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Slashback: Circumvention, AOLandfill, Scoffing
from the happy-birthday-fkp dept.
Excuse me, is this the service entrance? We just posted about Microsoft blocking gamers with mod-chipped X-boxes from the Microsoft-run online gaming service; now NiteStar writes "Xbox-Scene.com just reported that a group of Xbox hackers named Team Assembly managed to change the serial number and MAC address of the xbox. After the change they managed to get onto Xbox Live (with mod-chip disabled) with a previously banned xbox ..."
Not so fast, mister. The Raindog writes "Since NVIDIA announced its GeForce FX graphics chip, the web has been flooded with a slew of previews and articles that do little more than regurgitate what must have been NVIDIA's official press kit. Slashdot had coverage a few days ago, but since then, a new take on NVIDIA's latest chip has surfaced without all the PR-inspired hype. As it turns out, the GeForce FX's features aren't all that remarkable next to ATI's Radeon 9700 Pro, which has been available for months now."
I liked the old .sig about a black hole that would blot out the sun. Matthew Davis writes "CNN.com ran a story about Jim McKenna and John Lieberman back in October requesting everyone to send the CD mailers they receive to them. When they reach 1 million CDs they'll hand deliver them to AOL. In a recent article by SiliconValley.com they quote Nicholas Graham, a spokesman for AOL stating, "If they reach their goal ... I'd be happy to give them directions and greet them at the door ... We would make a contribution ourselves to put them over the top" Does that mean they're putting Jim and John's address on the top of the CD mailing list?"
Now if only these were CD-RWs ... and they can keep sending me the nice, reusable cases, just no more paper sleeves, thanks.
Still teasing, Stephen. foolish_child writes "Not sure if you noticed, but in the newest paperback pressing of Cryptonomicon (1 November 2002, I think) there is a chapter from Quicksilver at the back. I spotted it in the railway station in Amsterdam, so maybe it's a European edition. I have been checking to see if it was also online but have seen no sign of it - hence the heads up. I'm sure someone will scan it in soon - it is SUPERB! (read it waiting for a train) - Enoch the Red, emissary of the Royal Society, landing in 1700's Boston looking for . . someone. Scary thing is how good his research is as usual - I've just been reading up on Leibnitz and Newton and Co. and . . . you've probably seen it already but I wanted to share :)"
This new edition of Cryptonomicon is probably in a bookstore near you already, and the book proper is (only) several months away.
One small step for BanKind. An anonymous reader writes "It seems CapitalOne's website works with Mozilla, as of this November, 2002. This is good news because many people have CapitalOne credit cards, and previously the site required Microsoft's Intarweb Explorer. This just shows how simply speaking up by e-mailing large companies can evoke change. For more info see here ." Update: 12/03 22:00 GMT by T : Note that this information renders moot the question posed here about Cap One.
SLASHBACK (Score:4, Funny)
from the stupid-nitpics department
Re:No kidding! (Score:5, Insightful)
If the mod-chip is disabled how could they cheat? So is it moral? I think so.
Re:No kidding! (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it immoral to play online with an XBox that you've modded so that you can run homebrew software, or install Linux? I would hope not. Modding does not necessarily equal cheating.
Re:No kidding! (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty soon, EVERYONE would be banned. There's an ugly situation.
Re:No kidding! (Score:4, Insightful)
So, they can't exactly be cheating and screwing people over, if the only way they can get on xbox live is with the modchip DISABLED.
Re:No kidding! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ino,
Are all modchips necessarily used for cheating? From what I understand, the most spiffy thing about modding an XBox is that you can run Linux on such a system. If that's you reason for having such a system, how are you screwing over your fellow players?
Like poking a savage dog with a stick (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Like poking a savage dog with a stick (Score:4, Funny)
Breaking the licensing agreement (Score:4, Insightful)
You broke the licensing agreement in the first place by modding the box. Why do you think it's right to break it further by circumventing the agreed-upon penalty?
Re:Breaking the licensing agreement (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we, as consumers, have property rights, or don't we?
Re:Breaking the licensing agreement (Score:5, Funny)
Because God isn't a catholic
Re:Breaking the licensing agreement (Score:5, Interesting)
The X-box Live! servers are their own damn hardware, and they'll do what the hell they like to them and there's nothing you can do about it.
Mod all you like, but don't expect to be able to use their servers.
Re:Breaking the licensing agreement (Score:5, Insightful)
You BUY hardware, you don't license it.
Now, I agree with you completely that snagging another MAC and S/N at random is very uncool for the poor sot who actually buys the iron with those numbers.
As for why it's OK to break the licensing agreement, I point out (again) that hardware is NOT licensed, it's owned. I do not RENT my console. I own it.
As for circumventing the ban, given the above (I own my iron) I figure it's within my rights as a user to USE the iron I bought and paid for.
I'm NOT condoning cheating or anything with a mod. This isn't about cheating. It's about the owner's rights to use their own gear.
