Most programs will run on XP so Vista support isn't high priority until we see more programs that are Vista-only. Currently the only ones I can think of would need full DX10 support too which is probably gonna be a lot of work.
Oddly Trillian Astra tries to call Vista functions (dwmapi.dll) in Wine no matter what the Windows version is set to, so it crashes. Weird.
Or you could make a "passthrough" dll. It has the same function exports as the real DLL, but they all just call the real DLL functions. Then you can put whatever code in there you want to manipulate the function calls or their results or log stuff.
Someone made a DirectInput dll which allows real old games to use the Mousewheel which otherwise couldn't by making the game think you're really pressing PageUp and PageDown, which it should be able to handle easier.
Anyone who knows a bit of HTML will find it trivial to rip most anything from web pages. The hardest to rip are movies/audio delivered using SWFs, however you can usually decompile them to get the resources or references to external resources you need.
Some sites think they can be tricky by checking referers on these externally obtained resources or other safeguards, but with even the toughest safeguards I've seen one thing has remained true... the data always has to be sent to your computer SOMEHOW so you can view it. Thus, network sniffers win every time. Just need to identify the HTTP stream with the resource, then dump the file from the sniffer's log to disk.
In theory this file could be encrypted or the transfer could use HTTPS or something, but I haven't come across this yet. Even if I did, the file could be lying around unencrypted in memory just waiting to be dumped to disk from there, so even that isn't a dead end. And I'm assuming I already checked the cache and couldn't find it there.
Dumping audio from a audio/video FLV (the "Happy " thing Valve did for Portal in December '07) was a bit annoying for me to crack, but eventually I figured out how to use mplayer to dump the audio portion of a FLV to disk... and it was in MP3 format already for me. How nice.
I don't consider this unethical since it's content they're giving to me freely*. They post it on a public website, invite people to download it to their computers (that's how web browsers work, insert eng101 smiley here). They've given me that content, plain and simple. I'm just moving it to a permanent place on my disk where it won't be automatically deleted after I close my browser.
* - I'm not including other people posting copyrighted content they don't own in this little rant. I'm sure the owners of such content don't care whether or not it can be saved permanently, posting it is bad enough.
The only thing I haven't been able to crack was some music I liked in a flash game. The flash game itself was compressed and appended to a flash stub exe, which I defeated by dumping the uncompressed SWF from memory while the EXE ran. The resources didn't seem to have the music though, except for some files that MIGHT have been non-standard.AU audio files, but I couldn't find any player that could play them, despite supposed support, so I never did figure it out.
I guess it says something when I can mp3 files off of music sites which you'd think would try to prevent that, but I can't get the title screen music out of Codename Gordon even though it should have no reason to obfuscate it. I suppose I could record it from Stereo Out, but that's like admitting DEFEAT.
Actually I don't think most plugins have that level of control, at least for Netscape-compatible plugin interfaces (Firefox, Opera, etc). I think the browser downloads the file to the cache and points the plugin to it... on the other hand, plugins are able to check the download progress of files and play incomplete ones, but this may just be more plugin interfaces at work. At any rate, with Quicktime on Firefox the file indeed goes in the cache.
I've played a number of Team Fortress 2 rounds which prove you wrong. The whole game just encourages teamwork. You have the medic class who can go on his own but is best when he helps others. Get a few engineers together and they can set up their sentry turrets quicker, and have a tighter defense with more turrets. Spies can take out opposing sentries to help their team get through.
Granted, true coordination takes a bit more, but often all it has taken is one guy with a mic who suggests a good plan of action.
If a website's code is changed by a malicious, outside party, it usually has to reference an outside server at some point. SSP will block access to the outside server because it will recognize the current website has no need to have you interacting with it.
The checkUpdateSecurity fix isn't needed anymore since addons.mozilla.org updated, IIRC.
Also I've seen three incompatible extensions will crash Firefox so be careful: Free Download Manager extension (not needed if you use FlashGot, and is installed drive-by without your permission by the installer, crashes whenever you right click anywhere), Google Gears (crashes whenever you go to any website that tries to use it), and outdated versions of Split Browser (crashes whenever you try to use it; it's been updated to work with 3.0 now).
