It was my understanding that "unauthorized" meant "bootleg" in this case. There do exist authorized peripherals, which bear the logos found at this link, and while it's still a bit of a cash-grab on Microsoft's part (licensing), it likely has more to do with anti-cheating than anything - In other words, removing the ability to crack open an SD card on your PC and modify your save files, so as to prevent things like the CoD4 UFO hack and other exploits.
But don't let me stop the mindless bashing - It's MS, after all, and they deserve it no matter what, right?
There is an initial warning AFAIK, and if no action is taken within a certain period of time (I can't recall now what that is, since I've only ever serviced said machines and haven't actually received a warning myself), they get disconnected and have to go through some hoops to prove that it's clean in order to get it back. Some customers of ours had come in saying they'd already been disconnected, so I'm not sure if they throw the switch right away in the case of severe infections or if those people toting the malware-laden machines had actually ignored the warning.
The example of the false alarm via an incorrect DHCP lease length affected my college professor (and he actually told them about the issue, was assured that it was their error and that he wouldn't be disconnected, yet he still was), and caused a mild influx of puzzling service jobs at the shop I worked at where nothing was really wrong with the computers. It was thankfully localized to a certain area; Otherwise, we would've been swamped with false alarm service requests.
Rogers, here in Canada, has been practising this for a few years now, and will notify and disconnect computers that are sending network packets that match known malware. I think it's an automated process, too.
It's sort of funny, there was once a time when someone set the DHCP lease length too short, and several customers wrongly got blasted off the internet as they had been "infected".
You seem to be thinking of another console, perhaps the Saturn - Widespread availability of Dreamcast game rips wasn't a reality until the latter part of the Dreamcast's life, and even then there were releases that required features to be removed, or audio/video/textures/etc having to be heavily-compressed, which caused issues during gameplay (Skies of Arcadia's rip in particular suffered from this). Dreamcast game discs weren't normal CD-ROM media - They were a variant called GD-ROM, which enabled up to 1.2GB of information to be stored on a disc, through use of a higher-density design coupled with a normal-density track on the inside with a TOC that ignores the rest of the disc (the Dreamcast read a different TOC). Therefore, placing a GD-ROM into a normal CD-ROM/DVD-ROM reader would yield only a small track containing bibliography/etc info and in some cases bonus content such as wallpaper. As I understand it, firmware hacking can be done on a normal CD/DVD-ROM drive to look for that second TOC if the drive's laser can pick off the high-density data, but that's a significant hack that won't work on every drive.
For a long time, the only (and still by far the easiest) way to rip a GD-ROM disc was to use the Dreamcast itself as a GD-ROM drive, using a Coder's Cable (serial, slow) or a Broadband Adapter (rare) and special software to transfer the data to a computer. Making rips was by no means an easy task, and broadband of the day made for unreliable download stability for such large files (in the absence of Bittorrent). Hell, in the early days, it was even necessary to make use of a boot CD to load the game!
Piracy wasn't a big concern for Sega - Certainly not nearly as widespread as it was on the Playstation.
I remember this pretty vividly - This was back when I had a Sony 16x4x48x CD burner in my brand-new Pentium 4 1.5GHz Windows 98-based computer. I recall trying to download and burn some Dreamcast games that I wasn't able to get my hands on otherwise (Skies of Arcadia in particular was completely unknown around here for some reason) - The availability of rips and the likelihood that they'd work properly were both very low, along with the general quality level of the rips overall, many plagued with slowdown and inferior quality due to modifications made by the rip team. Quite frankly, it was a lot easier and less annoying to go out and actually buy the game legitimately.
Sure, you can find Dreamcast rips all over the place now in torrent form and even on some websites, but as a person who at one point during the Dreamcast's life cycle was looking to expand his Dreamcast collection beyond the paltry selection of games most stores in his area carried, I can tell you that it wasn't as easy as you think it was back in the day.
Ah, but your three monitors are recognized by Windows and assigned ID numbers, hence their desktops are handled independently by Windows. Here, the driver actually merges the displays and reports to Windows that there is precisely one monitor hooked up to the computer, which means, obviously, that Windows doesn't know about them. Hence, Windows will treat all three as one and maximize across the screens.
