"a balance that's good for the music, good for the fans, and good for business."
This is by far the most infuriating thing I've read all day. They just think it's their right to control everything related to music. The RIAA thinks that they should be able to control what is listened to by fans of music, period. As a musician, I swear I will not ever sign a contract with anyone related to these bean-countering destroyers of culture, and if that means I can never make money, so be it. I just hope the Internet makes these people obsolete and impoverished sooner than later.
But as far as banning them goes, it's a moot point: We have freedom of speech in this country, the games are rated, and they are rated so that the most impressionable individuals (children) aren't supposed to play them. Even if video games are violent, lawmakers should not ban them. Having occasionally harmful material fall into impressionable hands is the price you pay for freedom of expression and such.
I don't think that video games don't lead to violence. Can you tell me that there hasn't been any kid who played a game, saw something violent, and started going around pretending he's in the game? Ever see kids pretend that they're video game characters at recess? Are you going to tell me that not one little kid pretended he was in the game and then really punched someone? I do think that the level of violence they lead to is nothing compared to what a violent homelife or neighborhood could bring on, but let's argue based on reality (the right to freedom of expression), people, not what you want reality to be.
If its just a single call to some subroutine that determines which CPU is running, and doesn't use any custom code that only runs on that CPU, all you'd need to do is disassemble the program, find the call, and right after the call, there'll probably be a conditional jump...then all you need to do is change the conditional jump so that it either always jumps, or doesn't jump at all (one or the other), and it'll run fine. It could be different than this, and they could easily make it harder, but I doubt they will, because most corporate clients aren't going to download a freaking crack to get their software to run. (Although, this "crack" wouldn't really a crack, and might be legal, theoretically.)
At any given moment, if you live in a crowded area, you can just tell any computer that contains a wireless card to connect to the nearest wireless network, and pay absolutely nothing for your internet access. In the city, there's literally an unencrypted network nearby, no matter where you are. Mind you, this is due to human error, and is wrong to exploit, but man, people are stupid. I live behind a police station and once unintentionally accessed s computer on their network and started browsing through their files, thinking it was my own box...oops! So much for the "connect to the nearest unencrypted WAN" option!
I hate to sound like everyone else...
on
The Great HDCP Fiasco
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
...but this will be cracked so fast that it'll be like it wasn't even protected at all. This will be an absolute priority in the minds of high IQ, anti-social parents' basement dwellers everywhere who want to take revenge on a society that puts profit ahead of human progress, and seeks to limit information in a sociopathic bid for their own, personal monetary gain. The notion that information can be controlled, packaged into little products, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, HD-DVDs, 0s and 1s that are only accessible to those who have exchanged money with someone who wishes to make a profit rather than contribute to artistic or technological development will be defeated. In the looming new age of technological freedom created by the absolute chaos of the Internet in all its unfettered glory, only those who want to:
1) Create actual art, not created for the mere purpose of profit
or
2) Advance mankind by providing new and improved tools
will be able to realize their goals when it comes to publishing art or software. The newest generation of kids was raised on P2P, and they EXPECT the free flow of information, no matter how complex it is. I'd get to work on improving your open source projects, for the good of humanity, people, because we EXPECT free software. We don't agree with the notion of payment, as far as we're concerned, its all 0s and 1s.
And I don't mean to demean anti-social basement dwellers. I'm in their ranks, and anti-social basement dwellers with high IQs have done more to free information from the shackles of DRM than anyone else. To my brethren: Hail thy mom for not kicking thyself out onto the streets, she has done a service to humanity!
Maybe they started producing the game when there was huge demand for a sequel, and then were beset by delays. Unfortunately, this pushed the game past the point where it could cash in on the popularity of the original, and then they decided to wait until it'd been over 10 years since Duke Nukem came out and increase sales by selling to people for whom Duke Nukem 3-D was a fond childhood memory.
Slashdot Mirror
"a balance that's good for the music, good for the fans, and good for business."
This is by far the most infuriating thing I've read all day. They just think it's their right to control everything related to music. The RIAA thinks that they should be able to control what is listened to by fans of music, period. As a musician, I swear I will not ever sign a contract with anyone related to these bean-countering destroyers of culture, and if that means I can never make money, so be it. I just hope the Internet makes these people obsolete and impoverished sooner than later.
But as far as banning them goes, it's a moot point: We have freedom of speech in this country, the games are rated, and they are rated so that the most impressionable individuals (children) aren't supposed to play them. Even if video games are violent, lawmakers should not ban them. Having occasionally harmful material fall into impressionable hands is the price you pay for freedom of expression and such. I don't think that video games don't lead to violence. Can you tell me that there hasn't been any kid who played a game, saw something violent, and started going around pretending he's in the game? Ever see kids pretend that they're video game characters at recess? Are you going to tell me that not one little kid pretended he was in the game and then really punched someone? I do think that the level of violence they lead to is nothing compared to what a violent homelife or neighborhood could bring on, but let's argue based on reality (the right to freedom of expression), people, not what you want reality to be.
If its just a single call to some subroutine that determines which CPU is running, and doesn't use any custom code that only runs on that CPU, all you'd need to do is disassemble the program, find the call, and right after the call, there'll probably be a conditional jump...then all you need to do is change the conditional jump so that it either always jumps, or doesn't jump at all (one or the other), and it'll run fine. It could be different than this, and they could easily make it harder, but I doubt they will, because most corporate clients aren't going to download a freaking crack to get their software to run. (Although, this "crack" wouldn't really a crack, and might be legal, theoretically.)
At any given moment, if you live in a crowded area, you can just tell any computer that contains a wireless card to connect to the nearest wireless network, and pay absolutely nothing for your internet access. In the city, there's literally an unencrypted network nearby, no matter where you are. Mind you, this is due to human error, and is wrong to exploit, but man, people are stupid. I live behind a police station and once unintentionally accessed s computer on their network and started browsing through their files, thinking it was my own box...oops! So much for the "connect to the nearest unencrypted WAN" option!
...but this will be cracked so fast that it'll be like it wasn't even protected at all. This will be an absolute priority in the minds of high IQ, anti-social parents' basement dwellers everywhere who want to take revenge on a society that puts profit ahead of human progress, and seeks to limit information in a sociopathic bid for their own, personal monetary gain. The notion that information can be controlled, packaged into little products, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, HD-DVDs, 0s and 1s that are only accessible to those who have exchanged money with someone who wishes to make a profit rather than contribute to artistic or technological development will be defeated. In the looming new age of technological freedom created by the absolute chaos of the Internet in all its unfettered glory, only those who want to: 1) Create actual art, not created for the mere purpose of profit or 2) Advance mankind by providing new and improved tools will be able to realize their goals when it comes to publishing art or software. The newest generation of kids was raised on P2P, and they EXPECT the free flow of information, no matter how complex it is. I'd get to work on improving your open source projects, for the good of humanity, people, because we EXPECT free software. We don't agree with the notion of payment, as far as we're concerned, its all 0s and 1s. And I don't mean to demean anti-social basement dwellers. I'm in their ranks, and anti-social basement dwellers with high IQs have done more to free information from the shackles of DRM than anyone else. To my brethren: Hail thy mom for not kicking thyself out onto the streets, she has done a service to humanity!
Maybe they started producing the game when there was huge demand for a sequel, and then were beset by delays. Unfortunately, this pushed the game past the point where it could cash in on the popularity of the original, and then they decided to wait until it'd been over 10 years since Duke Nukem came out and increase sales by selling to people for whom Duke Nukem 3-D was a fond childhood memory.