So what? It is more useful to have xorg log output and text mode than a 256 colour 800x600 desktop. In linux: it is all about changing/etc/X11/xorg.conf. In windows: it is reasonable to have GUI failsafe because you won't edit registry or display settings in CLI.
Well, bad news for the MPAA and RIAA. Piratebay people obviously expected this and mantained backups to be able to deploy a new server elsewhere if needed.
MPAA and RIAA might however try to shut down their domain name in USA, but then we would just head over to thepiratebay.ru:) Their trackers are also dependant on domain name, no?
Because they are kids which do not, nor do their parents earn thousands of dollars pe month. You have to notice that there are lots of people outside of the USA or EU, some even owning their poverty to those rich western countries.
Naively, one should not allow application to reuse a temporary key if it doesn't belong to the system, but to the user (whatever the definition of system or the user executable might be).
In other words, don't allow anything installed by the user without admin priviledges to obtain admin access without explicit authentication. This would prevent most practical types of attacks.
If one does install it during admin sessions, it's a grave mistake anyway.
What they seem to do with a system is somewhat similar to selinux/apparmor in linux realm (btw. they also appear to have hardened system services).
The whole idea about creating fine-grained, but too-strict access control system and then fixing it on a case-by-case basis will not work uniformly. Developers can't predict everything users will try to do with their fresh new system, they can just try to make it less annoying by eliminating most frequent problems. People will still be bombed by this crap when they go into some specific corners of the system or do some seemingly benign tasks which Vista designers forgot about. I'm also really afraid how this will affect backwards compatibility.
Btw. windows users also like to explore various system and "hidden" places like control panel. Annoying them is not a good idea. I assume they will massively look for a way to turn the crap off. So those users will end up with XP-like security, and again be more vulnerable to malware. At this point Microsoft doesn't really care, they just want to lock-down the default system as much as possible to mitigate large-scale attacks on windows hosts.
Better way to do this? Maybe a single-sign-on system (Kerberos might be overkill, but something simpler with limited time access would be neat). Fedora Core 5 has this. When you type in your root password, yellow(gold?) icon appears in the tray. You manually click on it and select to expire ticket when you are done with root tasks, or ticket times out itself. After that, you are degraded back to normal priviledges.
Take an ecstasy and figure out what others think about your right to do with your body what you want. Human society does and always did favour rules beneficial for the society at the expense of indiviudal rights (in this case prohibiting the use of drugs).
Starforce was attractive when it was impossible to play pirate sf3-protected games. With the release of DT4 (and previously sfcure), that advantage was thing of past. Publishers are abandoning SF because it is probably too expensive for the level of protection it currently offers.
Well it's in pretty expensive. "Feeding" a vegetative person means keeping a body alive, cleaning it, taking care that it doesn't develop skin ilnesses from inactivity and taking care about "byproducts". It costs, and if person doesn't have a chance to wake up, why not use those resources to improve care for other ill people (with a chance to survive)?
I think noone really wants to actually die in the last conscious moment of his/her life, not even suiciders, When you are about to cease from existance, it must be terrifying. But for someone in coma life can be a prolongation of agony. People let their dogs be killed to avoid suffering, why not apply the same rule to humans.
Only 'issue' with eutanasia is that many of those watchdogs (poking nose into what isn't their business) are in fact merely worried about what will eventually happen to them when it's their turn to die. (But religious fanatics are also force to reckon with in this case)
OK, giving a song to a friend isn't something that is going to upset RIAA. Putting it on internet and allowing, in the end, 10000+ people to get it for free is certainly gong to upset them. I understand why. They count that at least some of those people would've bought it if it weren't obtainable through P2P. It is not surprising, their only goal is to keep shareholders' huge bank accounts growing.
This way of performing investigation is, IMO, still much more fair to users than practices preferred by music industry. Police forces, as opposed to various RIAA/MPAA-like organisations, do have the right to collect legitimate evidence and were probably even authorized by copyright holders to share copyrighted material in this investigation, if needed. Important bit is that their evidence is less likely to be falsificated. Sincerely, I don't understand how RIAA/MPAA logs can be any evidence, even in US courts, because they can write whatever they want and present it to court.
German police also contacted RIAA to verify if data is copyrighted. Well, you can bet that in USA they wouldn't even bother before knocking on your door.
Massive Edonkey sharers are likely to be targeted by this kind of operation (i.e those who share 500+ files). Bittorrent is much harder to track in that way, because it doesn't have a central database with each shared file (per server) so it's much harder to find people who are sharing HUGE amounts of material online. Therefore operations like this won't change a bit.
Wasn't this na issue when casette players became popular? Music industry went crazy as if they were to loose their money. And then again, the same story when radio came.
Maybe MS can remotely command 360 to extract firmware and do a checksum. They could as well update software and a firmware (and do random fw checksum checking). They can also frequently do fw update to prevent this, and even include the update on game discs.