Since Valve themselves implemented class-specific configs I am sure they will make sure to store those. If you have made your own.cfg files you may want to merge them into autoexec.cfg since that will probably be uploaded. Or you can type "bug" in the console of any Valve Source game and file a bug report requesting that Steamcloud follow "exec" commands in autoexec.cfg to recursively upload other.cfg files you make.
Steamcloud may also simply sync directories, so all your CFG files, whether you use them regularly or made one once and forgot about it, will always be synced.
Steam only shows information about non-Steam games being run if you specifically add them to Steam and then only launch them through Steam.
For Steam games just sign out of friends before launching, but I fail to see how letting your friends know you're playing Team Fortress 2 is a privacy concern, unless you're playing it at work, in which case I would prefer your boss find out and fire you because I need a freaking job.
More seriously, if your friends can see you playing a multiplayer game, they have the option to join your game with two clicks and play with you. It's very convenient and fun.
And what happens when Valve decides that they don't want you to have a game any more? What happens if/when Valve goes out of business or is bought by a less scrupulous company?
That's when we start Googling for game names with special keywords which lead us to downloads that make the games not require Steam running anymore to use. Even if Valve themselves don't free their games from Steam when it goes under (which they have said they would, and I like to believe they are trustworthy) we can always fall back on the huge community dedicated to making games free. We already paid for and own the games anyway.
I installed it on both Windows and Linux sharing the data files (I dual boot). I tried to share the user files (save games) too but it didn't work since the "hardware fingerprint" it keeps to make sure you don't copy the activated state to another computer doesn't match up when you switch OSs. So I ended up activating the game about 4 times in one day, and had no problems.
Judas killed himself over twenty silver pieces, right?
Wrong. Judas had only had Jesus arrested because he was trying to force Jesus to destroy the Roman occupants in Israel and crown himself king of Israel as many of the people assumed he was going to do (according to misinterpreted prophecies).
When he finally realized Jesus wasn't going to do any of that, he returned the bounty money he had been given and hung himself.
Quote from http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html. This will give you a rough idea about what OSs gamers prefer. Not all gamers run Steam, or submitted to the Steam Hardware Survey (I couldn't ever get it to properly upload my results) but Steam is becoming more popular as its library expands so this is at least indicative of the "hardcore" gaming group (given Valve's core library and the type of gamers who would play it).
Windows Version
Windows XP 1,428,465 80.80 %
Windows Vista 266,192 15.06 %
Windows Vista 64 bit 47,367 2.68 %
Windows 2003 64 bit 12,455 0.70 %
Windows 2000 10,794 0.61 %
Other 2,672 0.15 %
It would cost you money to "print" the 3d trinkets so it wouldn't be a similar comparison. Similar to why book sellers aren't sweating because it costs money for ink and paper for you to print your own copies of books (not to mention bindings). But if you keep them in digital format (ebooks) there's no cost to you at all. Extend this back to 3d trinkets and the real trouble starts once we get realistic, immersive virtual reality with no limitations on what you can design or make. Like the taste of that bottle of expensive wine you have? Reproduce it in virtual reality, without any cost to you. You can have it whenever you want, and you can drink as much of it as you want without being inebriated (or if you LIKE being inebriated you can make it virtually inebriate you!) or needing to use the restroom.
(I was trying a car analogy but virtual cars don't actually help you GET anywhere in the real world... but then again the real expensive ones don't really get there much faster than the "everyday" cars I guess.)
Look at Jesus, he asks you to sell everything you have in order to gain entrance to heaven. You have to hate your family and only love God. (No really, you can even quote the bible on that)
If you need to get on a VPN to access the FTP server you're already authenticated. There's no point in authenticating twice (unless you want different levels of access, or the FTP server is also accessible from other networks).
I could have submitted this story any time in the last few years (ever since I found out about the setting in 1.5 or 2.0 betas) and gotten on the front page of Slashdot. And I thought it was common knowledge!
Slashdot Mirror
Most programs will run on XP so Vista support isn't high priority until we see more programs that are Vista-only. Currently the only ones I can think of would need full DX10 support too which is probably gonna be a lot of work.
Oddly Trillian Astra tries to call Vista functions (dwmapi.dll) in Wine no matter what the Windows version is set to, so it crashes. Weird.
