequel to the game that you played for 200+ hours last year. Sony will generate a list of your favorite movies, and sell it to the MPAA, who will in turn allow movie companies to use the data to spam you with ads for like movies.
Those of course are the nice uses.
What happens when someone else wants to know what you do, what you watch? If someone is accused of a sex crime, the government will be able to subpeona your logs to see if you were watching kinky DVDs. After a school shooting, the state could use gameplay records to state that the offender learned to kill from video games, and prove it by producing records of all the games he played. A wife could divorce her husband on the grounds that he ignores her to play games all the time, and she could subpeona the records as proof.
I have a Playstation 2 now, and I love it, but I have a feeling that I might not be purchasing too many future releases.
Zethus was trying to recruit me in December. I was gung-ho and ready to go, suddenly it turned out that there were less openings that had been described, and I was told that they were all filled. The person working on recruiting me was a boss I knew from my previous employer, so I assumed it was just growing pains, and told them to call me back.
Same thing happened again. And again. I finally told them to call me when they got their shit together.
And look how lucky I was.
Of course, my current employer is a web-consulting firm that gets listed on FuckedCompany at least once a week. On Friday they gave me a raise. Then I found out on FuckedCompany that the company is about to shut down two offices and lay of another fifteen percent of our work force (I never challenge FC on this stuff, because everything Pud posts about us turns out to be true.).
On top of it all, the division I work in is for sale.
To the point: This stuff scares the shit out of me. I never know if I will have a job tomorrow, and if I do get fired, the company may be too broke for severance. I have few other options, because most of the companies in Northern Virginia are in the same boat.
So I just sit, wait, and hope the government pumps some cash into the defense industry, so that I can get a good stable job, at least for a while.
From the National Geographic article -
"The Australian will be dressed like an astronaut to protect his body from extreme pressures during his jump."
Seems to me that they should be far more worried about the extreme LACK of pressure.
Of course, one would think that the real danger would be heat from the fall.
Seriously, tho, good luck to him. Looks damned fun, I wish I could try it.
"Why not use a proxy to trap this? "
Because it needs to be simple for the idiots.
"Speculation is welcome as to why NT sysadmins don't install service packs for known vulnerabilities..."
NT service packs are a huge pain in the ass. Installing one can break apps (SP 6 and Lotus notes, anyone?), create new security holes, make a (Relatively.) stable system unstable, and more. Often it can be impossible to get approval from management to upgrade like this with no testing. Getting the testing done is a pain because developers are usually more concerned with testing their latest code than worrying about service packs. Sometimes there is just no money for the testing, especially in dotcoms.
What we really need is browsers to come with a warning before anyone submits a sixteen digit number to a form on a server running IIS, warning them how dangerous it is to provide a CC number to a site running a Microsoft product.
"Many Web sites are vulnerable to hackers because the task of auditing their applications and detecting hacking is time-consuming..."
/. has linked to it. Now every script kiddie on earth knows how to rip-off online vendors. Watch the patches fly out.
Not now that
"Sony did developed the play station on linux."
Acutally, the PS2 development box runs Linux. That is about all.
"You can take your Tech Slump and shove it..."
.coms will still go under. The techies will all go back to their old jobs at companies that can actually turn a buck. Sure those companies will be doing stuff with the net, but nothing spectacular.
How does a new influx of internet users change anything? Are they likely to suddenly start buying things from all the dying online stores that do not turn a profit on items sold anyway? Or will they view so many of those ads that do not pay for the bandwidth the site uses? Are you expecting them to all start buying tickets on priceline when the airlines sell the tickets just as cheap?
Or will they all just be a bunch of non-paying content producers/digesters like most of the net users before them.
More users does not mean an end to the internet slump. All of the useless
And in short, everyone will get over the internet, until some huge change (Like easy, cheap, accessible broadband.) comes along to get the net moving again.
The x-box needs a DVD content control chip anyway, so this seems like a logical extension.
What it all comes down to is making life easier for developers. By simply taking advantage of the chip, parents can block anything they do not want the kids to see. Great examples would be:
- A Soldier of Fortune port with both the no gore and normal versions.
- Giants, with the lockout turning blood green and adding underwear.
- Games could even incorporate the German style violence workaround: With the v-chip on, all life forms become robots.
This is a good thing. Really. Too bad Microsoft is doing it.
This one will likely be just as successful as Macrovision's pervious attempts at CD copy protection, Safedisc and Safedisc 2.
.iso format before they ever hit the stores.
Both Safedisc and Safedisc 2 can be defeated with generic cracks that were released as soon as the schemes came on the market. Safedisc and Safedisc 2 software are almost always released with specific cracks in
Macrovision's attempts at copy protection are worthless. They are sold to moronic executives with little technical knowledge, people too ignorant to realize how useless Macrovision protections on CDs are.