A modchip device which emulates this particular dvd drive (while it fowards dvd data from a vanilla one) would be a killer though and probably undetectable, maybe eve with a new firmware?
If they can make it work without expensive DVD DL discs, it's definitely going to shake the ground for MS (and in fact help them get more market share?).
This isn't Creative's problem, it's the fault of US patent system. Now an non-US company (Taiwanese to be precise) is suing US company. Why not, current patent law was in fact devised to protect US IP, so this is a good lesson for the US lawmakers. Creative will probably get sh*tloads of money while Apple will be forced to change interface of their overpriced Ipods. Of course, unless they find prior art evidence and win in court.
Why this is important? Because this is the only way US lawmakers will ever consider changing the system.
Probably not without crashing the machine. You don't need to look at windows kernel to find flaws in the OS. There are too many in the GFX driver (and the hardware).
If it can be downloaded. And btw. how they can have right to strip the envelope and check the content of the disc? It can contain freeware or even private data (photos, home videos, amateur porn...)
Maybe this time it works. Let's hope. It will also mean that simple transfuzion would cure cancer. Then I wonder why of so many cancer patients which receive transfuzion during chemotherapy, noone was miraculously cured. Unless, that is, if that kind of mutation isn't very rare (and maybe it could cause various autoimmune diseases?)...
Use proxy and encrypt (and/or hide) protocol in other data. Communicate privately with your Gaim/IM located at home desktop machine, send messages over it or receive them on your mobile device.
Let the bloody telco try stopping you.
Currently lots of people are uneducated to use IM or VOIP even at home, telcos want it to remain that way by upholding "hard-to-do" status of mobile IM/VoIP. We need a killer (mobile) application which will put an end to their income.
Luckily they didn't have software patent portfolio for the grim times (plan B)... Imagine the fuss if they e.g. patented textured trangle rendering with perspective correction? Though some would already be expired by now.
My guess is there will be hybrid GPU/PPU cards with NV/ATI + PhysX hardware on it. Of course, if it is possible to do without cooperation from GPU makers.
It will unfortunately make game playing more expensive (a big showstopper for crowds which don't buy the most expensive cards). Maybe they are planning make cheaper (=slower) version for, say, $100 6 months from now, it would be smart move.
Ageia SDK is free and provides software mode as well, so it's "price" is a great advantage over Havok, which will struggle to stay in business. this is a crucial moment for ageia as well, as it will decide if physx will stay or go. So I'm not surprised that Havok tries influence that process.
Like... Red Faction? This game was great innovation, I was actually was spending more time digging the holes than playing through levels. Game developers somehow don't realize that such game can be a hit, with a new gameplay layer. But condition is that it excells in other important areas (which is very hard task), so people will hype and embrace it. HL2 had physics gun, Far Cry had beautiful landscapes, while Riddick had great character models and full shadow/lightning system.
I don't therefore expect parent's ideas to appear until there's middleware + engine which can significantly speed up the task of creating complex environments.
As Havok was threatened to be pushed out of business by novodex API and physX hardware, they seem to have signed the agreement with Nvidia. Though I don't believe this solution will be as good as ageia cards (even SLI), because GPU must do other shader processing, and is generally not designed for such tasks (although they have advantage because all processing is done on one card and geometry data doesn't have to take round trips).
If I were a game developer, I'd be confused which API to pick. I'm sure Novodex will not support acceleration on GPU's (via SM30), because people wouldn't have reasons to buy physX card. On the other side, Nvidia sees accelerated Havok as opportunity to sell more cards in SLI setup or persuade people to buy better gfx cards instead of physX.
Physx seems to have atracted many developers (100 games to come), and is a pretty expensive solution for users wanting the hardware acceleration. On the other side, havok will be accessible to mid-range users which don't have additional $200 for a physics card, or want to have SLI for other, ordinary titles. After all, most gamers buy whatever is hyped (with parents' money), so for now I think Ageia has serious edge, but probably ATI and Nvidia will react in a year or two with more dedicated hardware capabilities. I wonder if Havok made exclusive deal with nividia because excluding ATI would be disaster for the success of API.
Which API will win? Ageia shouldn't have any interest to support graphic card shaders in their SDK/API, while Havok might try to support physX to at least have unified platform solution, because they earn solely from selling the middleware. I think these two will be around for some time (each with certain advantage), unless all developers pick the same side. Users will certainly benefit from the competition. Agreed, best way would be to have single card with both chips (with efficient interconnection and because of that redesigned API, so it is a long term goal), but I doubt't that GPU makers want to share that piece of cake.
Slashdot Mirror
So what? It is more useful to have xorg log output and text mode than a 256 colour 800x600 desktop. /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
In linux: it is all about changing
In windows: it is reasonable to have GUI failsafe because you won't edit registry or display settings in CLI.