You do realize that you lose NTFS permissions when copying from a Windows machine to external FAT-based storage, too, right? It's an issue that plagues every platform due to the inherent incompatibility with ACL's/UNIX permissions in FAT. This really has nothing to do with Ubuntu or any Linux distro, or even Mac OS - It's a common issue, and I believe Windows (XP and later) will also prompt to run anything from a FAT-based device, since the "this program is trusted" flag (I can't recall the proper name for it) cannot be set.
The prompts are desired behaviour due to the ease with which a virus can taint this sort of storage.
Going back to the main topic, though, while it in itself isn't a secure way of dealing with it, a text file describing the permissions could feasibly be used to restore the permissions after copying to/from a FAT-based FS, through either a script or other automated method. This of course isn't a very secure way of doing it and would be quite rudimentary, but would allow to maintain the permissions if you're the only one making use of the file when you copy it back and forth. The problem then becomes actually doing the scripting and whether or not it's actually that useful.
A longer-term solution would be to actually lobby for adoption of a newer file system for use in removable storage, rather than the de facto adoption of FAT/FAT32 (a thoroughly obsolete file system today thanks to the widespread use of security/permissions features) due to it being free as in beer and entirely ancient. It doesn't even really have to be EXT2/3, so long as it's free (as in beer) to use (which is essential if any other file system were to be even considered for adoption).
No they haven't. Only as of last month have they had a release candidate for the developers-only crowd. I think you're thinking of CUDA, which is an nVidia-only technology similar to OpenCL, but differing in implementation (and I believe openness as well). Along with OpenCL, DirectX 11 is also bringing "Compute Shaders" into the DirectX model, making this kind of thing a requirement for a DX11 GPU.
While it's true that they're technologically and logistically at a severe disadvantage in terms of air force, they don't only operate the Tomcat - They have more MiG-29UB's and F-5E's than they do Tomcats, which are actually probably from the same time period. They also supposedly have orders out for new Su-30's, J-10's and JF-17's, which if filled and in sufficient number, could actually bring Iran's air force technologically up closer to something that might be able to give the USAF some trouble. Of course, I doubt that any of that would even require the services of the F-22 - The F-15 with good pilots would probably still do well against those threats, especially if the Iranian pilots were novices (which would certainly be the case if they were to just have received those J-10's and JF-17's).
I'm hoping we don't find ourselves in a situation where we were wishing it hadn't been canceled because that means we're in a much bigger mess than we currently are in Iraq/Af.
What situation can you see the US Air Force in where it has a serious contender to air superiority versus even the F-15, which has a spotless air-to-air kill ratio against what most countries currently on the US's shitlist are flying? Much less along with the 187 flying F-22's? I mean, a hypothetical war with China might need it, but they're still flying original-model Su-27 derivatives while they design their own indigenous fighter, the Shenyang J-XX. With good enough pilots, they can seriously ruin an F-15's day, but with the F-22's already built, there should be more than enough firepower to take out something like that. I mean, there could be trouble if Russia decided to fully rebuild its air force with its recuperating economy and try a show of force against the USA, but what are the odds of that happening? Hell, China's not very likely either. The only foreseeable conflicts in the near future might be Iran and/or North Korea, and they're both still flying older-generation aircraft that the F-15 has shot down in the past. In terms of equipment, the playing field is already level, unless you're thinking that the USA's going to square off against Eurofighters or something.
The plane may have been better, but the companies behind it where not. Since both planes met requirements and were good aircraft, DoD chose the company with the better track record.
Of course, you can say hindsight is 20/20, but exactly the opposite of what they were hoping would happen, happened. I find it hilarious, myself.
Oh, another reason for the YF-23's passing was the rotary weapons launcher was prone to jamming on the test model. I guess even though that could have been fixed, the track records still spoke for themselves. Even if that mindset backfired miserably.
The CBC did a documentary called "Getting Gouged by Geeks" of precisely the same thing, with almost precisely the same fault - Instead of loosening the chip, the module itself was blown in such a way that the computer didn't power on. Unfortunately, CBC had high standards - even one guy who had figured it out, and honestly fixed it, was considered to be "gouging" because he only had a larger module than what needed replacing - Let's not even mention that they expected him to do a house call for free and give them a memory module for the going price online. There were plenty of examples of others who weren't so legit, though.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The only real thing that needs to happen to completely lock down physical media on consoles is for a small portion of the disc to be writeable, and require retailers to write that with a specialized burner on purchase, containing all pertinent information including console serial number, date of purchase, place of purchase, etc etc. Encode/burn it in a way otherwise unreadable by normal players (like the Dreamcast's GD-ROM format, which was, to grossly over-simplify, more or less an inversion of the expected TOC with the data written backwards), give the console(s) in question the ability to read and require that track via firmware, and you have a completely locked-down, no-resale system that's directly tied to your console and your console alone. Charge an extra 50% per disc for "unlocked" versions to be used solely at video rental stores, perhaps with a re-writeable layer containing a date string to lock the game once the due-back date arrives.