Or you could make a "passthrough" dll. It has the same function exports as the real DLL, but they all just call the real DLL functions. Then you can put whatever code in there you want to manipulate the function calls or their results or log stuff.
Someone made a DirectInput dll which allows real old games to use the Mousewheel which otherwise couldn't by making the game think you're really pressing PageUp and PageDown, which it should be able to handle easier.
Go look for realMyst, it's pretty neat plus it has a new age. Also it works on XP IIRC.
Doesn't work too well on Wine though. You can walk around but if you click on some stuff like books it crashes.
uTorrent already does, last time I checked.
I was debugging a Half-Life crash once and I noticed it checks the registry for Wine keys while starting up, probably for compatibility hacks.
I was under the impression those DVD players were licensed?
Anyone who knows a bit of HTML will find it trivial to rip most anything from web pages. The hardest to rip are movies/audio delivered using SWFs, however you can usually decompile them to get the resources or references to external resources you need.
Some sites think they can be tricky by checking referers on these externally obtained resources or other safeguards, but with even the toughest safeguards I've seen one thing has remained true... the data always has to be sent to your computer SOMEHOW so you can view it. Thus, network sniffers win every time. Just need to identify the HTTP stream with the resource, then dump the file from the sniffer's log to disk.
In theory this file could be encrypted or the transfer could use HTTPS or something, but I haven't come across this yet. Even if I did, the file could be lying around unencrypted in memory just waiting to be dumped to disk from there, so even that isn't a dead end. And I'm assuming I already checked the cache and couldn't find it there.
Dumping audio from a audio/video FLV (the "Happy " thing Valve did for Portal in December '07) was a bit annoying for me to crack, but eventually I figured out how to use mplayer to dump the audio portion of a FLV to disk... and it was in MP3 format already for me. How nice.
I don't consider this unethical since it's content they're giving to me freely*. They post it on a public website, invite people to download it to their computers (that's how web browsers work, insert eng101 smiley here). They've given me that content, plain and simple. I'm just moving it to a permanent place on my disk where it won't be automatically deleted after I close my browser.
* - I'm not including other people posting copyrighted content they don't own in this little rant. I'm sure the owners of such content don't care whether or not it can be saved permanently, posting it is bad enough.
The only thing I haven't been able to crack was some music I liked in a flash game. The flash game itself was compressed and appended to a flash stub exe, which I defeated by dumping the uncompressed SWF from memory while the EXE ran. The resources didn't seem to have the music though, except for some files that MIGHT have been non-standard .AU audio files, but I couldn't find any player that could play them, despite supposed support, so I never did figure it out.
I guess it says something when I can mp3 files off of music sites which you'd think would try to prevent that, but I can't get the title screen music out of Codename Gordon even though it should have no reason to obfuscate it. I suppose I could record it from Stereo Out, but that's like admitting DEFEAT.
Youtube uses Flash, not Quicktime.
Actually I don't think most plugins have that level of control, at least for Netscape-compatible plugin interfaces (Firefox, Opera, etc). I think the browser downloads the file to the cache and points the plugin to it... on the other hand, plugins are able to check the download progress of files and play incomplete ones, but this may just be more plugin interfaces at work. At any rate, with Quicktime on Firefox the file indeed goes in the cache.
I've played a number of Team Fortress 2 rounds which prove you wrong. The whole game just encourages teamwork. You have the medic class who can go on his own but is best when he helps others. Get a few engineers together and they can set up their sentry turrets quicker, and have a tighter defense with more turrets. Spies can take out opposing sentries to help their team get through.
Granted, true coordination takes a bit more, but often all it has taken is one guy with a mic who suggests a good plan of action.
You can inject HTML or JavaScript or CSS into any page without having to trick the remote server into doing it for you.
If a website's code is changed by a malicious, outside party, it usually has to reference an outside server at some point. SSP will block access to the outside server because it will recognize the current website has no need to have you interacting with it.
At least that's how I'm understanding it.
The checkUpdateSecurity fix isn't needed anymore since addons.mozilla.org updated, IIRC.