Re:Breaking the licensing agreement (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the Xbox itself, Microsoft doesn't care what you do with it, nor do they have any say in the matter. They strongly prefer that you buy a lot of games for it, but hell even if you make it a Linux box, they don't care. Just lets them say to developers, "Hey, we've sold x systems, you should make games for us." (Yes, in the long run they don't want a lot of people buying systems but not games, but in the short run it probably still helps them)
It's unanimous (Score:5, Funny)
Even dogs [nomoreaolcds.com].
Why return CDs to AOL (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want it stopped, hit them where it hurts - put a return-to-sender sticker on them, make AOL pay for the postage, or handle them one-by-one, or see if you can use that German law about making retailers pay the cost of removing and disposing of excess packaging... I'm not a genius (I used to be, but I'm told I'm not any more) but surely we can come up with something more persuasive than a one-off dump of a large single load of CDs.
Re:Why return CDs to AOL (Score:5, Funny)
You must have gotten married.
Re:Why return CDs to AOL (Score:4, Funny)
Shit.. that was supposed to say "wasn't worth it" - no offence intended.... just a little late at night here in the UK, and the odd Freudian slip...
--
Tim
MOD PARENT DOWN! (Score:5, Informative)
As has been repeated ad nauseum both here and on their website, AOL CDs (like almost all other mailed advertisements) are sent via Standard Mail (not First Class). There is no Return to Sender bit in Standard Mail (unlike First Class).
Besides, if they were sent First Class, the return postage has already been paid in the price of the stamp. It wouldn't hurt their wallet one way or the other.
Changing serial numbers and macs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Changing serial numbers and macs... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Are X-Box serial numbers laid out in some predictable pattern (sequentally for instance?). And if not: 2. Just how big IS that serial number space. Something tells me it's of BIGNUM proportions and it's the kind of thing that you woudn't be able to burn through in your lifetime.
Actual use for AOL CD's (Score:5, Funny)
As an aside, when you don't have 5.01 or later it just kills the browser that you do have installed, so it kinda causes a really fun catch-22, no browser to surf the web to find a new browser..... Really sucked.
Anyway, back with my story.... I was on a frantic search for a copy of IE 5.01 or later when I remembered that I had a stockpile of those AOL Cd's in the garage... I grabbed myself one of them (yellow, no idea what version) and proceeded to find the IE directory on the disc.. Sure enough it was version 5.01.x so I installed it and everything went smoothly from there.
So, the moral of the story? Sometimes AOL disks do have a use other than coasters or frisbees....
AOL CD's are awsome... (Score:5, Funny)
xbox serial number (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, you can arrange for any arbitrary XBox to be permanently banned!
I wonder if there's a way to pollute their blacklist with so many bogus entries that they have to give up.
Re:xbox serial number (Score:5, Insightful)
MS Rep1: Hmm, some dumbshit is logging in with sequental serial numbers from IP address 123.456.789.012.
MS Rep2: What an idiot... send the death squads.
Honestly, MS is going to figure out a way to stop that kind of thing very easily.
Re:xbox serial number (Score:5, Funny)
Then make it the payload of the next Outlook worm...
AOLandfill Halloween Costume (Score:5, Funny)
But I did have a bunch of crap CDs, some of which were AOL CDs. So I taped them together and went as AOLandfill. Had about strips of 6-7 down each a leg, a sort of vest and a couple on my forearms. Truth be told, it did look like some low-rent Power Ranger battle armour or something, but once I said the name, people thought it was funny.
I also got to use pickup lines like
Try me free for 1000 hours for your first month!
I'm so easy to use it's no wonder I'm number one!
The terrifying part of the costume may have been how well those lines worked.
Re:Sending Back 1 Million AOL CD's.....Uhhhh (Score:5, Informative)
It would have saved you from looking stupid, since it states that they will be scratching each CD so they can't be used again.
Nvidia not news ?!?! (Score:4, Informative)
ATI support is about the worst I've ever had the misfortune to need to deal with. The actually make M$ support look forthcoming and really eager to please. 4 rev's of ATI's so called catalyst drivers and things are actually sort of stable, but a slew of games won't run under the 9700pro, for example M$ CFS3 does not recognize the driver set up. If you are thinking about buying a video card I suggest as someone who has a Radeon 9700pro and a nvidia 460, I'd get a cheap GF3 or 4200 and wait and see the NV30. Unless you have money to just burn, ATI has dissapointed again, and they've not corrected any of this All in One Wonder driver issues either....
capital one (Score:5, Interesting)
Excellent. Now keep speaking up and make sure they know that you are pleased to be able to continue giving them your business because they respect your personal choices.
My bank in canada always had a Mozilla friendly site and I made sure I sent them a nice e-mail thanking them ,describing exactly why I prefer to use their services as opposed to my previous bank.
Positive feedback is just as important as negative feedback!
Confused.... (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmm... But... but.... *head explodes*
Slashdot: Successfully colapsing the known universe since...
GeforceFX and 128 bit memory interfaces. (Score:5, Interesting)
Theory goes that by having a 128 bit interface the cards themselves are cheaper to produce. The fact that all bar one of the Radeon 9700 pro cards are using the ATI reference design is surely a testament to how much of a bitch it is to produce a 256 bit memory interface in the real world. But then they go and stick that f*cking vacuum cleaner thing on top. Are you expecting me to believe that a copper heat sink, heat pipes, and a rediculous vacuum cleaner thing is cheap to produce?