Sure, it'd cost an arm and a leg and the soul of your first-born son, but who cares? You're saving yourself from PIRATES. Plus, you get all the benefits of the online distribution racket, too - Your friend wants to play? They need to get their own copy! You lost your disc? Buy another one, just like people who lost their accounts do! Console broke? Well, buy a new one and buy all your games again! Best of all, no pesky internet connection required to verify the license. That's a plus for the consumer!
Sure, you might be able to get around it, but good luck with that.
Well, you do have a point, though I do have to say that rental prices have all but doubled where I live, for no real reason. It's pretty much as expensive as going to the theatre now (minus concession items). Though quite honestly, the force of the market alone will drive DVD's out of favour simply because it can and will. Manufacturing of DVD players is starting to peter off from a few years ago, and the market is being flooded with Blu-Ray equipment and virtually every new release today is available on both Blu-Ray and DVD.
That said, I also agree that digital distribution is definitely the way things seem to be headed, as much as Sony might dislike that fact. But the state of the industry right now, along with the vested interest in Blu-Ray means that it's definitely going to dominate DVD before its end of life, even if it's only by artificial means.
Are you saying that slashdotters never have friends over for food and drinks, with a little music too?
Do you really even need to ask that question?
Seriously, though, background music is background music in that kind of situation, unless you're planning on putting on a party (in which case it's louder background music), and you'll probably either try and find something that you know everyone will enjoy. My tastes are obviously not yours, so my feelings on the current musical trends don't really count here, but when faced with the decision between buying a disc or just grabbing a few tracks, I think most people would be more inclined to do the latter. Hell, iTunes has been a runaway success in spite of the RIAA's assertions, based on that very idea, not to mention that the seemingly most popular P2P app (around here anyway), Limewire (on the Gnutella2 network), is laden with fakes and viruses. A legitimate, virus-free environment, it makes for a very safe alternative to just downloading it for free. Sure, some people know better and can spot that kind of stuff, but come on. How many users are actually that intelligent?
It is a bit of a leap, yeah, but when you think about it, there are a couple of reasons for that:
1) People universally dislike the RIAA. At least around here, people like to spite them as much as possible.
2) It isn't universally illegal to download music over the internet, and still is a legal grey area.
3) The cost of a music CD, given the amount of enjoyment and entertainment (assuming all songs in the album are "good") versus the cost of a DVD/game and the amount of enjoyment and entertainment gained from that, is fairly hard to quantify, but a single music track is usually around 3-5 minutes in length, give or take a minute. Considering that music has become a much more personal experience, it isn't necessarily a social activity anymore; While a DVD might be limited to an hour and a 1.5-2 hours in length or so with limited replayability, it still remains something of a group activity. Gaming has also become an increasingly social activity (well, arguably social), with a lot of replayability and unpredictability, depending on the game.
It's not really enough to say for sure that consumers are choosing to spend their money on games instead of music, but given the general quality of music as of late (so I'm told; I jumped off the bandwagon long ago) and the rather public knowledge that the artist gets little to no support from their purchase to begin with, it makes for a very good case to spend your money elsewhere.
When Blu-Ray drives cost $19.95, can be made by anybody, and the Blu-Ray disc section is bigger than the DVD section, then let's talk.
This is precisely what people said about DVD's about a decade ago, and the fact that you've bought DVD's and DVD-media games proves that it worked itself out in the end, even if only by sheer force of the market, whether or not people actually did want it (and they did). I'm not particularly happy about Blu-Ray winning the format war (I was more a fan of HD-DVD, for basically the sole reason that Sony's had a terrible track record with standardizing media), but at least we have a successor format to do us until we get some good holographic storage going. Given the consumer shelf life of DVD, that should put us in about the right timeframe for it by the time Blu-Ray is long in the tooth. Already there are BD-ROM drives for around $100, and players for about that much. Burners are still expensive, but still continuously dropping in price. Hell, a Liteon 4x BD-R drive is currently running for around $200 CAD on NCIX, and a really nice LG 8x one is only about $60 more. The price is plummeting, and with the PS3 gaining momentum in the gaming market and Blu-Ray being the de-facto standard in high-definition storage media for movies, we'll eventually see Blu-Ray take over and land nicely in the spot DVD landed in some years ago.