Well, bad news for the MPAA and RIAA. Piratebay people obviously expected this and mantained backups to be able to deploy a new server elsewhere if needed.
:) Their trackers are also dependant on domain name, no?
MPAA and RIAA might however try to shut down their domain name in USA, but then we would just head over to thepiratebay.ru
Because they are kids which do not, nor do their parents earn thousands of dollars pe month.
You have to notice that there are lots of people outside of the USA or EU, some even owning their poverty to those rich western countries.
Naively, one should not allow application to reuse a temporary key if it doesn't belong to the system, but to the user (whatever the definition of system or the user executable might be).
In other words, don't allow anything installed by the user without admin priviledges to obtain admin access without explicit authentication. This would prevent most practical types of attacks.
If one does install it during admin sessions, it's a grave mistake anyway.
What they seem to do with a system is somewhat similar to selinux/apparmor in linux realm (btw. they also appear to have hardened system services).
The whole idea about creating fine-grained, but too-strict access control system and then fixing it on a case-by-case basis will not work uniformly. Developers can't predict everything users will try to do with their fresh new system, they can just try to make it less annoying by eliminating most frequent problems. People will still be bombed by this crap when they go into some specific corners of the system or do some seemingly benign tasks which Vista designers forgot about. I'm also really afraid how this will affect backwards compatibility.
Btw. windows users also like to explore various system and "hidden" places like control panel. Annoying them is not a good idea. I assume they will massively look for a way to turn the crap off. So those users will end up with XP-like security, and again be more vulnerable to malware. At this point Microsoft doesn't really care, they just want to lock-down the default system as much as possible to mitigate large-scale attacks on windows hosts.
Better way to do this? Maybe a single-sign-on system (Kerberos might be overkill, but something simpler with limited time access would be neat). Fedora Core 5 has this. When you type in your root password, yellow(gold?) icon appears in the tray. You manually click on it and select to expire ticket when you are done with root tasks, or ticket times out itself. After that, you are degraded back to normal priviledges.
Take an ecstasy and figure out what others think about your right to do with your body what you want. Human society does and always did favour rules beneficial for the society at the expense of indiviudal rights (in this case prohibiting the use of drugs).
Starforce was attractive when it was impossible to play pirate sf3-protected games. With the release of DT4 (and previously sfcure), that advantage was thing of past. Publishers are abandoning SF because it is probably too expensive for the level of protection it currently offers.
Well it's in pretty expensive. "Feeding" a vegetative person means keeping a body alive, cleaning it, taking care that it doesn't develop skin ilnesses from inactivity and taking care about "byproducts". It costs, and if person doesn't have a chance to wake up, why not use those resources to improve care for other ill people (with a chance to survive)?
I think noone really wants to actually die in the last conscious moment of his/her life, not even suiciders, When you are about to cease from existance, it must be terrifying. But for someone in coma life can be a prolongation of agony. People let their dogs be killed to avoid suffering, why not apply the same rule to humans.
Only 'issue' with eutanasia is that many of those watchdogs (poking nose into what isn't their business) are in fact merely worried about what will eventually happen to them when it's their turn to die. (But religious fanatics are also force to reckon with in this case)
OK, giving a song to a friend isn't something that is going to upset RIAA. Putting it on internet and allowing, in the end, 10000+ people to get it for free is certainly gong to upset them. I understand why. They count that at least some of those people would've bought it if it weren't obtainable through P2P. It is not surprising, their only goal is to keep shareholders' huge bank accounts growing.
This way of performing investigation is, IMO, still much more fair to users than practices preferred by music industry. Police forces, as opposed to various RIAA/MPAA-like organisations, do have the right to collect legitimate evidence and were probably even authorized by copyright holders to share copyrighted material in this investigation, if needed. Important bit is that their evidence is less likely to be falsificated. Sincerely, I don't understand how RIAA/MPAA logs can be any evidence, even in US courts, because they can write whatever they want and present it to court.
German police also contacted RIAA to verify if data is copyrighted. Well, you can bet that in USA they wouldn't even bother before knocking on your door.
Massive Edonkey sharers are likely to be targeted by this kind of operation (i.e those who share 500+ files). Bittorrent is much harder to track in that way, because it doesn't have a central database with each shared file (per server) so it's much harder to find people who are sharing HUGE amounts of material online. Therefore operations like this won't change a bit.
Wasn't this na issue when casette players became popular? Music industry went crazy as if they were to loose their money. And then again, the same story when radio came.
It is also called the "RIAA/MPAA trojan".
Maybe MS can remotely command 360 to extract firmware and do a checksum. They could as well update software and a firmware (and do random fw checksum checking).
They can also frequently do fw update to prevent this, and even include the update on game discs.