Also I've seen three incompatible extensions will crash Firefox so be careful: Free Download Manager extension (not needed if you use FlashGot, and is installed drive-by without your permission by the installer, crashes whenever you right click anywhere), Google Gears (crashes whenever you go to any website that tries to use it), and outdated versions of Split Browser (crashes whenever you try to use it; it's been updated to work with 3.0 now).
Since Valve themselves implemented class-specific configs I am sure they will make sure to store those. If you have made your own .cfg files you may want to merge them into autoexec.cfg since that will probably be uploaded. Or you can type "bug" in the console of any Valve Source game and file a bug report requesting that Steamcloud follow "exec" commands in autoexec.cfg to recursively upload other .cfg files you make.
Steamcloud may also simply sync directories, so all your CFG files, whether you use them regularly or made one once and forgot about it, will always be synced.
Steam only shows information about non-Steam games being run if you specifically add them to Steam and then only launch them through Steam.
For Steam games just sign out of friends before launching, but I fail to see how letting your friends know you're playing Team Fortress 2 is a privacy concern, unless you're playing it at work, in which case I would prefer your boss find out and fire you because I need a freaking job.
More seriously, if your friends can see you playing a multiplayer game, they have the option to join your game with two clicks and play with you. It's very convenient and fun.
That's when we start Googling for game names with special keywords which lead us to downloads that make the games not require Steam running anymore to use. Even if Valve themselves don't free their games from Steam when it goes under (which they have said they would, and I like to believe they are trustworthy) we can always fall back on the huge community dedicated to making games free. We already paid for and own the games anyway.
When I clicked on this story title for a second I thought it was referring to Vista SP1.
I installed it on both Windows and Linux sharing the data files (I dual boot). I tried to share the user files (save games) too but it didn't work since the "hardware fingerprint" it keeps to make sure you don't copy the activated state to another computer doesn't match up when you switch OSs. So I ended up activating the game about 4 times in one day, and had no problems.
Wrong. Judas had only had Jesus arrested because he was trying to force Jesus to destroy the Roman occupants in Israel and crown himself king of Israel as many of the people assumed he was going to do (according to misinterpreted prophecies).
When he finally realized Jesus wasn't going to do any of that, he returned the bounty money he had been given and hung himself.
Quote from http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html. This will give you a rough idea about what OSs gamers prefer. Not all gamers run Steam, or submitted to the Steam Hardware Survey (I couldn't ever get it to properly upload my results) but Steam is becoming more popular as its library expands so this is at least indicative of the "hardcore" gaming group (given Valve's core library and the type of gamers who would play it).
Windows Version Windows XP 1,428,465 80.80 % Windows Vista 266,192 15.06 % Windows Vista 64 bit 47,367 2.68 % Windows 2003 64 bit 12,455 0.70 % Windows 2000 10,794 0.61 % Other 2,672 0.15 %So we got 15% Vista here.
Does this not work in the Azureus-based BitTyrant or is it just me? I type in my query and hit search and nothing happens.
It would cost you money to "print" the 3d trinkets so it wouldn't be a similar comparison. Similar to why book sellers aren't sweating because it costs money for ink and paper for you to print your own copies of books (not to mention bindings). But if you keep them in digital format (ebooks) there's no cost to you at all. Extend this back to 3d trinkets and the real trouble starts once we get realistic, immersive virtual reality with no limitations on what you can design or make. Like the taste of that bottle of expensive wine you have? Reproduce it in virtual reality, without any cost to you. You can have it whenever you want, and you can drink as much of it as you want without being inebriated (or if you LIKE being inebriated you can make it virtually inebriate you!) or needing to use the restroom.
(I was trying a car analogy but virtual cars don't actually help you GET anywhere in the real world... but then again the real expensive ones don't really get there much faster than the "everyday" cars I guess.)
Look at Jesus, he asks you to sell everything you have in order to gain entrance to heaven. You have to hate your family and only love God. (No really, you can even quote the bible on that)
You mean like this?If you need to get on a VPN to access the FTP server you're already authenticated. There's no point in authenticating twice (unless you want different levels of access, or the FTP server is also accessible from other networks).
I could have submitted this story any time in the last few years (ever since I found out about the setting in 1.5 or 2.0 betas) and gotten on the front page of Slashdot. And I thought it was common knowledge!