I was under the impression that this was launched long ago, as I remember them (Gamepark Holdings) advertising it for sale at least a year ago. Doing a bit of research, I guess they thought it would be launched far sooner than they really could. I remember they had pricing available and everything.
Besides, if you're looking for a truly high-end computer and you're not looking to build it yourself (or you're looking for a notebook), Falcon Northwest is one of the best there is, and they've been in the business since 1992. Of course, they're custom-built high-end PC's; They'll cost a pretty penny, and there's no assembly line, so they'll take a week or so to arrive, depending on your order.
Well, neither of those systems were networked or quite up to par with the business machines out there in the day, but there were plenty of Amiga viruses floating around, thanks to its widespread homebrew and piracy.
The Commodore 64 and Atari didn't exactly have permanent storage, so the worst you could do would be to have an annoying attachment to a diskette/tape/cartridge that wouldn't transfer to other media unless used during the same session. However, that in mind, there does happen to be at least one Commodore 64 virus widespread enough to have been documented.
Perhaps someone forgot about an article that was on here a week or so ago about the modern Mac-based botnet that's currently floating around? Not particularly vulnerabilities in the OS, but it's the idea that Macs are bulletproof that allows social engineering to be a very successful attack vector against Mac users. Remember that a lot of viruses even in the Windows world still require the user to manually launch them.
What's incredibly funny is that the first result for "Mac botnet" in a Google search is a 2006 "Mac Geekery" blog entry containing a rant about how Macs will never constitute a botnet. =D Such foresight! Such fanboism!
Yeah, this is what I thought when I first heard about this earlier today. If ever there were a "big reason" to back the draconian ACTA, international "condemnation" is it. This'll probably let them lobby for and push it through without much, if any, opposition.
Slashdot Mirror
It was my understanding that "unauthorized" meant "bootleg" in this case. There do exist authorized peripherals, which bear the logos found at this link, and while it's still a bit of a cash-grab on Microsoft's part (licensing), it likely has more to do with anti-cheating than anything - In other words, removing the ability to crack open an SD card on your PC and modify your save files, so as to prevent things like the CoD4 UFO hack and other exploits.
But don't let me stop the mindless bashing - It's MS, after all, and they deserve it no matter what, right?
Right?
Feh.
Yeah, it turned out they entered the number in minutes, not in seconds. Whoops.
Took 'em several days to detect and fix it if I'm not mistaken.
There is an initial warning AFAIK, and if no action is taken within a certain period of time (I can't recall now what that is, since I've only ever serviced said machines and haven't actually received a warning myself), they get disconnected and have to go through some hoops to prove that it's clean in order to get it back. Some customers of ours had come in saying they'd already been disconnected, so I'm not sure if they throw the switch right away in the case of severe infections or if those people toting the malware-laden machines had actually ignored the warning.
The example of the false alarm via an incorrect DHCP lease length affected my college professor (and he actually told them about the issue, was assured that it was their error and that he wouldn't be disconnected, yet he still was), and caused a mild influx of puzzling service jobs at the shop I worked at where nothing was really wrong with the computers. It was thankfully localized to a certain area; Otherwise, we would've been swamped with false alarm service requests.
Rogers, here in Canada, has been practising this for a few years now, and will notify and disconnect computers that are sending network packets that match known malware. I think it's an automated process, too.
It's sort of funny, there was once a time when someone set the DHCP lease length too short, and several customers wrongly got blasted off the internet as they had been "infected".