A modchip device which emulates this particular dvd drive (while it fowards dvd data from a vanilla one) would be a killer though and probably undetectable, maybe eve with a new firmware?
If they can make it work without expensive DVD DL discs, it's definitely going to shake the ground for MS (and in fact help them get more market share?).
How about 50 percent?
Have in mind that many kids who play console games live in poor countries.
PS1/2 success wasn't a coincidence.
This isn't Creative's problem, it's the fault of US patent system. Now an non-US company (Taiwanese to be precise) is suing US company. Why not, current patent law was in fact devised to protect US IP, so this is a good lesson for the US lawmakers. Creative will probably get sh*tloads of money while Apple will be forced to change interface of their overpriced Ipods. Of course, unless they find prior art evidence and win in court. Why this is important? Because this is the only way US lawmakers will ever consider changing the system.
Probably not without crashing the machine. You don't need to look at windows kernel to find flaws in the OS. There are too many in the GFX driver (and the hardware).
If it can be downloaded.
And btw. how they can have right to strip the envelope and check the content of the disc? It can contain freeware or even private data (photos, home videos, amateur porn...)
Maybe this time it works. Let's hope. It will also mean that simple transfuzion would cure cancer. Then I wonder why of so many cancer patients which receive transfuzion during chemotherapy, noone was miraculously cured. Unless, that is, if that kind of mutation isn't very rare (and maybe it could cause various autoimmune diseases?)...
Use proxy and encrypt (and/or hide) protocol in other data. Communicate privately with your Gaim/IM located at home desktop machine, send messages over it or receive them on your mobile device.
Let the bloody telco try stopping you.
Currently lots of people are uneducated to use IM or VOIP even at home, telcos want it to remain that way by upholding "hard-to-do" status of mobile IM/VoIP. We need a killer (mobile) application which will put an end to their income.
Big question: How much did MS play to get GTA on xbox360?
I'd say much because it is a key game to the success of the 360.
Luckily they didn't have software patent portfolio for the grim times (plan B)...
Imagine the fuss if they e.g. patented textured trangle rendering with perspective correction?
Though some would already be expired by now.
My guess is there will be hybrid GPU/PPU cards with NV/ATI + PhysX hardware on it. Of course, if it is possible to do without cooperation from GPU makers.
It will unfortunately make game playing more expensive (a big showstopper for crowds which don't buy the most expensive cards). Maybe they are planning make cheaper (=slower) version for, say, $100 6 months from now, it would be smart move.
Ageia SDK is free and provides software mode as well, so it's "price" is a great advantage over Havok, which will struggle to stay in business. this is a crucial moment for ageia as well, as it will decide if physx will stay or go. So I'm not surprised that Havok tries influence that process.
Like... Red Faction?
This game was great innovation, I was actually was spending more time digging the holes than playing through levels. Game developers somehow don't realize that such game can be a hit, with a new gameplay layer. But condition is that it excells in other important areas (which is very hard task), so people will hype and embrace it. HL2 had physics gun, Far Cry had beautiful landscapes, while Riddick had great character models and full shadow/lightning system.
I don't therefore expect parent's ideas to appear until there's middleware + engine which can significantly speed up the task of creating complex environments.
As Havok was threatened to be pushed out of business by novodex API and physX hardware, they seem to have signed the agreement with Nvidia. Though I don't believe this solution will be as good as ageia cards (even SLI), because GPU must do other shader processing, and is generally not designed for such tasks (although they have advantage because all processing is done on one card and geometry data doesn't have to take round trips).
If I were a game developer, I'd be confused which API to pick. I'm sure Novodex will not support acceleration on GPU's (via SM30), because people wouldn't have reasons to buy physX card. On the other side, Nvidia sees accelerated Havok as opportunity to sell more cards in SLI setup or persuade people to buy better gfx cards instead of physX.
Physx seems to have atracted many developers (100 games to come), and is a pretty expensive solution for users wanting the hardware acceleration. On the other side, havok will be accessible to mid-range users which don't have additional $200 for a physics card, or want to have SLI for other, ordinary titles. After all, most gamers buy whatever is hyped (with parents' money), so for now I think Ageia has serious edge, but probably ATI and Nvidia will react in a year or two with more dedicated hardware capabilities. I wonder if Havok made exclusive deal with nividia because excluding ATI would be disaster for the success of API.
Which API will win? Ageia shouldn't have any interest to support graphic card shaders in their SDK/API, while Havok might try to support physX to at least have unified platform solution, because they earn solely from selling the middleware. I think these two will be around for some time (each with certain advantage), unless all developers pick the same side. Users will certainly benefit from the competition. Agreed, best way would be to have single card with both chips (with efficient interconnection and because of that redesigned API, so it is a long term goal), but I doubt't that GPU makers want to share that piece of cake.