Nah, it's panic innit. NV30 is nowhere near as fast as it should have been and they're having to overclock it's tits off to get any reasonable headway over the R300.
Personally I blame specification overkill. Given that we won't be seeing DX9/GL2 based games for at least two years, what's the point of having 64k instruction long pipelines? Maybe nVidia are eyeing up the professional rendering market but... well... I dunno. It just seems a little over the top. The "ti200" version might be worth it, but then so is a Radeon 9700 (ordinary, not pro) and you can have that now.
Dave
Toyota.ca vs. Mozilla success! (Score:5, Interesting)
A month later, there was a page up saying they were redesigning for Mozilla/Netscape7/Opera compliance.
Today Mozilla works flawlessly, on their remarkably well designed site.
Score one for the good guys! And I'm off to make sure Toyota knows I appreciate their effort.
ATI vs. NVIDIA (Score:4, Interesting)
Despite all the puffery of the PR, they only claim about 40% increase over the 9700. 46 measly frames in Doom III with all the goods!!! Neither of these cards will run the Doom demo well! Hardly worthy of the claim creating a "new era of cinematic graphics". ATI started the new era, and NVIDIA is now matching ATI's offering with a slight increase in performance. Good job to both camps. We will all enjoy the benefits.
Future NVIDIA purchasers will have ATI to thank for the NV30's clockspeed and required hoover for cooling. There is little doubt that if it were not for the 9700 NV30 would be delivered later or clocked lower. I think ATI really surprised NVIDIA. We shall see who has the next surprise.
I think the big lie is that cinematic effects only begin with their deeper 2.0+ shaders. If you look at the DX9 demos from ATI [hardforum.com], you can see the stock 2.0 pixel and vertex shaders offer plenty of opportunity for cinematic effects.
The hoopla helps deflects attention away from NV30's lower bandwidth and poorer clockspeed-t/performace ratio compared to the 9700. I suspect the deeper shaders will not perform well for gaming and will only be used in near-real-time applications.
Both will be decent cards that adequately handle requirements (DX9) that may only start to matter for mainstream games by the time we're debating NV40 vs. R400.
Re:The whole "web standards" debate is stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Very few web sits voluntarily chose a grey background. In fact, that glorious grey is the browser's default background color. If fact, if you visit webstandards.org [webstandards.org] without CSS support, you're getting the colors, fonts, and layout you asked for. Don't like it, take a trip to Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Colors. Click the button for "Background" and change it to something you like. See, control in your hands.
Actually, they're making use of the latest version of HTML completely and correctly. Using the various color tags and techniques from previous versions would in fact be violating the correct use of HTML. When you break standards you end up having to do dozens of special cases for the quirks of each browser. If you stick to baseline modern HTML with CSS, all modern browsers will display the same thing looking good, older browsers will degrade gracefully.
You argue that by not supporting out of date HTML you're somehow discriminating against people with older computers. That's a bizarre claim. By using out of date HTML, you're making it harder for anyone to use it. Modern HTML makes it easier to render a web page in lynx [browser.org], or on your WebTV, or on a braille display, or be read aloud by a text to speech program. CSS makes it easier to keep your HTML small, speeding up the browsing experience for people with lower quality phone lines or working over an expensive wireless link. Modern HTML degrades gracefully. The old hackery HTML turns into a mess when forced to degrade. The webstandards.org page you complain about may not look pretty, but it's sure as hell usable. It'll work fine under lynx and a text to speech reader will easily and accurate speak the page for a blind person. As someone who occasionally must fall back on extremely low end systems and extremely slow connections, I appreciate how well webstandards.org degrade and curse how poorly most "old HTML" sites do.
Actually, anyone playing this sort of game is most certainly not a believer in Web Standards. Setting the background color at all in HTML (instead of CSS) is not invalid by the standard. No, those people are just assholes.
To hell with the Xbox serial/MAC addy hackers (Score:4, Insightful)
BooHoo.
If I were to somehow get OS X running on an AMD chip and iTools no longer worked, the last thing I would do would be to cry to Apple.
Xbox Live is a little oasis of online gaming where cheating, drastic connection differences and hardware differences are currently nonexistant. It is EXACTLY what legit Counterstrike players have been begging for since the late '90s. Now, a bunch of assholes out to get around their own inability to deal with the consequences their actions have bestowed upon them, are out to ruin it for everyone else.
XBL is something we've all wanted for years. Now, we can likely expect to see legit users permabanned from XBL because some 1337 hAx0r cannot possibly deal with the fact he can only get ahead in online Xbox games by using
So he uses their serial/MAC.
Others do the same.
They also cheat.
XBL is ruined.
I know a lot of people think it is cool to fuck over Microsoft at every oppertunity and feel that they should give up on the banning, but if this were anyone else, there would be a lot more outrage than there is now. Something good is on the verge of being destroyed. Too bad no one wants to own up to their own hypocrisy.
AOL CD tangent (Score:3, Funny)
Re:what about the innocent? (Score:4, Insightful)