You seem to be thinking of another console, perhaps the Saturn - Widespread availability of Dreamcast game rips wasn't a reality until the latter part of the Dreamcast's life, and even then there were releases that required features to be removed, or audio/video/textures/etc having to be heavily-compressed, which caused issues during gameplay (Skies of Arcadia's rip in particular suffered from this). Dreamcast game discs weren't normal CD-ROM media - They were a variant called GD-ROM, which enabled up to 1.2GB of information to be stored on a disc, through use of a higher-density design coupled with a normal-density track on the inside with a TOC that ignores the rest of the disc (the Dreamcast read a different TOC). Therefore, placing a GD-ROM into a normal CD-ROM/DVD-ROM reader would yield only a small track containing bibliography/etc info and in some cases bonus content such as wallpaper. As I understand it, firmware hacking can be done on a normal CD/DVD-ROM drive to look for that second TOC if the drive's laser can pick off the high-density data, but that's a significant hack that won't work on every drive.
For a long time, the only (and still by far the easiest) way to rip a GD-ROM disc was to use the Dreamcast itself as a GD-ROM drive, using a Coder's Cable (serial, slow) or a Broadband Adapter (rare) and special software to transfer the data to a computer. Making rips was by no means an easy task, and broadband of the day made for unreliable download stability for such large files (in the absence of Bittorrent). Hell, in the early days, it was even necessary to make use of a boot CD to load the game!
Piracy wasn't a big concern for Sega - Certainly not nearly as widespread as it was on the Playstation.
I remember this pretty vividly - This was back when I had a Sony 16x4x48x CD burner in my brand-new Pentium 4 1.5GHz Windows 98-based computer. I recall trying to download and burn some Dreamcast games that I wasn't able to get my hands on otherwise (Skies of Arcadia in particular was completely unknown around here for some reason) - The availability of rips and the likelihood that they'd work properly were both very low, along with the general quality level of the rips overall, many plagued with slowdown and inferior quality due to modifications made by the rip team. Quite frankly, it was a lot easier and less annoying to go out and actually buy the game legitimately.
Sure, you can find Dreamcast rips all over the place now in torrent form and even on some websites, but as a person who at one point during the Dreamcast's life cycle was looking to expand his Dreamcast collection beyond the paltry selection of games most stores in his area carried, I can tell you that it wasn't as easy as you think it was back in the day.
Ah, but your three monitors are recognized by Windows and assigned ID numbers, hence their desktops are handled independently by Windows. Here, the driver actually merges the displays and reports to Windows that there is precisely one monitor hooked up to the computer, which means, obviously, that Windows doesn't know about them. Hence, Windows will treat all three as one and maximize across the screens.
You do realize that you lose NTFS permissions when copying from a Windows machine to external FAT-based storage, too, right? It's an issue that plagues every platform due to the inherent incompatibility with ACL's/UNIX permissions in FAT. This really has nothing to do with Ubuntu or any Linux distro, or even Mac OS - It's a common issue, and I believe Windows (XP and later) will also prompt to run anything from a FAT-based device, since the "this program is trusted" flag (I can't recall the proper name for it) cannot be set.
The prompts are desired behaviour due to the ease with which a virus can taint this sort of storage.
Going back to the main topic, though, while it in itself isn't a secure way of dealing with it, a text file describing the permissions could feasibly be used to restore the permissions after copying to/from a FAT-based FS, through either a script or other automated method. This of course isn't a very secure way of doing it and would be quite rudimentary, but would allow to maintain the permissions if you're the only one making use of the file when you copy it back and forth. The problem then becomes actually doing the scripting and whether or not it's actually that useful.
A longer-term solution would be to actually lobby for adoption of a newer file system for use in removable storage, rather than the de facto adoption of FAT/FAT32 (a thoroughly obsolete file system today thanks to the widespread use of security/permissions features) due to it being free as in beer and entirely ancient. It doesn't even really have to be EXT2/3, so long as it's free (as in beer) to use (which is essential if any other file system were to be even considered for adoption).
No they haven't. Only as of last month have they had a release candidate for the developers-only crowd. I think you're thinking of CUDA, which is an nVidia-only technology similar to OpenCL, but differing in implementation (and I believe openness as well). Along with OpenCL, DirectX 11 is also bringing "Compute Shaders" into the DirectX model, making this kind of thing a requirement for a DX11 GPU.
But I thought the Almighty Apple was impervious to security flaws? Isn't that what Father Jobs has been telling us?
Isn't it?
You know, I have to wonder which is worse. I mean, at least when it's mandated, they're doing something properly.
While it's true that they're technologically and logistically at a severe disadvantage in terms of air force, they don't only operate the Tomcat - They have more MiG-29UB's and F-5E's than they do Tomcats, which are actually probably from the same time period. They also supposedly have orders out for new Su-30's, J-10's and JF-17's, which if filled and in sufficient number, could actually bring Iran's air force technologically up closer to something that might be able to give the USAF some trouble. Of course, I doubt that any of that would even require the services of the F-22 - The F-15 with good pilots would probably still do well against those threats, especially if the Iranian pilots were novices (which would certainly be the case if they were to just have received those J-10's and JF-17's).
What situation can you see the US Air Force in where it has a serious contender to air superiority versus even the F-15, which has a spotless air-to-air kill ratio against what most countries currently on the US's shitlist are flying? Much less along with the 187 flying F-22's? I mean, a hypothetical war with China might need it, but they're still flying original-model Su-27 derivatives while they design their own indigenous fighter, the Shenyang J-XX. With good enough pilots, they can seriously ruin an F-15's day, but with the F-22's already built, there should be more than enough firepower to take out something like that. I mean, there could be trouble if Russia decided to fully rebuild its air force with its recuperating economy and try a show of force against the USA, but what are the odds of that happening? Hell, China's not very likely either. The only foreseeable conflicts in the near future might be Iran and/or North Korea, and they're both still flying older-generation aircraft that the F-15 has shot down in the past. In terms of equipment, the playing field is already level, unless you're thinking that the USA's going to square off against Eurofighters or something.
Of course, you can say hindsight is 20/20, but exactly the opposite of what they were hoping would happen, happened. I find it hilarious, myself.
Oh, another reason for the YF-23's passing was the rotary weapons launcher was prone to jamming on the test model. I guess even though that could have been fixed, the track records still spoke for themselves. Even if that mindset backfired miserably.
The CBC did a documentary called "Getting Gouged by Geeks" of precisely the same thing, with almost precisely the same fault - Instead of loosening the chip, the module itself was blown in such a way that the computer didn't power on. Unfortunately, CBC had high standards - even one guy who had figured it out, and honestly fixed it, was considered to be "gouging" because he only had a larger module than what needed replacing - Let's not even mention that they expected him to do a house call for free and give them a memory module for the going price online. There were plenty of examples of others who weren't so legit, though.
You can see it here. Interestingly, Slashdot ran a story on it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The only real thing that needs to happen to completely lock down physical media on consoles is for a small portion of the disc to be writeable, and require retailers to write that with a specialized burner on purchase, containing all pertinent information including console serial number, date of purchase, place of purchase, etc etc. Encode/burn it in a way otherwise unreadable by normal players (like the Dreamcast's GD-ROM format, which was, to grossly over-simplify, more or less an inversion of the expected TOC with the data written backwards), give the console(s) in question the ability to read and require that track via firmware, and you have a completely locked-down, no-resale system that's directly tied to your console and your console alone. Charge an extra 50% per disc for "unlocked" versions to be used solely at video rental stores, perhaps with a re-writeable layer containing a date string to lock the game once the due-back date arrives.
Sure, it'd cost an arm and a leg and the soul of your first-born son, but who cares? You're saving yourself from PIRATES. Plus, you get all the benefits of the online distribution racket, too - Your friend wants to play? They need to get their own copy! You lost your disc? Buy another one, just like people who lost their accounts do! Console broke? Well, buy a new one and buy all your games again! Best of all, no pesky internet connection required to verify the license. That's a plus for the consumer!
Sure, you might be able to get around it, but good luck with that.
Well, you do have a point, though I do have to say that rental prices have all but doubled where I live, for no real reason. It's pretty much as expensive as going to the theatre now (minus concession items). Though quite honestly, the force of the market alone will drive DVD's out of favour simply because it can and will. Manufacturing of DVD players is starting to peter off from a few years ago, and the market is being flooded with Blu-Ray equipment and virtually every new release today is available on both Blu-Ray and DVD.
That said, I also agree that digital distribution is definitely the way things seem to be headed, as much as Sony might dislike that fact. But the state of the industry right now, along with the vested interest in Blu-Ray means that it's definitely going to dominate DVD before its end of life, even if it's only by artificial means.
Do you really even need to ask that question?
Seriously, though, background music is background music in that kind of situation, unless you're planning on putting on a party (in which case it's louder background music), and you'll probably either try and find something that you know everyone will enjoy. My tastes are obviously not yours, so my feelings on the current musical trends don't really count here, but when faced with the decision between buying a disc or just grabbing a few tracks, I think most people would be more inclined to do the latter. Hell, iTunes has been a runaway success in spite of the RIAA's assertions, based on that very idea, not to mention that the seemingly most popular P2P app (around here anyway), Limewire (on the Gnutella2 network), is laden with fakes and viruses. A legitimate, virus-free environment, it makes for a very safe alternative to just downloading it for free. Sure, some people know better and can spot that kind of stuff, but come on. How many users are actually that intelligent?
It is a bit of a leap, yeah, but when you think about it, there are a couple of reasons for that:
1) People universally dislike the RIAA. At least around here, people like to spite them as much as possible.
2) It isn't universally illegal to download music over the internet, and still is a legal grey area.
3) The cost of a music CD, given the amount of enjoyment and entertainment (assuming all songs in the album are "good") versus the cost of a DVD/game and the amount of enjoyment and entertainment gained from that, is fairly hard to quantify, but a single music track is usually around 3-5 minutes in length, give or take a minute. Considering that music has become a much more personal experience, it isn't necessarily a social activity anymore; While a DVD might be limited to an hour and a 1.5-2 hours in length or so with limited replayability, it still remains something of a group activity. Gaming has also become an increasingly social activity (well, arguably social), with a lot of replayability and unpredictability, depending on the game.
It's not really enough to say for sure that consumers are choosing to spend their money on games instead of music, but given the general quality of music as of late (so I'm told; I jumped off the bandwagon long ago) and the rather public knowledge that the artist gets little to no support from their purchase to begin with, it makes for a very good case to spend your money elsewhere.
This is precisely what people said about DVD's about a decade ago, and the fact that you've bought DVD's and DVD-media games proves that it worked itself out in the end, even if only by sheer force of the market, whether or not people actually did want it (and they did). I'm not particularly happy about Blu-Ray winning the format war (I was more a fan of HD-DVD, for basically the sole reason that Sony's had a terrible track record with standardizing media), but at least we have a successor format to do us until we get some good holographic storage going. Given the consumer shelf life of DVD, that should put us in about the right timeframe for it by the time Blu-Ray is long in the tooth. Already there are BD-ROM drives for around $100, and players for about that much. Burners are still expensive, but still continuously dropping in price. Hell, a Liteon 4x BD-R drive is currently running for around $200 CAD on NCIX, and a really nice LG 8x one is only about $60 more. The price is plummeting, and with the PS3 gaining momentum in the gaming market and Blu-Ray being the de-facto standard in high-definition storage media for movies, we'll eventually see Blu-Ray take over and land nicely in the spot DVD landed in some years ago.
I was under the impression that this was launched long ago, as I remember them (Gamepark Holdings) advertising it for sale at least a year ago. Doing a bit of research, I guess they thought it would be launched far sooner than they really could. I remember they had pricing available and everything.
Besides, if you're looking for a truly high-end computer and you're not looking to build it yourself (or you're looking for a notebook), Falcon Northwest is one of the best there is, and they've been in the business since 1992. Of course, they're custom-built high-end PC's; They'll cost a pretty penny, and there's no assembly line, so they'll take a week or so to arrive, depending on your order.
Well, neither of those systems were networked or quite up to par with the business machines out there in the day, but there were plenty of Amiga viruses floating around, thanks to its widespread homebrew and piracy.
The Commodore 64 and Atari didn't exactly have permanent storage, so the worst you could do would be to have an annoying attachment to a diskette/tape/cartridge that wouldn't transfer to other media unless used during the same session. However, that in mind, there does happen to be at least one Commodore 64 virus widespread enough to have been documented.
Perhaps someone forgot about an article that was on here a week or so ago about the modern Mac-based botnet that's currently floating around? Not particularly vulnerabilities in the OS, but it's the idea that Macs are bulletproof that allows social engineering to be a very successful attack vector against Mac users. Remember that a lot of viruses even in the Windows world still require the user to manually launch them.
What's incredibly funny is that the first result for "Mac botnet" in a Google search is a 2006 "Mac Geekery" blog entry containing a rant about how Macs will never constitute a botnet. =D Such foresight! Such fanboism!
Yeah, this is what I thought when I first heard about this earlier today. If ever there were a "big reason" to back the draconian ACTA, international "condemnation" is it. This'll probably let them lobby for and push it through without much, if any, opposition.
Curse you, technicalities!